(Maybe this is better off in the General Rants section, but since it comes out of the Live Sound thread in this section, I put it here. Feel free to move, Stephen.)
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I would sound quite different from Dave even if we both played the same trumpet, played the same piece and in the same style.
Guitarists call it "Tone" and it is the Holy Grail of sound for many players. They exchange amps and strings, instruments and pieces of instruments, tubes, drivers and cables as they constantly search for their own "Tone". In the back of their mind they all know "Tone" is in their fingers and their heads, it's in their confidence as a player. They all subconciously understand that should you get B.B. King to play on a $400 Stratocaster the sound will still be undeniably "Blues Boy" (plus 60 years of experience).
Anyone else notice that lots of audiophile obsessions, some of which seem hopelessly neurotic to the rest of the world, are undeniably, totally, probably-DBT-passingly *true* and verifiable when it comes to the electric guitar/amp interface?
ie:
- Tubes sound better than solid state. Yes, we're talking distortion here, but even the often quite good digital emulations of tube amps in the guitar world do not feel right when you're playing through them.
- Wire makes a difference-- Guitar Player magazine has gotten a lot of crap lately for this one, but even the most scientific people who've looked into it (like Bill Lawrence, the pickup designer) have concluded that the capacitance in a guitar cable makes a major difference to the sound. (Guitar amps have tremendously more input impedance than even the flakiest audiophile tube power amp-- 1megohm is generally standard). I have before-and-after recordings of a guitar where I replaced the interior wiring with silver-plated-high-purity copper, and the difference in sound is not minor at all.
-Passive parts sound different. Years ago, before I was more than a casual audiophile, I would swap out the caps on the tone pots on guitars for different types of the same mf value. Noticeably different sounds-- not the subtleties you find if say you swap out the electrolytics in your preamp with Black Gates.
etc.
(Fifteen years ago, Eric Johnson was considered a neurotic nut because he claimed he could hear the difference between types and brands of batteries in his fuzz pedal. Now, many power supplies for pedals include options for the sag of dying batteries and the lower voltage of non-alkaline ones...)
(Maybe this is better off in the General Rants section, but since it comes out of the Live Sound thread in this section, I put it here. Feel free to move, Stephen.)
Anyone else notice that lots of audiophile obsessions, some of which seem hopelessly neurotic to the rest of the world, are undeniably, totally, probably-DBT-passingly *true* and verifiable when it comes to the electric guitar/amp interface?
ie:
- Tubes sound better than solid state. Yes, we're talking distortion here, but even the often quite good digital emulations of tube amps in the guitar world do not feel right when you're playing through them.
- Wire makes a difference-- Guitar Player magazine has gotten a lot of crap lately for this one, but even the most scientific people who've looked into it (like Bill Lawrence, the pickup designer) have concluded that the capacitance in a guitar cable makes a major difference to the sound. (Guitar amps have tremendously more input impedance than even the flakiest audiophile tube power amp-- 1megohm is generally standard). I have before-and-after recordings of a guitar where I replaced the interior wiring with silver-plated-high-purity copper, and the difference in sound is not minor at all.
-Passive parts sound different. Years ago, before I was more than a casual audiophile, I would swap out the caps on the tone pots on guitars for different types of the same mf value. Noticeably different sounds-- not the subtleties you find if say you swap out the electrolytics in your preamp with Black Gates.
etc.
(Fifteen years ago, Eric Johnson was considered a neurotic nut because he claimed he could hear the difference between types and brands of batteries in his fuzz pedal. Now, many power supplies for pedals include options for the sag of dying batteries and the lower voltage of non-alkaline ones...)