Clif,
I don't know how worthy of bandwidth my response will be, but I do
see this differently.
Tone is important to me in two main ways. One is that I care how
others hear my guitar. But, probably even more important, is that I
can't play my best unless the guitar sounds "right". If I don't get
my sound it feels like I'm playing with somebody else's hands. I
can't get comfortable, because every note irritates me. Predictably,
there are times when I can't stand the sound and the other musicians
can't figure out what I'm complaining about.
I do agree, though, that if you had to pick tone vs groove, you'd go
with groove every time. But, in reality, you don't have to pick
between them, so you might as well pay attention to both.
Also, the guitar players I like all have great tone. Wes, Jim Hall,
Santana, Knopfler, Metheny, for example, are all guys whose tone I
love.
Joe Pass is an example of the other side of things. I have an album
of his called Tudo Bem. It's the music I like (Brazilian), played by
a great rhythm section. Joe's stuff is in the pocket and melodically
terrific. But his guitar sounds thin and dry and keeps me from
enjoying the music more.
Rick
--- In jazz_guitar@..., "jazzclif" <jurupari@a...> wrote:
--- In jazz_guitar@..., "brianmayeux"
<brianmayeux@y...>
wrote:
OK... So what do you play... If gear doesn't matter I guess you
must
play the cheapest thing out there ... Like a Used squier strat ??
I do, and it doesn't affect my playing at all.
I don't play a Benedetto one dang bit better than I play my JT-136
which cost $299. Probably worse, since I don't have fb problems
with
the Jay Turser.
I do have a squier lineage guitar too, a DeArmond X-145 I paid $250
for, and it plays fine too.
The videos I've put up have all been on cheap guitars, the above
mentioned and an Epiphone Studio Dot, ($237) and the output sounds
about the same to me. The ornithology/moon fingersyle solo is on
the
DeArmond and the chick and trane stuff up now is on the jt-136.
My mentor on guitar early on, Oscar Wright, was an excellent player
and a pretty large influence on my outlook.
He told me he didn't personally care anything at all about the tone
of his instrument. What mattered to him was timing, note choice,
phrasing and being at one in a group and with himself.
He was a very busy cat, and always caught the attention of the Joe
Henderson Woody Shaw type musican because he was so well plugged
into
that idiom. He'd also gigged with every r&b artist I'd about ever
heard of, and stayed busy, so it didn't affect his employability,
either.
He cared not one little bit about tone, just dialed in something he
was comfortable with. He played a Framus with a Jim Hall neck and
two
floating single coil pickups that were very trebly straight into a
twin he'd cut down some for portability.
I've sort of hit on one jazz tone I like and just get that out of
whatever guitar, since it's pretty easy to do.
What's important to me is dimension - I want a short scale guitar
with accesible frets and a reasonably low action and straight neck,
Competent workmanship, not necessarily perfect, and strings between
14's and 11's, but if I have all that, there's not going to be any
improvement in my ability if all I'm doing is playing on something
fancier.
I do tend to favor blond guitars, but to me they usually sound a
little different acoustically in a way I like.
I dunno, maybe some people get ten times the performance, or a
hundred times the performance for the same ratio of investment, but
that doesn't happen with me at all. I'll play a cheap short scale
better than a mint New Yorker from before WWII, I'll guarantee you.
For me, if it's in there, it'll come out regardless, and if it
isn't
no price of guitar is going to make it be otherwise.
Clif Kuplen
