Clif, I'm unclear. What is "masking"? Thanks, Rick --- In jazz_guitar@..., "jazzclif" <jurupari@a...> wrote: --- In jazz_guitar@..., "Rick_Poll"
<richardipollack@y...> wrote:
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. I used to, but there's absolutely nothing uniform about an audience
response and there's not much that can ever be done about it.
There's apparently something seriously wrong with EVERYBODY's
playing in somebody's ears, it seems. :o) I think if you get the
tone you like and you're sayin' something, that's about as far as you can take it.
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. As guitarists we're really prone to that! Usually it's masking.
I've found the best way to get around that for me is to squeeze
the signal a little bit.
I've used some standing compression for about 25 years now, I
suppose. Presently I use a presonus blue max on commercial gigs and a little crate studio unit on solo jazz.
I can get away without it, but it's great for eliminating masking,
and for archtops, it helps control feedback. I don't want to get into how since it's complicated, but it does, no kidding.
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.
I haven't heard that, but my favorite tone of his was the flubbed
one on the first virtuoso album.
It isn't really dry, though. There's a small amount of reverb and an echo image in the non dominant channel.
I don't much care for the tones of any of the guys you mention,
really, but love all their playing to the point I don't really notice tone. Jim Hall's seems to change a lot from album to album as I
recall.
I supppose my favorite guitar tone would maybe be Kenny Burrell on
the stuff he did with trane for a 'jazz guitar' sound.
Wes was all over the map with electic tone, and was famous or maybe
notorious in his time for always hating it and continually trying to tweak it.
Oscar, my mentor I mentioned was a very Wes-like phraser,a disciple
in a lot of ways, and took apart harmony in a very similar way but
with very different note choices.
One reason he just said to hell with it about tone was because of his simpatico with Wes and his identifying with Wes' troubles with tone.
I know he was just trying to get past all that, but we all have
trouble with masking.
There was even a reference to his tone quest on one of Wes' liner
notes from before he was on Verve. He has recordings with vibrato
and off the back pickup.
It's not that tone isn't important to me, it's seriously important,
but I can get a tone I'm ok with out of about anything I've ever
played, usually by just dialing it in with whatever amp I'm using,
but occasionally like with my cheap guitars, I have to angle the
pickup towards treble to roll off some of the bass to make the
volume more even.
I'd thought the discussion was more about the relative merits of high- end guitars rather than tone, so my comments might not have been on
point.
I don't suppose I feel much different from you, but I've just had a
lot of practice getting the sound I want, and don't equate it to high- end guitars, of which I've had more than my share.
I remember a Gretsch Firebird I had that just didn't do it for me
though, so I've got limits, but I've played a '60 strat and 2 '70's
teles and 2 '50's les pauls and a '54 super 4 and a couple of 175's, one from the '50s and a 1975 I have now, a 335, an epi 350, an Ibanez AS200 and the 3 cheap asian guitars I have now, and for jazz, any of them was fine, and I could get about the same tone out of any of
them. But I had to get rid of the Gretsch - I just couldn't get it to sound right at high volumes.
Clif
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