What is the biggest contributor to your overall Tone??

[Yossi]

What is the most important?
Guitar: Type of wood, fretboard, type of guitar?
Pick Ups?
Amplifier?
Speakers?
Cabinet ?
Other?

Yossi

[Mark C]

1. My hands
2. the amp
3. type of pickups
4. Type of guitar (scale length, set neck/bolt neck, trem or stop)
5. The wood

[screamingdaisy]

Ability
Cab
Amp
Pickups
Guitar (type, ex LP or Strat)
Wood

In my opinion.

[Stephen Landry]

The biggest component of my tone is my fingers. Always has been, always will be. Everything else just colors that.

[Jim Soloway]

The foundation of my tone is the position of my picking hand, my picking method and attack.

[george4908]

Bumblebee caps, oxygen free cable and machined aluminum jack plates.

[Will Little]

Hands should always be a first, but as far as how gear shapes my tone, I notice the most differences in pickups.

Then tubes/amp circuit
Then Speaker

I can also notice differences with cables, picks and strings, but they aren't as drastic, or important to the foundation of overall tone as the 3 above.

[wichita]

Playing without a pick

[jreardon]

Originally posted by Stephen Landry
The biggest component of my tone is my fingers. Always has been, always will be. Everything else just colors that.
+ 1. Fingers do it for me every time

[littlemoon]

Good judgment and taste.

littlemoon

Oh, and good ears.

[Jimi Clapton]

This order:
1.You
2.Your Guitar
3.The Amp

Now go PRACTICE!!!!!

[Tom Gross]

I disagree.

I'd say, for tone, its:

1)Guitar type - (strat, tele, dual Hum)
2) Amp
3)Particular Guitar
4) Hands

As for how you're music sounds, or how much dynamic difference, I think the player contributes a lot.

But all that "I heard Robben Ford playing thru a SS Peavey & he sounded great" stuff doesn't do much for me.

[Supertgtr]

1) personal technique
2) amp
3) guitar

[aroman]

How the Guitar RESONATES. A piece of Brick with 500.00 PUPs will NOT sound good.

Proper PUPs- A Vintage Jazzbox with EMG PUPs thru a Vintage Fender Twin will NOT get you Wes Montgomery Tones.

Amp- A Jay Turser Strat will sound better thru a Bruno than a Chapin thru a SS Crate.

Hands - I will SOUND better playing Open A, E, G with a Chapin and a Bruno than Scott Henderson with a Jay Turser and Gorilla.
Scott Henderson will PLAY better.

[Shawn Lutz]

I think the majority of ones so called tone comes more so from ones hands and technique than anything else. Pickups, amps and speaker type certainly do not hurt either :)

[Dave B]

Originally posted by Jim Soloway
The foundation of my tone is the position of my picking hand, my picking method and attack.

I agree. What you mentioned is all part of how we articulate our notes. Go grab a handful of different picks and play your electric (even unplugged) with each for a few minutes. You'll notice how your articulation changes based upon the pick's thickness, shape, strike point, and composition. It's tougher to do the same things with all picks.

Very enlightening for me when I tried this, especially with the ones thick enough or hard enough to have no give or flex in them whatsoever, or thin enough that they flexed too much and hadn't come back in time for hitting the next note. Changed my attack completely. Don't forget to compare the picks of the same thickness but are made out of different materials, too. The tonal differences should be easily noticeable.

You can always take your favorite pick and turn it sideways so its string strikepoint is different. That will change your articulation and your tone with one fell swoop.

These easy experiments gave me a new perspective on all the little things that add up to one's sound.

[mkoby]

Does anyone else think strings affect "timbre"?

Is this what we are discussing or overall sound/playing?

Flatwound 14-62's sure sound (and play) differently from slinky 08-36's.

[Tag]

Guitar type.

[aeolian]

1. The sound I hear in my head
2. My hands
3. The guitar and type of pickups
4. Speakers
5. Amp
6. Room

I read in a Vai interview that Zappa told him the root of tone was what you heard inside. That made so much sense to me. Most of my playing life was with pretty weak gear. I had to do whatever I could with my hands to approximate what I heard in my head.

[kikujiro0208]

My mood.
Regards,