What is the worst tone you can get with your gear?

[Bryan T]

Enough of this 'best tone' nonsense. With the gear that you currently own, what is the 'worst' timbre that you can get?

Bryan

P.S. Bonus points if you can find a musical application for your worst sound.

[Dr. Tweedbucket]

Well, a Squire Strat is the thinnest tone thing I have, and I have a Mesa amp that if you tweek it wrong, it will shoot icepicks all over the place, hook that up to at Boss SD1 pedal ....... could probably put together a nickelback tribute band :dunno

[Texas_Blues]

Raunchy bloody heavy fuzz tone....monster peice fuzz +bridge pup mixed with a bit of neck+ some higher treble= Fuzz Raunch ala Black Keys...

[daphil]

The worst would be no tone at all...

The rest is totally subjective.

[macheesmo3]

80's BC Rich into an 80's SS Crate with the gain set on 11 ! Sounds like a swarm of mild tempered bees coming to shake you down for donations!!!

[Terry McInturff]

Using my 60's Dynacord Emminent head, I can exactly replicate that old "Live Rust" Niel Young tone. He'd really love that amp.

[Jahn]

i turned on all my pedals at the same time. out came this mess:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m00fpxejfu8&fmt=18

[Gas-man]

Using my 60's Dynacord Emminent head, I can exactly replicate that old "Live Rust" Niel Young tone. He'd really love that amp.

Eww!!!

My ears hurt just reading that. LOL.

[macheesmo3]

Oh , I misread the OP. Was just naming the worst tone possible.

With my gear, if I turned the bridge pickup tone knob all the way up on my tele, then turn the tone knob all the way up on my Lectrolab R200 . Then turn the treble booster up on my Rangemaster. I can get the sound of 1000 icepicks jammed into my ears !

[shaneygoo]

haha

all pedals cranked with modfactor set to sample and hold ring mod or undulator, timefactor self oscillating with 2 band delays or reverse delay in stereo?

call the tone police...

[FlyingVBlues]

Sometimes late a night my 1966 Princeton Reverb picks up radio broadcasts. The combination of Rush Limbaugh, reverb and a Les Paul sounds pretty bad.


FVB

[rwe333]

I have a Lovepedal Wall of Noise...
Gorgeous, utter nastiness.
Love it...

[elkym]

yeah... bridge pickup in my tele with tone all the way up into peavey VK112 with the bright switch on.
And the treble knob all the way up. Ice pick.

The other one was before I modded my muff. tone all the way down, from both pickups on my tele (neck is minibucker) into a totally scooped EQ on my VK112. sooo woolly... ugh. It might have been useful somehow... but I never found it.

[mikem]

Mexi strat into Peavey 5150- bridge pickup on, lead channel gain maxed- sounds like the sonic equivalent of what I flushed this morning. Messy and gut wrenching.

Mike

[icarusi]

Enough of this 'best tone' nonsense. With the gear that you currently own, what is the 'worst' timbre that you can get?


It's a toss up between, constant mains hum (no signal), dead silence but the reasuring hiss/hum of the amp(s) working and intermittent on/off despite much lead waggling and amp/fx nocking and kicking.

Most continuous sounds I've found useable in some context, if not often for some.

[jgyn]

The worst tone and the best tone is sometimes very close.

[MartinC]

I have a V-amp2 that is broken. It sounded like crap before it was broken. But now ... any setting is totally unbearable.

Some people say that great players can sound great through any gear ... not this piece of gear.

[Prodigy]

A cheap Washburn into a Boss DS-1 with all the knobs maxed. Run that into a cheap exciter pedal, again, knobs maxed, and then into a cheap digital delay pedal at a very short delay time with the level knob maxed, then into a Fender DSP solid state combo with the max reverb setting on. Make sure to max the treble and mids on the amp and zero the bass. This isn't my gear, but man oh man would that sound awful! :bkw

[arthur rotfeld]

Oh, it's hard to pick the worst. Depends on what I step on first.

[randall g]

I just plug in, and I seem to get it every time:dunno

[Thwap]

I've got this old strat...the intonation is just sooooo far off, you can tune it, and as soon as you play anything, it's just awful.

I've been playing it in the front room for the last few weeks, and my wife ordered me to get a new guitar.

Course I coulda just adjusted the intonation....:banana

[dk123123dk]

How about an amp with dying tubes?

Some fuzz pedals sound pretty nasty, ovtavia's come to mind. Mind you there are lots of cool sounds in there, but lots of harsh ones as well.

There is an effect on Korg/Vox multi effects called Filtron or Traveler. Its basically a filter effect that is controlled with an expression pedal. At the lowest setting it sounds like your guitar is underwater and murky, at the highest setting it sounds like a digital screaming banshee. If you use the bridge pickup, its even sharper. Ouch, yet trippy with some delay.

dk

[FeloniousBishop]

The worst tone and the best tone is sometimes very close.

yeah, just tweak the tone knob on that tele...

[bilbal]

I can get bad tone all day long!!!! You might say I excel in this category.

:dunno

[Tritone]

I can drop my amplifier on a cat.

But that would be cruel.

To the amplifier.

Haha just kidding, I love cats.

[rob2001]

Grab up my beautiful custom Tele, plug it straight into my wonderful JCM 800 .....and add 1/2 a bottle of Captain! :drink

[French Fry]

i turned on all my pedals at the same time. out came this mess:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m00fpxejfu8&fmt=18

I didn't mind that. Worse is possible.

But no one else has posted ...

[Kenny D]

I wouldn't know. Honestly, I don't really try getting bad tone.

[Rod]

A cheap Washburn into a Boss DS-1 with all the knobs maxed. Run that into a cheap exciter pedal, again, knobs maxed, and then into a cheap digital delay pedal at a very short delay time with the level knob maxed, then into a Fender DSP solid state combo with the max reverb setting on. Make sure to max the treble and mids on the amp and zero the bass. This isn't my gear, but man oh man would that sound awful! :bkw
OUCH!!! I can feel the pain of above!!!!!!!!!!!!:drink

[dk123123dk]

How bout when you do the surf/punk thing and kick the amp to get that horrible reverb noise. I once accidentally bumped my amp like that during a gig. Certainly got everyone's attention!

dk