maninashed
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Post by maninashed on Feb 6, 2022 5:58:45 GMT
How much difference does using period correct guitars and amps to recreating a period sound?
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Post by borborygmus on Feb 6, 2022 13:18:02 GMT
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ocarolan
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Post by ocarolan on Feb 6, 2022 13:38:30 GMT
If you're talking about "live" sound, then the right stuff helps hugely to get the right starting point. And to get the player into the right mindset too.
Recorded sound, however is a different gether altomatter - studio recording gear and methods were so different that reproducing a particular vintage sound is hard without access to similar gear. Electronica can help, and there are plugins to process "oldness" into the more modern recorded sound.
And you'll never have the fingers of the player you may wish to emulate, nor their particular musicality. Some people do get close though...
Keith
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Post by Onechordtrick on Feb 6, 2022 14:32:58 GMT
Fascinating, well worth a watch. To my cloth ears and listening on an iPad it seemed the pick-up is the biggest difference. |
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Post by grayn on Feb 7, 2022 9:38:53 GMT
Electric guitars, are a complex balance of many organic and inorganic ingredients. Common sense tells us that it's just coiled metal (strings) being picked up via magnetism, with that initial vibration being converted to an electrical signal. But all the different woods, metals and megnets involved can have a huge effect on the final tone. And then there's the amplifier, let alone the guitar's builder and whose playing it. Then there is, is the neck glued in (fixed), bolted on or even a thtrough neck, with one peice of tree, running from top to tail. Many years ago, I remember asking Chris May, the founder of Overwater basses, who have been going since the 70s, what was the single most important aspect of a bass, for tone. He straight away said "wood". I was sure he was going to say pickups but then he showed me a vast amount of woods and how they altered tones. It's a wonderful alchemy and I am kind of glad it isn't all nailed down with science. Although many would argue with that.  |
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Post by borborygmus on Feb 7, 2022 10:41:54 GMT
Did you have a chance to watch the video I posted? I would tend to agree with you grayn, otherwise why would we all acknowledge the tonal differences between a tele, strat and les paul? But that video did get me thinking. He is measuring simple things (open chord strums), whereas I think it's more complex than that; sustain, for example. |
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Post by grayn on Feb 7, 2022 11:42:33 GMT
TBH, I hadn't but I have now.
There were marked differences in the test guitars, IMO.
Also these differences from woods etc are relatively subtle and really need to be tried without distortion and over simplistic playing.
I've owned a ton of electric guitars, basses and amps, over the years and can testify that even neck woods can add to a guitar's sound character.
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maninashed
Cheerfully Optimistic
Mad Farmer Liberation Front
Posts: 4,371
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Post by maninashed on Feb 9, 2022 5:57:25 GMT
It's surprising how much the components in an amp with the same circuit can make. The Marshall 18 watt Bluesbreaker was essentially a Bassman circuit built with British components, and the Gibson GA-5 was the same circuit as a 5F1 Champ but with different resistors.
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Post by woodtoner on Feb 26, 2022 17:43:25 GMT
I was recently gifted a Watkins mk 2 copicat from around 1963. NOTHING comes close to this beast.I run it through a fender 4x10 hotrod deville and its just lovely. I can't stop playing John Martyn tunes through it!
I thought to myself recently though - and this has more to do with acoustic instruments - That people will pay a fortune for a ledbelly 20's stella 12 string or an old gibson L1 like Robert Johnson's for that "authentic sound" when really those guitars were new in those old fast-walking days and would've sounded new. 100 years later they sound like beautiful vintage tone monsters and bear little to no tonal similarity to what the original guitars sounded like at the time. I would imagine it would be impossible to achieve the original tone of those old guys.
Sorry for the slightly off-topic soliloquy..
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Jo whoever he is.
