Christian Dobson

Prof. Dagher
Insert class here
8 April 2015
Guitar Tone Essay Draft
The electric guitar in music is similar to a stem cell while a song
is the human body. The stem cells forms to what is already around it in
the body and is essential to the process of creating it. Without the stem
cells, production of the human body is impossible. The electric guitar is
a very unique instrument. There are infinite dimensions of sound you
can produce with it with no foreseeable limit toward options. The
electric guitar alone is almost useless. It requires so many different
outside factors, that I believe that no two people can reproduce the
exact same tone. You might be asking, its just a guitar, what all could
go into the process of making sound come from the instrument? Well
first of all, I like to call this process tonal painting. The goal is to
achieve a guitar tone that is full, strong, sustainable, and clear. There
are many minute factors that can majorly change the entire sound of
your guitar and throughout this essay, we will explore these factors
and really learn what guitar tone truly is. So the question is, what is
guitar tone, what makes a certain guitar tone more pleasing to the ear
than another, and how can we achieve a tonal piece of artwork from
this beautiful instrument?

What is guitar tone? It is what gives the electric guitar the ability
to create even the most abstract sounds that cause you to experience
different feelings while listening to a piece of music. The tone is the
finished product, what most prominently gets inside your ear, after the
guitar has been processed within the actual instrument and has made
its way out of an electronic world into our listening environment. There
are many factors that affect a guitars tone. A journal from The
Acoustical Society of America broke down the key components of tone
production into a flow chart of player techniques and gestures, pickups,
preamp and power amp, driver breakup and radiation, and microphone
selection and placement (cite source 1). I agree with that chain
completely but for the sake of this essay, Ill instead order the flow of
components as player techniques, non-electronic attributes of the
guitar, pickups, amplifier set up, then microphone selection and
placement along with the option of direct input recording.
To really understand what it takes to create what is a good guitar
tone, you must understand the most important differencial between
two musicians tones. It is a guitarist ability level and the assorted
techniques they use. These techniques make the most subtle of
changes to your tone that without really focusing on it, you probably
wouldnt notice. Every guitarist has their own specific gestures while
playing that can ultimately distinguish one guitarist from another and
has the ability to turn a good tone into a great one. A perfect example

would be the other guitarist in my band and his technique he honed to

bridge wide gaps in fretting positions. Instead of keeping each of his
four fretting fingers designated over four in-lined frets like most
guitarists do, he designates his second finger to the second and third
fret in the sequence. The third then covers the fourth fret while the
pinky can cover the fifth, and with a bit of a stretch, the sixth. His
technique gave him the option to additional and faster reach in his
fretting ability and like all others techniques, it was developed
gradually over time and occurred naturally. All guitarists with learn how
to play differently and their techniques will form organically into the
most subtle yet important aspect of tone.
The way that a guitar is made and the materials that were used
in its production are the next in line to change the tone of a guitar.
From the type of wood put in the body to the scale length of the neck,
these attributes of a guitar make minute changes to a guitars
sustained note length and can effect the way the sound resonates in
the guitar. Typically, good wood to use for the fret board would be
rosewood which gives the sustain a very full and clear resonance
pattern whereas a maple fret board would produce a very snappy and
crisp resonance pattern. A non-electronic characteristic of a guitar is
the scale length of the neck. A shorter scale length means that the
guitar must be in a higher pitched tuning. If the scale in longer that

means you will more than likely have to lower your tuning a step or
two which will effect the root of your guitar tone.
The next tonal factor are your pickups. They are what turn the
sound from the instrument and convert it into a signal to go through
the following chain of electronics. There are many different kinds of
pickups with assorted coil amounts, wiring, different kinds of magnets,
and some kinds that completely boost your signal output. The type of
pickups that boost signal output are called actives and are separately
powered by a nine-volt battery. The downside to those pickups is that
the boost boosts even the smallest vibration and causes a lot of
feedback. Its reciprocal is called passive pickups and they do not boost
your signal chain but instead allow your tone to represent the
techniques you do more clearly. Because of this, I have a strong
favoritism toward passive pickups and I use them in my current
recording and live setup.
The aspect of guitar tone that makes the most easily noticeable
difference is the type of amplifier you are using and how youre dialing
in its equalizer. This phase of signal is where distortion comes into
play. Certain amps are more suited for lower amounts of distortion
while others are intended on being gain-monsters. The amp most
suited for high-gain is a tube-powered amplifier. They have the most
natural and beefy tones and still give plenty of options on how to dial
in its tone knobs. Most amps are suited with knobs to adjust their low,

mid, and high frequency levels, distortion or gain, resonance,

presence, and volume. The low-to-high frequency knobs adjust which
frequency groups are boosted and which are cut. For your lows you
want there to be just enough to have a rounded sound without it
becoming mushy or sounding as if its underwater. Mids should be set
somewhere between the tone sounding too fat and it becoming too
fizzy and the highs are usually just up to your own taste and playing
style. The same applies to resonance and presence as long as they are
not turned up to the point that the tone turns fizzy. As far as tube amps
go, the volume knob should be turned as loud as your sound ordinance
allows. The louder the tube amp, the more of its power it can push
forward.
The final piece of what culminates a guitars tone is the
microphone selection and microphone placement. First, you have to
select a quality microphone. The more high-end studio microphones
include accurate, small diaphragm, omnidirectional pressure
transducers just to be sure that you pick out all the best parts of your
sound (cite source 1). My personal favorite for guitar recording is a
Shure SM57. It is built to accentuate any distorted guitar tones and is
uses in professional studios around the world. The microphone
placement also greatly affects your tone. The norm in the recording
world is to have your microphone no more than an inch away from your
amplifier speakers for optimal sound. Despite that, there are many

microphone positions you can fiddle with to make odd and often
creative tonal qualities in your music.
Before you take all of this information as being the only correct
way to dial in a quality guitar tone, think again. All of the statements
made here are more of a guide of good suggestions to try. All
amplifiers are different and will produce different tones. All guitars are
different and will produce different tones. All musicians are different
and have different tastes and what sounds bad to one person might be
the Mona Lisa of music to another. There are no limits to what you can
do with your tone and there is no such thing as a perfect tone. It will
take experience and toying to learn how to make a tone that satisfies
you personally and having a tone that pleases you is the most
important aspect of tone building.