Pocketplayer wrote:these Youtube kids who play guitar parts w/tone exactly like artists makes me want
that type of player...I did make the mistake of telling the guitar player this...
that did not go over well!
For things like this a guitar player's ego should be able to handle the discussion.
There are more things to this, though.
There are a couple of general ways guitar players get their tone and there usually a preference.
Tone is a big thing for electric guitar players and a thing that's generally not understood any better by the rest of the band than e.g. how little things on the hats, inner dynamics or whatever affects a drum groove.
Personally, I can relate a lot to what Vinnie said in the Sweetwater interview about how it used to be a thing to have your own voice. That's what was important. I miss that soo much these days. We're turning everything into classical music.
Also, just the basic thing about fitting into every style of music really comes down to being present and having big ears.
My guitar tone is basically a strat with low output pickups, a mid heavy pedal and clean or semi clean Fender or Plexi type amp. I can fake almost anything except a really scooped metal sound with that, but based on the ears of the average keyboard player or drummer I've played with I can fake that enough, too.
So, it's always interesting in these cases to know exactly what the rest of the band actually can hear. What parameters are important in regard to authenticity to them. I can almost guarantee I can fool them long before I can fool myself in pretty much every case. We, like other instrumentalist go through phases in our formative ears where we really nail someone elses style and tone. I've had my Clapton, Hendrix, Knopfler, Carlton, Ritenour, Luke, Yngwie, Vai phase. I can get really close, but my thing now and how it's been for a long time closer to Landau than anything else. That means I'll adjust for the style, tight atttitude, type of licks, play parts that are essential, but do it within that frame.
Guitar player like Mike or drummers like Vinne who play any style convincingly, but you still know who it is.
With the advent of all the modelers that do any sort of tone you can copy anything these days. For a player like me though, who look at the electric guitar as a loud acoustic instrument, it's getting sort of like electronic drums, though. The dynamics and touch sensitivity are gone.