What's more important, the guitar or the amp?

singemonkey

There's a right answer to this question, as illustrated by this Congolese guitar player. A '60s Japanese or European electric that he appears to have miked up. He still get's a great accompanying sound and is able to demonstrate some unique chops in a central African folk style:

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Edit: This also speaks to Alan's article on being spoiled...

ActionArnie

The player

MikeM

A good musician will make whatever he has work. Be it a squier or a MG30FX.

It's impossible for me to make a general statement though. If the pickups are AWFUL, they're more important than the amp.. Otherwise, tonally the amp.

Psean

singemonkey wrote:

Edit: This also speaks to Alan's article on being spoiled...

+1
Cool article

singemonkey

My point is that this guy would have achieved nothing had he had a Dr. Z. But with a broken down old mass-produced guitar, he could learn to play it, and stick a mic in front and get a sound out of it.

This is why I advise beginners to use their entire budget on getting the best guitar they can buy - rather than splitting some off on the amp. A good guitar helps you learn to play. A good amp doesn't. An amp enhances performance.

guidothepimmp

Having said that, is it not a case for, "what's more important when you start playing? A guitar or an amp?"

Either way.. I agree a guitar with great action and playability will make it infinitely easier to learn on..

Warren

singemonkey wrote:
This is why I advise beginners to use their entire budget on getting the best guitar they can buy - rather than splitting some off on the amp. A good guitar helps you learn to play. A good amp doesn't. An amp enhances performance.

I disagree with this. The amp is ultimately as big a part of the sound as the guitar. Playing an electric guitar unplugged is very different to playing it plugged in, especially if you go beyond simple clean tones. When I first started out on electric guitar, I couldn't get in the ball park of the sound I was after (a fairly middle of the road rock crunch tone) because the amp I had just didn't create those sorts of sounds. A TS808 in front of that amp changed my world, if only because I could now get proper, good sounding distortion out of it.

Some techniques I feel you can only really learn properly on a plugged in guitar: palm muting, fret tapping (in a rock context), squealies etc. It's also not practical to learn to control heavy distortion and feedback on an unplugged guitar.

I think that learning to exploit the way the guitar interacts with the amp is an essential part of electric guitar playing.

AlanRatcliffe

Yup - ultimately it's the muso. You make the most of what you have. If they don't have an instrument handy, a real Muso will probably end up making something with whatever is at hand. Look at steel drums, washboards, broomstick basses or our own plastic barrel drums. The music comes from the musician, not the instrument. But that's not the question...

The question "What's more important, the guitar or the amp?" is still a valid question. Modern electric guitar-oriented music has a reasonably long history now, enough for us to have developed a norm of what "good tone" means to us as players. But where does that tone come from?

To me, the sound of the electric guitar is a combination of the player, the guitar, the pickups, the amplification (and the speakers. Change any of these things and the tone changes (and "better" or "worse is purely subjective"). If I step up on stage and play someone else's gear, I'll still sound like me, but I won't sound exactly how I usually do. Then again, I usually play with both piezos/clean amplification and magnetic pickups/guitar amp simultaneously and each sound is very different - and together they give me a third sound.

So if every link in the chain plays it's role in shaping the tone, it's reasonable to ask the question "which is more important?" or, to put it another way "which has the most effect on the tone?". And yes, the player as the source of the music is the most important, but you can't easily buy an upgrade for the player. ? So it boils down to guitar or amp...

For me, they are tonally both almost as important as one another, but the guitar edges out the amp (I can get a reasonable facsimile of my sound from any common amp). However, I think that for players who use more gain than I do, the amp takes on a bigger role in shaping the tone. So once again, it's down to the player... ?

Arno-West

I think both the amp and guitar are important, but yes, the player is the most important. EVH will still sound better than Gawie Visagie even if they are both given one of those Castrol "can of the best" novelty pieces of crap to strut their stuff....