The Guitarist Of The Future

Neil-Nitro

I have been playing valve amps now for about 4-5 years. I love all the classics when it comes to guitars though I am a little more inclined towards the telecaster... (Tele fans gimme a high-5!) Basically I went through my guitar journey with two close friends of mine that also play. Neither of them have ever owned a valve amp. Infact neither of them have much love for a valve amp in general. And the reason is... The sound... Yes the sound. They don't like the sound. They don't sound good playing on a valve amp. They seem to feel out of their element and exposed. Is there anyone else who knows someone or maybe they themselves feel that valves just don't do it for you? There are many advances in technology not only in the amp world but also in the world of guitars. Robot tuning, one guitar that sounds like a lot of different guitars and the list goes on. Will the next generation of guitarist still play valves and buy one guitar for what it is instead of one that does it all??

In your opinion, what does the future of guitar have in store for us?

Keira-WitherKay

? nice to see other telecaster fans.........

as for the future of guitar............ it will always evolve ....with technology

if you think back to the days after Torres designed the nylon string as we know it ....guitarists of the 19th century ...toured for the 1st time since there was a guitar which was good as a solo instrument BUT the main influence was the railway system in europe which allowed easy travel from town to town and across countries.... these players were the 1st "touring stars "

then when in ragtime era banjo's and fiddles/violins were the rage .... with ragtime guitarists were too soft so they shifted to banjo (to be heard) until Martin found new ways to brace tops .... but they and other makers made the D18 which is called a banjo killer since it finally could compete ...again technology

then when big bands were in fashion in 20's/30's guitarists were so drowned out by the brass and increased volume ..think freddie greene with count basie.... he used to have the action way high over an inch off 12th fret and played his acoustic archtop with 18's on high E to get volume ..... because of all the physical effort involved with getting volume those early parts could only be chords 4/4 on the beats .... limiting guitar to a rhythm instrument.......... THEN the 1st pickups were invented and initially fitted NOT to guitars 1st but Hawaiian guitars (lap steels) but then after fitting them to guitars like early rickenbackers suddenly charlie christian could start soloing in big bands and they used radio tube amps ......... and the solo for guitars became a trend thanks to tube and pickup advancements

and then 50's saw fender design the telecaster or broadcaster 1st ......... then 1957 saw the invention of the humbucker ............... and it too changed music to what we know today ..........with electric solid bodies ....

and so on and so on ............ always technology ...be it the CNC machine/mass production techniques/travel /string technology/electronics/

so as technology changes the guitarist will evolve ....

on a more recent note... anyone see the voyageair guitars that because now we travel in planes we go they have designed.... folding necks that can fold and unfold in 60 seconds ...... and then guitars can fit in a back pack and be carried on as hand luggage ...another change due to technology this time of air travel and restrictions

then we see the profiling amps...getting tube tone from solid state .......

recording studio's that no longer need to be in a 500 square metre building but is contained in your laptop.... and offers equal quality

gibson have guitars that tune themselves .... even tho we crit it ... it makes life easy for many ...and may just catch on

so where will the guitarist of the future be ......???? well some like you and dinosaurs like me will still love tele's and princeton tube amps ....

but many will be getting fabulous tone from what the new technology of the time has to offer ....

now me i'm waiting for that full sounding PA rig that fills a room with pro quality sound but fits in a backpack and runs off solar power .... ?

V8

Neil Nitro wrote: They don't sound good playing on a valve amp. They seem to feel out of their element and exposed. Is there anyone else who knows someone or maybe they themselves feel that valves just don't do it for you?

I generally prefer tranny amps to valve amps - I like to be able to get a clean tone, regardless of volume. I'm happy enough on a valve amp - but, as a bedroom guitarist, I find I do feel "exposed" at volume - you can hear everything. Whether it's a tranny or valve doesn't seem to matter to me, the difference between the two is that I use the guitar vol more on a valve to adjust break-up/dynamics.

My fav tranny so far is a vintage Roland jazz chorus 120. Pity it weighs fourty-four tons :? There is also a Vox twin (valve) that sounds that has more headroom that you can shake a stick at that I'm fond of.

Keira WitherKay wrote: now me i'm waiting for that full sounding PA rig that fills a room with pro quality sound but fits in a backpack and runs off solar power .... ?

+1 billion!

Neil Nitro wrote: In your opinion, what does the future of guitar have in store for us?

More apps. More digital integration. More synthetic materials.

Apps have already snuck their way into our lives with surprisingly good tuners on a smartphone, chord dictionaries, tab readers, etc...

Somebody posted about the Duo Mod last year : http://thenextweb.com/insider/2014/09/16/mod-duo-wants-last-guitar-pedal-ever/. There's quite a few arduino based pedal projects around atm - I quite like the concept.

I'm surprised by the amount of guitar tech you can interface with a computer these days - even if it's just editing the on board patches, or getting a USB signal out of a mixer. Quite a few peeps are running iPad's with interfaces and using them live.

Midi guitar is more affordable than ever - whether it's a graphtech hardware solution, fishman tripleplay or the Midiguitar32 vst. Yip, I'm a fan of playing piano on a guitar ?

One place I'd love to see more 80's style experimentation in guitar construction - composite materials, ergonomic designs, easily movable pickups & headless designs returning to the mainstream... ?

I reckon composites will feature more over the next few decades - Already Tusq nuts, basses with ebanol fretboards & instruments with luthite bodies are fairly common (There's a luthite bodied Joe Satriani model!).

daveo1977

Thank you for your thought-provoking post. I apologise in advance that I'm going to digress slightly. I am new to the guitar; started learning on an acoustic, and now also own an electric. I walked into a music store soon after I got my electric, and said to the sales assistant that I'm brand new to the electric guitar, and that I'd like to get an amp. He pointed me to the Blackstar TVP (true valve power) range. Solid state that emulates valve. In my opinion, him pointing me in this direction was right.

I would like to own a valve amp in the future, because to my mind, it is more "human". I would liken it to something that happened in the industry that I work in, film. In the filmmaking world, we've made the transition from celluloid film to digital video. Working with film is tactile, and 35mm film captures both colour and light spectacularly. While digital video is now approaching film's dynamic range, there is still something about watching a properly projected film - we, as viewers, get romantic about it. As a student, I never learnt how to cut on film (I'm a tape-to-tape guy), but a couple of years later, I was teaching students how to edit celluloid film on a Steenbeck editing table (I had a great tutor who showed me the ropes). The thing that you walk away with is the good working practice. Here's where I want to come back to valve amps.

I imagine that you have to research and work hard to get your tone "just so" on a valve amp. But that appeals to me, because when you've struck on something that sounds great to your ear, no one can take that knowledge away from you. I read somewhere that at the end of the day, the tone resides in your fingers. And that's what also appeals to me about learning the guitar. I can't load a patch to make me a better guitar player, I just have to practice. And I think in our digital world that's a good thing. And in terms of the guitar of the future? I'm all for the Roland g5 VG stratocaster, because it's versatile. But, my dream guitar is the Fender Johnny Marr signature Jaguar (again because Mr. Marr put his years of experience as a player into producing a guitar that best represents his tone).

Neil-Nitro

Great reply Keira! I definitely have to agree that its much easier having a room full of gear in one piece of gear. Makes traveling easy and ofcourse you have more reliability. Then again.... being a dinosaur and having a real room full of gear is still pretty sweet. ?

Neil-Nitro

V8 I definitely agree with the Roland. They do make some awesome SS amps. One of the friends I mentioned is actually looking into the GA112 at the moment.

Neil-Nitro

Dave those TVP's are great! Very nice sounding amps. I also agree with you that it takes some time to find the sweet spots when it comes to valve amps.... But ofcourse the guys who use modeling also spend a lot of time to edit their patches. So I think both offer you the ability to get "Your Sound".... I do think maybe valve amps are a little more responsive to the individual's playing though. But that is my opinion! Welcome to the world of guitar btw!

Hasie

I've been playing a little over a year now. Have a small modelling amp and el cheapo electric guitar. The amp gives great tone easily.

Then, one day I walked into my favourite music shop, plugged a Tremonti SE into a Peavy tube amp and it felt like I was cheating on my wife.

I believe there will always be a lot of "purists" preferring valve amps, like me. Still need to go and buy my mistress though...

GuitarDoge

The thing I like about playing guitar is that it doesn't need to keep up with technology, unlike most other aspects of my life.

Sure models will get better, but valve amps are still the best way to rock out. It's far far easier in my opinion to get your own unique good tone on one, and because of the responsiveness it also helps you learn to play properly.

I do like the apps and online tabs that make everything easier.

thrasher

I think that guitarist will always prefer to use a certain guitar, and that valve amps will never fade out, atleast not in my lifetime.
There are sooooooo many guitars and models and even though you get the line6 variax guitars and axe fx, line6 pods, kemplar etc, not everyone can afford them and a good power amp to run their modelers thru. Many of those are great in the studio, some guitarist that you would see using say the axe fx will and did revert back to mesa boogie or what ever they were using in the past.

There is just some magic going on in a valve amp! Ive played many solid state amps, modelers and valve amps. I always go back to a valve amp, it juts feels right, like its alive, it talks back, it responds just differently then any digital or solidstate unit ive played with.
I do take exception to clean playing, solidtate is real good for cleans in my opinion, a good one that is, not some ice picky kill your ears amp.
I suppose there is a reason so many of the great Jazz players stick with solidstate amps!

Same for guitars, yes Gibson made that robot tuner guitars, but that's just tuners, you can buy them for any guitar.
Guitars that can emulate different guitars and pickups may be awesome for someone in a cover band, for someone that does lots of session work and cant afford to get say 2 or 3 different guitars.

But I believe nothing beats the real thing, the character of a real Gibson Les Paul, Fender strat, Martin acoustic, ESP, Jackson, Ibanez etc etc. Just how the guitar is crafted, the shape of it, the weight, how it makes you play different and write differently!

Just my opinion on this!

Mixerboy

I think one of the problems is assuming that "valve" amp = good sounding amp, and anything else = bad sounding amp.

Give me a good sounding amp sim plugin over a badly recorded valve amp any day.

Basically......whatever sounds good

singemonkey

Valve amps sound better than transistor amps. But they're heavy and they are easily overdriven. For a great many of us, that's the greatest part of the sound of an electric guitar - the way the amplifier is part of the instrument and gets hairier when you pick harder and chimier when you use a light touch. It (the electric guitar plugged into a good valve amp with a good speaker) is an incredibly dynamic instrument.

But different strokes for different folks. For those people who don't like overdrive and want a pure representation of the sound of the strings over the pickup only, valve amps get bigger and heavier at a frightening rate if you want to keep that undistorted sound at higher volumes. So transistor amps are a great compromise.

Well they were.

Transistor amps add so little to the sound of the electric guitar, that if you want convenience, then you go for some kind of direct input device into the PA and get a good monitor (seriously - arguing that you use your squeaky clean amp fed by a pedal for 'monitoring' is bogus. There are way better monitors that are way easier to haul around). In fact, that's the only threat to tube amps - they're heavy to carry around and can be expensive to maintain. So a box the size of two cigarette packets that sounds 98% of the way to a valve amp is deal-maker for many people.

And it's this convenience factor that we'll see more of. Like Keira mentioned in her great post, guitars that beat the problem of airlines are a big deal. Being able to pack your entire rig into a guitar case and go to a gig is something even I would cave into from time to time.

What just totally beats me though, are multifx that are the size of a doormat, and clever modelling amps bigger than the average tube head... running into an effing 4x12 cabinet. That's doing the future wrong. If I'm going to lug crap like that around, I'd far rather go one better and bring my tube amp and a mic to mic it up with.

Rescator

Kemper Profiler Amplifier and perfect , boutique ,hand made , top quality guitars with amazing playability are the future .

This combination can do any guitar tone and any amp sound coming (profiling technology) from the any real amp which currently exist on this World .

Future is here already, one just have to open her/his ears/mind.

Good Luck !

Airguitar

I've been watching products come and go for 30 years now. Ever since microprocessor technology was around somebody was always incorporating it into music and instruments. The "Next Big Thing" is only big until the next "Next big thing" comes out. And as it turns out these big things have time and time again merely sought to emulate the old things in smaller, lighter and cheaper packages. This is a good thing because it emphasises the fact that Mr. Fender, Mr. Marshall and Orville Gibson Esq. Really had it right.

I've owned them all. Solid state, modelling and tubes. Bring your plastic stack anytime and let's shoot it out. Yes, it may be lighter and may emulate every amp known to mankind but it will always be copying something else and to date no modelling amp has come close. There are two or three solid state amps that have carved out a niche for themselves without trying to sound like something else. The Roland JC120, the Roland Cube and Peavey Renown. Brilliant amps but even they have lost their Mojo.
There's a reason Fender still sells Twin or Deluxe Reverbs, and Marshall still sells 50 and 100 Watt plexis. And there's a reason why they still fetch top dollar.

Damn, I'm SO old school!

Neil-Nitro

singemonkey wrote:

And it's this convenience factor that we'll see more of. Like Keira mentioned in her great post, guitars that beat the problem of airlines are a big deal. Being able to pack your entire rig into a guitar case and go to a gig is something even I would cave into from time to time.

What just totally beats me though, are multifx that are the size of a doormat, and clever modelling amps bigger than the average tube head... running into an effing 4x12 cabinet. That's doing the future wrong. If I'm going to lug crap like that around, I'd far rather go one better and bring my tube amp and a mic to mic it up with.

I agree that when you look at the future its all about convenience. As for size... You're spot on. In my hunt for finding something digital to play at church, a guy at my local shop tried selling me a Fender Mustang stack... I am definitely not gonna haul a stack around each week.

chris77

Trying to define The Guitarist Of The Future is a bit like trying to define The Guitarist Of The Present. Too many folks who enjoy too many things in too many different ways.