Best vintage guitar tone?

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Originally Posted by Squiddy

Did I mean the Woodstock Festival?

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I do believe you did! The one and only time I saw him his sound was totally shit ... IOW 1970. I was eleven ... and smuggled in by my bra-less hippy female older cousins. I didn't know who I was watching cos like most eleven year olds I was into crap pop. I was hypnotised (and it was technically way past my bedtime) ... when I eventually was taken home ... and the gun-smoke cleared, (I was never allowed to be taken out by my cousins again) but I had to have a guitar and make those noises.
I saw the man ... and though he might not have been on top form ... it started my own guitar journey. :)
(I was born and raised on the Isle of Wight ... and ended up eventually playing with Dick Taylor of the Pretty Things ... and founder member of the Stones ... who decided to live there after the Festival was over!)

Nothing has ever out done my 72 SG std, it sings before you plug it in & it just sings louder thro an amp, sadly I find the neck too narrow to play comfortably for any length of time now but we have played too many notes together for me to part with it. All you les paul owners out there searching for the perfect tone go & buy a good sg & save yourself a fortune (only an SG owner will truly understand this last statement ), mike b.

( before anyone makes the comment I have lost count how many lesters I have bought & sold over the last 40yrs , the SG remains supreme )

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Originally Posted by wrinkleygit

Nothing has ever out done my 72 SG std, it sings before you plug it in & it just sings louder thro an amp, sadly I find the neck too narrow to play comfortably for any length of time now but we have played too many notes together for me to part with it. All you les paul owners out there searching for the perfect tone go & buy a good sg & save yourself a fortune (only an SG owner will truly understand this last statement ), mike b.

( before anyone makes the comment I have lost count how many lesters I have bought & sold over the last 40yrs , the SG remains supreme )

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Not popular to say it no doubt ... but Angus young has always had a terrific tone ... to my ears. I only have one issue with SGs ... some of them balance really badly ... but I can live with that.

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Originally Posted by wrinkleygit

All you les paul owners out there searching for the perfect tone go & buy a good sg & save yourself a fortune (only an SG owner will truly understand this last statement ), mike b.

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Maybe you're right. I know it's not "vintage" as such, but pretty much every note Derek Trucks has recorded with his SG has sounded like tonal nirvana to me. What's odd is that although I've owned a few LPs and copies, I've barely ever even played an SG.

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Originally Posted by TheGuitarWeasel

Not popular to say it no doubt ... but Angus young has always had a terrific tone ... to my ears.

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I'd go along with that. I'm not all that keen on the music (although some of the early LPs were great) but he's always sounded fantastic. Another one of the "probably using less distortion than you might at first think" brigade, maybe?

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Originally Posted by musophilr

Glad you mentioned the ES-175. Every time I hear one I think Mmmmm I neeeed one of those!

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Well you do, Shirley. :D

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Originally Posted by Squiddy

I suppose my favourite guitar tone of all time would have to be Hendrix at the Isle of White Festival, from 1969. But it's a close-run thing with Mick Ralphs Les Paul tones of the mid 70s.

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I transpires that a lot of the recordings by Bad Co/Ralphs were done with a strat/marshall and pedal (can't recall which though). He preferred the LP live for the extra grunt in the PUs. He was also (at the time) finicky about his strings and would play them until completely dead. If one string broke only that one was replaced. Considering he could get free strings by endorsement that was an unusual choice.
Great player and hero of my yoof. I had the pleasure of knowing and playing with Boz Burrell many years later, a true gent and fabulous musician.

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Originally Posted by ICBM

But do you mean the guitar, or the amp? (Or the combination.) A Les Paul played clean - ie the actual sound of the guitar - is not particularly distinctive or iconic. A Les Paul played through a cranked Bassman or Marshall is... but is that the iconic sound of the Les Paul, or of the 5F6-A circuit?

The reason the Les Paul became popular is because it was one of the only guitars with the output level and sustain to drive those relatively low-gain amps into singing overdrive, rather than for its actual tone.

I'm not being deliberately awkward! :) Just pointing out that what we think of as "tone" is often as much down to the amp as the guitar.

If you mean genuinely iconic *guitar* tones, I think you'd probably pick the Strat's in-between sound or possibly a Rickenbacker's jangle as more iconic than the actual sound of a Les Paul.

(I love the sound of Les Pauls by the way, including clean.)

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+1 I've not been around here long, but I'm already thinking you talk a lot of sense (by that I mean opionions similar to my own).

I'd just add re. Gibsons - I personally think the sound of all mahogany, juniors / specials / SGs have more of a distinct tonal quality than the maple tops.

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Originally Posted by TheGuitarWeasel

I do believe you did! The one and only time I saw him his sound was totally shit ... IOW 1970. I was eleven ...

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Very interesting. I too had the great fortune - not to attend the Isle of Wight 'cos my parents stopped me - but to hear 'great tone' full-face in the late 60's. What I am surprised at is that you knew then that Jimi's IOW tone was crap, which IMHO it is. That said, I bought the album as soon as it came out and listened to it until I was sick of it - riberoberiberob. I reckon it took me a decade before I realised it was bad tone for him, and a similar time to register that the (revolutionary remember) tones of the 60's had been ousted by the overblown sounds of the 70's (and then the digital stuff of the 80's).

My assumption was BTW that I was fixated on the sounds of my generation. Indeed I always assumed that Led Zeppelin was 'here today gone tomorrow' music - never thought it would become iconic, or that I would still be listening in gobsmacked pleasure today.

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Originally Posted by wrinkleygit

Nothing has ever out done my 72 SG std, it sings before you plug it in & it just sings louder thro an amp, sadly I find the neck too narrow to play comfortably for any length of time now but we have played too many notes together for me to part with it. All you les paul owners out there searching for the perfect tone go & buy a good sg & save yourself a fortune (only an SG owner will truly understand this last statement ), mike b.

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+1 (and I own both) Let's remember that the SG was the followup to/development of the LP Junior, inasmuch as it it was a cut-down version, a mahogany sounding board literally, much cheaper to produce than an archtop. Remember too that Les himself disowned it! My '72 has the original Bigsby on it which I never use, but balances it perfectly.

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Originally Posted by TheGuitarWeasel

My own opinion: Iconic electric guitar sounds come firstly from a players hands ... secondly from amplification ... thirdly from pickups ... fourthly from guitar construction. But to answer the original post:
Tele, Strat, Les Paul, Rikky, Gretsch ... they all can be Iconic through the right amps ... and recorded the right way ... oh and played by the right people :D

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Couldn't agree more. I wonder how much of Roy's tone was in his hands...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMcjPZgK9GM