The Worst Guitar Tones on Famous Songs

Throughout time, there have been some amazing guitar players and very famous songs which feature extremely bad guitar tones. So what's the deal with that? We will discuss and use science to discover the truth...

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[MusicisWin]

It's okay to air your tone grievances here... this is a safe space.

[RiffsAndBeards]

When I made my bad tone video years ago I got actual physical threats for 6 months afterwards. Godspeed, sir.

[CesarCordova]

Jimi Hendrix has some very ugly tones that are incredible.

[keatomic]

Something I want to point out here. Everything back in the day was low-fi. So using these exaggerated or odd tones on the speakers we had available in our homes and cars actually worked. It's like stage actors wearing exaggerated makeup.

[dartstudio]

Slashing a speaker with a box knife to create distortion sound confirmed. My first guitar amp was a 8 track player with aux in jack. It sounded super horrible. I heard the story about the speaker cutting in a magazine and tried it. Confirmed, distortion sound. So I kept experimenting and found the shape and length of cuts makes a difference. Also if you keep making more and more cuts you eventually get no sound and need to go to a pawn shop and find a real practice amp.

[Erniethebear]

Leo Fender and Les Paul spent their lives and fortunes trying to eliminate distortion. Then kids bought their stuff and immediately set about figuring out how to put it back.

[glitchxero]

Randy Rhodes amp knobs:
Bass: -10        Mid: +2        High: +9

[BLDYME]

As a sound engineer (and a guitarist) I constantly need to have this conversation with guitarists in the studio. When you play alone, your amp pretty much takes up the whole audio spectrum, you get chunky lows in 100-300Hz, then obviously mid-range, and then some treble from distortion or fuzz or just pick attack on clean tones anywhere from 5k-15kHz range. I always try to explain to them that they can't have their FULL tone as it comes out of the amp, because it needs to sit right in the context of the song.

I will record the tone and the take they're happy with, but once I start mixing, you can be sure I'll put it through a high pass filter to let the bass and the kick punch through the mix, and possibly even a gentle low-pass filter to let hihats/cymbals ring clearer, or filter out that high-frequency noise when the guitar is silent but the amp and pedals keep amplifying the signal i.e. noise. Noise gates are great, but sometimes it's caused by the frequencies the instrument doesn't use otherwise, so why have it there in the first place. Filter them ultra-highs out and make space for anything that needs them, mostly drums: hihats, cymbals, snares miced up from the bottom, or vocals that have a lot of S or Zs in their lyrics, or any high frequency noise you make with your mouth. Some voices have natural grit and raspy quality, so need to leave them highs alone.

Every instrument needs to sit in its own space on the audio spectrum (both EQ-wise and stereo-wise), otherwise it becomes a mess with guitars just muddying up the whole song (that goes for every instrument in the song). Then when it comes to fine-tuning I'll apply a few EQ dips and peaks here and there to make sure it doesn't clash with the vocals, or the snare, or the attack/click of kick + toms, while making sure you can still hear the guitar(s) really well (usually plural with rhythm + lead + overdubs for that rich sound and wide stereo effect etc), seeing how it shares mid-range with about 90% of other instruments in the song.

After all the EQing, compression, balancing etc is done, if you isolate their "amazing tone" it suddenly sounds weak and insignificant, and you usually get comments like "yo we need to redo the guitars" or "boost the bass on my solo bro". But with the rest of the instruments filling those gaps, the full song sounds sick and each instrument sits where it's supposed in the mix.

EDIT:
Unless of course guitar is the main act of the band. Like the guy thinks he's the reincarnation of Jimi Hendrix or SRV himself. Then all other instruments are there to support the guitarist, even if there's also vocals, which usually are the focus of the song. Sometimes customer's right even when you think they're not, since they're technically your boss.

[gewittervonwahrheit]

“What’s your favorite song with a bad guitar tone?”

Listeners of Black Metal: “Yes”

[guitarfan]

ok, putting the youtube auto ad break after "It's Randy Rhodes' guitar tone" was pretty great.

[michaelivan]

It takes most players years to realize that a “great” guitar tone in a mix can sound very weak. AC/DC s Malcom Young barely used gain. It was all volume and it sounds glorious in a band setting.

[lonniewild]

I have always loved the Billy Jean solo tone (AKA the Madonna guitar tone). out of phase pickups - heavy compression - medium depth just because it's simple doesn't make it bad

[TheStatler]

Facetious is an awesome word.
It has all of the vowels in order.

Have a nice day.

[spartans]

That Randy Rhoads part just reiterates the importance of bass tbh

[BecomeTheKnight]

13:06 interesting that you say this and reference Eric Johnson at the beginning. EJ actually gets his live sound by having dirty signal. No BS. The dudes at Fender went through a *ton* of pickup revisions before he was satisfied. In frustration they sent him back the first pickup saying it was the next revision and just by hearing it he knew it was the first pickup they made him.

Point is, some people really have an ear for this stuff and KNOW what they like/want. That's the key takeaway for me. What timbre makes your balls jump a little bit....

[IGrocker]

I completely agree about Rhoads’ studio tone. It’s thin and tinny on it’s own. That said, his live tone is leaps and bounds better, especially in the last year of touring

[rgb]

I like that Billie Jean Guitar sound. Nile Rodgers went direct a lot. EVH went direct for Finish What You Started.

[harryscarry]

Love how they got sounds back then. Say this in a northern England accent. “So what we did right, was stick a guitar lead up the backside of a dead cow, put the udder end in a pint of lager what was surrounded by angry flies, then I pretended to break up with my girlfriend. She started to cry, we recorded that, sped it up, played it backwards and that was the intro to earthworm express. Magic!”

[Jamsville]

Everyone just remember that the only reason distortion exists is because someone’s amp busted.

[scottanderson]

Randy’s tone was always one of my favorites growing up.
I chased that sound like crazy with the cheap crappy gear I had.
Then I remember the first time I played through a Marshall half stack. Ready to unleash the huge, responsive, epic tone of my favorite records I flip the switch and hear a kind of nasty, bright, upper mids-focused, kind of annoying, kind of clean tone….
To this day, I still think sitting in front of a Marshall is a painful and unpleasant experience largely. But on stage, loud and in the context of a band, its one of the most glorious things you will ever hear.