For those of you who know me you know that I'm a bit of a guitar tech geek. I can tell you more than you would ever want to know about most guitars, pickups, amps, pre-amps, effects, etc. In fact, if you do know me then chances are you have been subjected at some point to a very long conversation about those things that you could not, no matter how hard you tried, get out of.
For as big a geek as I am about guitar equipment, Nels Cline is a bigger one. For as many pedals as I have and use (Scot and Chappy, you know all about this), Nels Cline has more and uses more.
Here is an artist's depiction of Nels Cline's effects set-up:
And yet here's what Nels has to say at the end of the "Tech Talk" section of his website:
As I've said, so much time, energy, and MONEY goes into talk about equipment and the like, when only a few things are really of paramount significance when it comes to musicmaking - and guess what, I don't think equipment is high on that list! It still comes down to WHAT NOTES one chooses to play and to HOW ONE TOUCHES THE INSTRUMENT.
The bottom line?
That is something that is good for all of us guitarists and guitar geeks (as well as other music geeks out there) to keep in mind. The most crucial element in the equation of good tone is your hands. That is how you can tell that Mark Knopfler is playing whatever part you hear him playing. Whether it is a Les Paul, a Strat, or an acoustic, clean or overdriven, whatever effects may or may not be on the track, they all feature the hands of Mark Knopfler.
A friend of mine came over a little while ago to jam. He plays a Strat straight into an Ampeg amp. I play (mostly) a Parker into all of my effects (too numerous to bother listing here), then into either both channels of my Peavey (Normal and Bright simultaneously for a really cool texture) or one channel of the Peavey (Normal) and either a Fender Blues Junior or a Fender Super Reverb.
My friend decided while playing with me that he might be interested in employing a more complicated setup like mine. So I let him just play my Parker into my setup. I even dialed up some of my favorite sounds. It just didn't sound right. It didn't sound like me. With all of the same equipment at the same settings, but with his hands playing the way that he plays, some of my favorite settings ended up sounding bad.
He gets a fantastic sound out of his setup, but he just sounded wrong through mine. I'm sure that he could find some effects that would compliment the way he plays better than mine did, I'm just not sure he really needs them. He's found his sound, and he plays best when his signal path remains unmolested.
Effects aren't there to produce the sound. They effect and shape it, but your hands (in conjunction with the instrument) produce it. I like to use my effects to enhance what I'm doing. I like to use several different overdrives, modulation effects, and delays to get some neat, ethereal, raw and yet weird-ass sounds. But the core of my sound, and any guitarist's sound, is in my hands. I sound an awful lot like me no matter what equipment I'm using.
I discovered this fact with much dismay a few years ago. I felt like I was in a bit of a rut. I really didn't like my sound. I had been using mostly Fender amps and single-coil equipped guitars. So I switched to my Peavey amp. I put humbuckers in some of my guitars and I bought some more with humbuckers. I added some new overdrive pedals and an active EQ to further shape my sound. But the end result was more like a minor tweaking than the radical overhaul I was looking for. I had changed gears, equipment wise, about as far as I could without going into full-stack mode (I still like smaller tube amp combos), and yet the sound was still basically the same sound I've always had. I often marvel at that phenomenon. Eric Clapton has morphed from using Gibsons (with the tone knob rolled all the way down on the bridge pickup) through Marshall stacks to using Strats (with active mid-boost) through small Fender combos, and yet he still sounds like Eric Clapton! The gear is just a minor part of the sound.
So what's the moral of all of this? Find your sound. It's in your hands. Get them ready. Practice. Hone your tone. And then don't worry too much about the equipment. It's there to assist you, it can't do your job for you. That's between you and your hands.
I leave you with this tech checklist from Nels Cline:
Tom
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