The loudness wars were not so much about live shows. It was mostly about recorded music because at one time that's what sold most records. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war#:~:text=Modern recordings that use extreme,victims of the loudness war".
Whoever sounded louder on the radio, or whatever medium, would sell more product. At some point records went from more natural in frequency distribution to an unnaturally bright mastered sound. Up till that point a bright, clipped mastering style was an untried method of getting yet louder sound. Limiting, clipping, etc., had all been used before to increase perceived loudness of recorded music, but in more of a natural frequency balance. At some point the competition led to mastering records that were clipped at all frequencies because it sounded even louder than before. This happened more in the 'screamo' era, IIRC.
The point here is that some of what music people grow up and became exposed to in their particular age group is what seemed relevant to them and their friends at the time. People don't only hear guitar sounds in arena rock. There are club blues, jazz, etc. Then there is recorded music sound too. If people learn to like a particular sound it must be from a variety of exposures, seems to me anyway.
So what does all this have to do with guitar sound? IMHO guitar sound is whatever fits into the mix in records being produced at a particular point in time. You can't have a huge, fat guitar sound, a huge, fat drum sound, a huge, fat bass, sound, and a huge fat vocal sound all at once. The mix won't work. Sounds from different instruments have to bit fit together like pieces of puzzle.
Understanding the foregoing, let's us look back at the time of early blues electric guitar. There was space in the mix to let a little bit of guitar distortion sound good. Over time and as music evolved, that easy going, a little bit distorted, beautiful guitar sound had to move aside to make for the different sounds of music of later times.
The more bright and grating the guitar sound became, the more people learned to associate it with emotional angst and intensity of the upcoming generation of young people. You know, that type of thing. Some things sound good in a more natural way, and some other things may be more learned. Its not simply one or the other.
Last edited:
"However the wall of marshall cabinets remains a visual trope in certain glam/hair metal circles even today.🤘"
Or an 8 foot tall Fender Princeton Reverb (dummy amp with 4 inch glowing jewel pilot light)
Ryan Adams. In most of his larger live shows there are two of them and a larger than life arcade style video game.
Or an 8 foot tall Fender Princeton Reverb (dummy amp with 4 inch glowing jewel pilot light)
Ryan Adams. In most of his larger live shows there are two of them and a larger than life arcade style video game.
Attachments
Guitar amp evolution has nothing to do with The Loudness War. Guitarists buys amps after what they want or think they can get from their purchase. Mainly for getting their desired sound, but In various degrees influenced of course by looks, brandnames, what their idols play etc.
Btw. Of topic: Walther Trout says about pedals. "Why get a kickaß, expensive expensive amp, and then put your guitar through a 100dollar pedal?" He just stick his strat into his Mesa Boogie something mk4 and that's it. - I want the same amp, so I can play like Walther Trout 😊
Cheers!
Btw. Of topic: Walther Trout says about pedals. "Why get a kickaß, expensive expensive amp, and then put your guitar through a 100dollar pedal?" He just stick his strat into his Mesa Boogie something mk4 and that's it. - I want the same amp, so I can play like Walther Trout 😊
Cheers!
Those $100 pedals are rapidly becoming more than most players talent would ever need. Perhaps they're actually $1000 pedals at the moment, soon to fall a decade in price. So you just need an expensive "Full Range" amp, which I take is nothing more than any one of the so-called "acoustic" amps that all the popular manufacturers make.
A young fellow at the open mic, his girlfriend got pretty angelic when their voices gel. He was carrying around a road worn what looked like one of the Roland street amps, a two speaker wedge affair. I asked him "is that all the amp you ever really need?" He said pretty much. I noticed he played his acoustic and then a strat through it and was getting a tone no one else had that night.
So, IMHO, guitar amps do sound different and there is a point where the functionality provided is truly sufficient for your purposes. It was just one of those little street amps and this guy took it everywhere he plays as a practical solution to getting his sound consistently. He had no lack of playing talent that amp would apparently, convey.
I think it is all on the front end. The guitar itself and to some extent it's pickups that makes all the difference.
I have built several electric guitars (including the necks) My "most favorite" is the hollow body "double F hole" telecaster.
The body was "worm scared Maple" and the top was Black Walnut. The neck was tiger maple. All locally sourced in Pennsylvania.
The finish was in Tung Oil. These are not exceptional tone woods.
Early on the guitar was kind of dull (i'd say about 6 months). But then, with age, everything hardened up and the tone improved dramatically.
I do use a small tube pre-amp going into my Hafler IRIS preamp and and then into a Hafler Mosfet DH200 amp
So it's all on the front end. Get that right then achieving loudness by any method really does not matter.
I have built several electric guitars (including the necks) My "most favorite" is the hollow body "double F hole" telecaster.
The body was "worm scared Maple" and the top was Black Walnut. The neck was tiger maple. All locally sourced in Pennsylvania.
The finish was in Tung Oil. These are not exceptional tone woods.
Early on the guitar was kind of dull (i'd say about 6 months). But then, with age, everything hardened up and the tone improved dramatically.
I do use a small tube pre-amp going into my Hafler IRIS preamp and and then into a Hafler Mosfet DH200 amp
So it's all on the front end. Get that right then achieving loudness by any method really does not matter.
I know a little late to the party after kicking off the train of thought, but you have to think back further to the beginning of the electronic era. Amps were not designed to distort but guitarists pushed the amps louder and the resultant sound was found pleasing at times. The early Gibson amps had a following, a lot of others in the 30-40's that defined the blues sound for a while. The public listened to the recordings and the radio, old ears may not have liked it but the kids really did. These were built the same way as PA amps, they were not designed to get a certain sound other than to get loud enough without the amp breaking.
Leo copied the technology of the day and it was his push to clean volume that brought in the scooped sound. He never embraced the idea of distortion, even Marshall at first tried to make an amp that was clean. Fender went country, Marshall went rock. And as time went on the Plexi became the 2203/2204 series came out with higher gain and then went into the chugging metal arena. Did people from the 50's like the metal sound? No, they did not grow up with it. Take a step back to Back To The Future with McFly doing Hendrix in front of a dance hop. A lot of confused people standing around.
So yes, I think that society's ears have been trained to like the distorted guitar sound through countless recordings made with it. Heck, Link Ray's Rumble and Johnny Burnette's Train Kept a Rollin were two of the first distorted guitar sounds that turned white folk's ears up. So it was not that instrument manufacturers trained ears to their sound but people (kids) hearing something new and liking it.
Me having had a Vox AC50 with no gain dial or anything make me think its very much in the output stage. Most important is the speaker and its cabinet probably, but its the whole package. No not the speaker. Its the player that is the most important part of the package of course 😄. That's why I will never sound like Walther Trout
Cheers!
Cheers!
Rubato. For that to work the it isn't just the player. The steady tempo of the accompaniment is critical. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempo_rubato
Like with most everything, there's a Ying and there's a Yang.
Take a freshly stringed acoustic guitar, preferably a good one like a Martin, hit a few notes, and enjoy the richness of the harmonics.
Now swap in a Gibson with humbuckers, and hit the same notes: OOPS, the upper harmonics are gone. That's the limitations of the pickups, and the double coil makes it worse. The Fenders, being (mostly) single coil, fare slightly better, in this respect.
There're ways to deal with this: call it a new genre: Charlie Christian did pretty well creating the "mellow" jazz guitar sound. Or turn up the volume and get a win-win: now you can fight the brass section, and you get some of the harmonics back. You can fine tune the contribution of each amplification stage to get your sonic Nirvana, or, if you're a pro with time constrain, you can use pedals to get a quick and dirty approximation.
Take a freshly stringed acoustic guitar, preferably a good one like a Martin, hit a few notes, and enjoy the richness of the harmonics.
Now swap in a Gibson with humbuckers, and hit the same notes: OOPS, the upper harmonics are gone. That's the limitations of the pickups, and the double coil makes it worse. The Fenders, being (mostly) single coil, fare slightly better, in this respect.
There're ways to deal with this: call it a new genre: Charlie Christian did pretty well creating the "mellow" jazz guitar sound. Or turn up the volume and get a win-win: now you can fight the brass section, and you get some of the harmonics back. You can fine tune the contribution of each amplification stage to get your sonic Nirvana, or, if you're a pro with time constrain, you can use pedals to get a quick and dirty approximation.
There is this thing where a musical instrument sounds best if it uses all the available frequency space for each channel. When there are too many instruments trying to fill up the whole frequency space at once, then you have a mix problem. Its not going to sound good, especially if too many instruments are making part of their sound around the especially sensitive frequencies around 300Hz.
So, for a solo acoustic guitar or other simple music that leaves open most of the frequency space for the guitar, new strings and their harmonics can be nice. OTOH, add a full band where each instrumentalist has decided when practicing in private that their particular instrument sounds best if it produces frequencies from DC to light, that's a trap many beginners fall into. Their producer or mix engineer will have to get them to understand that won't work if the goal is to make a great sounding record.
The more instruments and vocals playing at once, the less frequency space can be allocated to each one. In fact, that's why most of the instruments in a symphony orchestra are included in symphonic music. Each chosen instrument can make sounds that can dovetail in with the sounds other instruments in order to produce new, composite sounds. But they can be used to complement each other rather than to create muddy sound together.
The reason saxophones have not been added to symphonic music is basically because they take up too much frequency space. IIRC it something that was considered, adding saxes, but the final analysis was that it wouldn't be of benefit to an orchestra. Same reason why piano isn't in most symphonic music. If its included then the orchestration and arranging needs to take it into account as it easily fills up a lot available frequencies.
This stuff is all basic mixing theory. Of course there are always exceptions to theories like that. But as a general rule, a mix usually doesn't work well to sound good if too many cooks are spoiling the broth, each of them instrumentalists wishing to optimize the sound of their own instrument without regard to the effect on the overall mix.
So, for a solo acoustic guitar or other simple music that leaves open most of the frequency space for the guitar, new strings and their harmonics can be nice. OTOH, add a full band where each instrumentalist has decided when practicing in private that their particular instrument sounds best if it produces frequencies from DC to light, that's a trap many beginners fall into. Their producer or mix engineer will have to get them to understand that won't work if the goal is to make a great sounding record.
The more instruments and vocals playing at once, the less frequency space can be allocated to each one. In fact, that's why most of the instruments in a symphony orchestra are included in symphonic music. Each chosen instrument can make sounds that can dovetail in with the sounds other instruments in order to produce new, composite sounds. But they can be used to complement each other rather than to create muddy sound together.
The reason saxophones have not been added to symphonic music is basically because they take up too much frequency space. IIRC it something that was considered, adding saxes, but the final analysis was that it wouldn't be of benefit to an orchestra. Same reason why piano isn't in most symphonic music. If its included then the orchestration and arranging needs to take it into account as it easily fills up a lot available frequencies.
This stuff is all basic mixing theory. Of course there are always exceptions to theories like that. But as a general rule, a mix usually doesn't work well to sound good if too many cooks are spoiling the broth, each of them instrumentalists wishing to optimize the sound of their own instrument without regard to the effect on the overall mix.
Last edited:
You're also enjoying sound that hasnt gone through somebody's pickup / microphone / amplifier / speaker / sound system. The classical players have it even harder, regarding sound reinforcement; no magnetic field to perturb with a steel string for them...
It's almost like you have to turn that acoustic sound into something else, so might as well and find a way to make it enjoyable.
To mic an acoustic guitar, its pretty good using a Schoeps CMC641 about one foot away and aimed mostly at the 12th fret. That into the right preamp, then maybe into a Distressor or not, and then into an good ADC. The mic is not cheap, maybe more expensive than some acoustic guitars. The mic, preamp, compressor (if used), and ADC channel all together probably cost more than many acoustic guitars. We are talking thousands of dollars here.
Does it sound good? Yeah, it does! At least it does if the player is good.
OTOH, if you are playing a $3k+ guitar into an SM-57, then into a self-powered speaker, what do you expect?
Does it sound good? Yeah, it does! At least it does if the player is good.
OTOH, if you are playing a $3k+ guitar into an SM-57, then into a self-powered speaker, what do you expect?
Last edited:
As a longtime electric guitar player who's gone through a lot of amps, yes... Different guitar amps sound different.
Take a Roland Jazz Chorus amp and plug it into a Deluxe Reverb speaker cab. Put the tone controls at '5' on their dials.
Now plug that speaker cab back into the Deluxe Reverb amp. Put the tone controls at '5' on their dials.
Do they sound the same?
Have you ever heard a Gibson GA-50 from the early 1950s? Cool sounding amp. 6SJ7 as the input tube, into a 6SN7 see-saw/paraphase phase splitter, push-pull 6L6 tubes biased pretty warm with low plate and screen voltages. The tone control circuit is unusual too. Nothing like a Fender/Marshall tone stack.
I think the various tone control circuits change the sound noticeably. I once had my Deluxe Reverb wired up with a James tone control circuit in the Normal channel and the original Fender tone stack in the Reverb channel. You can make the two sound the same at certain settings, but they sound different in use. For one thing, they have very different insertion loss. The Fender tone stack is more lossy. That alone changes the tone some.
Oh, I don't know why I'm posting about this. I know from experience that if I take a Polytone Mini-Brute and plug it into my 12" speaker cab, it sounds very different from my Deluxe Reverb plugged into that same 12" speaker cab... Even clean, but especially if pushed a bit.
Take a Roland Jazz Chorus amp and plug it into a Deluxe Reverb speaker cab. Put the tone controls at '5' on their dials.
Now plug that speaker cab back into the Deluxe Reverb amp. Put the tone controls at '5' on their dials.
Do they sound the same?
Have you ever heard a Gibson GA-50 from the early 1950s? Cool sounding amp. 6SJ7 as the input tube, into a 6SN7 see-saw/paraphase phase splitter, push-pull 6L6 tubes biased pretty warm with low plate and screen voltages. The tone control circuit is unusual too. Nothing like a Fender/Marshall tone stack.
I think the various tone control circuits change the sound noticeably. I once had my Deluxe Reverb wired up with a James tone control circuit in the Normal channel and the original Fender tone stack in the Reverb channel. You can make the two sound the same at certain settings, but they sound different in use. For one thing, they have very different insertion loss. The Fender tone stack is more lossy. That alone changes the tone some.
Oh, I don't know why I'm posting about this. I know from experience that if I take a Polytone Mini-Brute and plug it into my 12" speaker cab, it sounds very different from my Deluxe Reverb plugged into that same 12" speaker cab... Even clean, but especially if pushed a bit.