Guitars (Don't) Suck; But I'm not Sure How Much they Matter

[jakeisjake]

i love the "jangle" sound...there's just something about it for me (and i know that's true for a lot of you, too). the "jangle" is associated with Rickenbacker...and, so, many of us love those guitars, too.

but in a couple of instances lately...i've found that the jangle isn't necessarily a Ric. in "A Million Miles Away", Peter Case (i assume from the vid) plays a Ric...but the riff is a strat.

and, as i've been listening to the Pretenders today...James Honeyman-Scott makes anything jangle. in fact, the least jangly song, "Message of Love", he's playing a Ric (again, if the vid is true).

Garcia makes any guitar sound like him...Clapton, too. Marr plays a ton of different guitars and always sounds like him.

i just find it interesting.

[Grey]

You can make almost any piece of gear work for you, some just help you get there faster or do a specific sound more easily and without as much messing around.

[StevenO]

I think, with some notable exceptions, gear matters more to the player and keen observers than the average listener. I'm perfectly okay with that, actually.

I have had gear that cost next to nothing that I love and gear that costs a lot that I wouldn't wish upon even my enemies.

[Jaguar018]

Tone is in the fingers right?

Some of that stuff is the amp. Vox amps have that chime way more than Fenders, and most of those Beatles 2.0 wannabe guys like Peter Case chased that sound for a while.

[NelsonInstruments]

I think "Jangle", while generally being associated with Rickenbackers, is one of those terms that can be really subjective.
I'd posit that most likely the term came into use due to the Byrds doing Mr. Tambourine Man with the "Jingle Jangle" lyric and the Ric 12-string.

But really what is "Jangle"?! I think it might really be a loose term that might describe almost any guitar with using the treble pickup BUT without TOO much treble (not ice-picky treble) and probably a little compression.

Teles can jangle, Gretsches can Jangle, Ricks can Jangle, we can all Jangle if we put our mind to it.

[sirjeremy]

First two replies to the OP really had me dying. So true. Perception is key. I'm a 90s/00s alternative/punk kid but in recent years I've grown to appreciate soooo much other music. Lately I've been studying surf stuff and I, for the life of me, can't replicate the tone of a lot of these guys. Ventures specifically. I know they used Strats in part, but I feel like there's something about JMs and Jags that just makes a difference. Then again my Strat is decked. So my Strat prob doesn't even match THEIR Strat setup.

I'm drunk.

[stevejamsecono]

i love the "jangle" sound...there's just something about it for me (and i know that's true for a lot of you, too). the "jangle" is associated with Rickenbacker...and, so, many of us love those guitars, too.

but in a couple of instances lately...i've found that the jangle isn't necessarily a Ric. in "A Million Miles Away", Peter Case (i assume from the vid) plays a Ric...but the riff is a strat.

and, as i've been listening to the Pretenders today...James Honeyman-Scott makes anything jangle. in fact, the least jangly song, "Message of Love", he's playing a Ric (again, if the vid is true).

Garcia makes any guitar sound like him...Clapton, too. Marr plays a ton of different guitars and always sounds like him.

i just find it interesting.

Yep. JHS is a huge influence on my guitar playing and most of his key stuff was done on either a LP Standard, 335, or a Telecaster. It's all in how you choose to play and what you use to get across what you're thinking. I would say that my guitar playing has some solid jangle in it (arpeggios, ringing open strings, chorus pedals), and right now I play a Yamaha SG through Marshall amps, so... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[dezb1]

Like you say most of the Smiths jangle was a Tele so the Ric takes some of the jangle credits when it's not due them.

[stevejamsecono]

Yeah, I think people still have a Beatles/Byrds hangover on that stuff when I think honestly it just came down to the quality of amplification and production at the time more than anything else.

[Larry Mal]

I think the variation with electric guitars is much less than a lot of us tend to think. Like, we can tell the difference between a Rickenbacker and a Telecaster and so on, but it's out job to do so. It's out focus to really know the details of those sounds and to worry about them, the subtleties and such. But the difference is very slight, really. I mean, they are all still electric guitars that use the same fundamental concepts.

[marqueemoon]

"Rics are jangly"

[spacecadet]

Well this is a variation on a debate that's come up at least 4 or 5 times since I've been on this site. Sometimes it's phrased in terms of guitars being appropriate to certain types of music (ie. why can't you use a Jazzmaster for metal, or a pointy guitar to play indie rock), sometimes it's more about tone chasing, and going through different guitars, effects and amp combos looking for a very specific sound that you may never find.

I always say that you can get any sound on any guitar and you can play any kind of music on any guitar. But certain guitars are more *predisposed* to be played one way or another (it's just easier to play them with one style than another), and they have a certain sound when played stock through the same amp vs. another guitar.

For example, the design of the Jazzmaster and its bridge and tremolo system means that it doesn't take well to very light strings or extremely low action. You can put 7's on it if you want and adjust the action way low up and down the entire neck, but it'd probably go out of tune constantly and buzz terribly. So if you want it to sound like a guitar from an 80's metal band, which are typically played on guitars made for very light playing and precise and fast picking, you need to learn to deal with those problems. And then you have to do something about the pickups. Sure, it all can be done, and plenty of guys play metal (and sound like any other metal players) on guitars you wouldn't expect, ex. Dave Murray and Yngwie Malmsteen, who play Strats. But they've usually made modifications to allow them to sound and play like that.

(Inoran, a really popular metal player in Japan, plays a Jazzmaster and I think it's basically stock. But he plays a slightly different style that's more like Foo Fighters-style hard rock with different vocals.)

Out of the box, Jazzmasters and Jaguars seem like they want to be played hard. They like heavy strings and somewhat high action, and they have that big valley in between the pickups that's just in the perfect spot to ram your picking hand over as you're playing. I think that's part of the reason why indie bands seem to like them. (Obviously not the only reason.) I think this is also one reason why they weren't actually successful as jazz guitars. I don't think they're designed all that well for that purpose.

And different play styles result in different sounds. Playing a bar chord really hard just sounds different from playing it lightly, even if you crank the volume and distortion to try to match the intensity.

So if you were to take two guitars with identical pickups and electronics but with a different design that encourages different styles of play, they'll sound different. But if you intentionally *tried* to play the the exact same way, they'd sound the same. And even two guitars with different pickups and electronics would sound similar if they were played the exact same way (though not the same, but depending on the actual guitars, probably indistinguishable to a lot of people).

So I do think it's the play style that makes the biggest difference in sound, but a lot of guitars just want to be played a certain way. A few guitars, like the Strat or Les Paul, might be jacks of all trades and that's why they're so popular. (Though single coil vs. humbucker guitars do definitely sound different, even if played the same way.) But I think probably the majority of guitar types are more specialized in how their design encourages you to play them, and that's why they're associated with a certain sound moreso than what the electronics are actually doing.

[StevenO]

Not sure how much this relates, but man... I used to record band practices and jams that I had with different people over the years, and unless there's a specific guitar-specific little trick in the recording (vibrato use from my JM, out of phase Start sounds, etc), I pretty much can't tell the difference between what guitars I am playing. It kind of surprises me, though it doesn't bother me in the slightest. I have guitars for different reasons, not all are sonic. Some are my in-the-moment reactions to the different abilities that each guitar provides. To me, if I can tell the difference when playing them, that's all that matters.

[NelsonInstruments]

Yeah, I think people still have a Beatles/Byrds hangover on that stuff when I think honestly it just came down to the quality of amplification and production at the time more than anything else.

Soooo from the age of maybe 12 until 19-20 I was a Beatles fanatic. Bought examples of the rics and gretsches and a hofner bass etc. (My entire vintage collection is long gone though)

Anyway some of my favorite Beatle tones are from the Please please me, and With the Beatles albums. (Specifically the lead guitar on the song "Please Please me" and the driving rhythm on "All my Loving" as well as others).

Having the Rickenbacker 325, the Gretsch Duo jet, and an AC30 I could never understand why I just couldn't get even CLOSE to my favorite tones. Then a year or so ago on a different forum my mind was BLOWN wide open when I realized that my favorite Beatle sounds were played on their Gibson J160E guitars.

Just like the Ricks get credit for Tele sounds etc I think a lot of us associate certain sounds with certain instruments because of photos we saw of people playing guitars that probably weren't used in the studio.

Another example (not that this has much to do with "Jangle") is that in the 60s the majority of the guitar players in "The Wrecking Crew" hated Strats and all of them played Teles on the vast majority of those classic Wrecking Crew recordings. The notable exception being Carol Kaye who played a Jazzmaster.

[pad]

Didn't those Wrecking Crew Volks and Psychobillys mostly play Gretsch?