you truly seek an objective difference and you are not afraid to admit that you can’t because of marginal differences.
Never underestimate the power of good source material (a decent recording) being edited and mixed by a pro to play with some frequencies.
look at technique, cables, pre-amp, mics’ speakers, … (speakers do much more than amps imo)
…and factors you don’t control directly like the room etc. If you pay a bit of attention to each part of that chain, you’ll get far! Not completely going insane on gear and sound proofing but trying to find the right setting, distance, technique to play etc… just continuously improving as you progress.
Just putting yourself in a different spot or having just a lighter touch on your guitar can do massive improvements. People often mistake a good technique and dynamic playing for “good sound quality”. A decently set up guitar with strings that aren’t completely bland from age will often do fine when used right.
Same here,
saw quite a few Youtube string- or other gear comparisons where it was really hard to tell a difference for me. Sometimes, you have to know what in the sound to pay attention to. Two sounds may sound the same at first, but once you noticed where the differences are, they can be much more noticeable to you, even to the point of suddenly disturbing you.
But it general, the player is so much more important than gear.
Behind my market stall, I often have buskers, and one came with a classical guitar with electric pickup - first time I heard him, one piece reminded me of Mark Knopfler with his Dobro acoustic guitar. (Just on one song, because he made the guitar sound quite differently just playing it differently). Some other week, I noticed, it sounded a bit different, but not by very much - and when I had time to watch I was really astonished to see him using a Telecaster this time - so I was questioning my ears also!
You’re not alone. Just be happy with your gear and enjoy.
Keep in mind that people creating YouTube content are in the business of creating YT content and moving product - they’re basically paid advertisers, and so they have to extol the virtue of the product they’re pushing while also coming up with new videos to make. I watched one guitar video where the “reviewer” praised how good the guitar looked while it was still in an opaque bag and, upon finally taking the guitar out of the bag, he gushed about how the volume knob was the best volume knob he’s ever used without ever plugging the guitar in to see if the volume knob even worked.
People also tend to get hung up on the minutia of sound, missing the forest for the trees. Do strings change your guitar’s sound? Sure. But what you play and how you play makes a much bigger impact. When I hear a great riff, I’m thinking, “Wow, that’s a great sounding riff!” I’m not thinking about the specific amp or pedals or guitar or strings that the riff was played on - and the riff will likely sound great regardless of what it’s played on.
Some people think they hear differences that they don’t actually hear, but that’s only revealed in blind comparison tests. I remember seeing one test of modelers against a real amp where one person was very sure of which was the real amp and which was a modeler he really didn’t like - because clip A had a “harmonic richness” the others lacked, while clip D had a “nasally mid-range hump” that he believed was endemic to a brand of modelers. Well, surprise surprise, it was eventually revealed that A with the “harmonic richness” was actually the modeler he thought he didn’t like while D was the real amp.
And as you discovered, your audience likely hears even less of a difference than you do. So if you don’t want to spend your time trying out different strings to find the ones that sound the best, or deciding whether a 0.5 db boost at 500Hz is really an improvement, you don’t have to. Just enjoy the gear you have and spend your time on things you find worthwhile.
I’ve come across people in the guitar-building world who believe the type of finish you apply to the body of an electric guitar can effect its tone. I’m not sure which is crazier! There is soooo much BS talked about tone in the guitar world (mainly electric) it amazes me.
Interesting thread! Before starting JG, I dabbled in the audiophile world, trying to improve my stereo setup, listening to the same song in multiple resolutions and formats, chasing quality etc. Just another kind of GAS attack, to be honest
IMHO
Learning to play guitar and recording myself and post-processing the results in Logic/GB taught me how big a difference those steps make to sound quality, a real eye opener. (As pointed out earlier in this thread)
Beyond a point, the incremental improvements in sound quality get smaller and smaller and more and more expensive. That point varies from person to person, based on observations from friends and family who indulged me in “can you hear the difference between X and Y” games.
Personally, the differences I noticed were in the level of detail you could hear in each instrument and the separation between them, and sometimes how perceivable a particular sound was in the mix. It wasn’t that any instrument sounded “better”, it was that I could pick them out and focus on them more easily.
Some of the songs I used for these experiments were Speak to Me from Dark Side (how soon I could hear the heartbeat in the opening); My Sweet Lord from the George Harrison tribute concert (could I hear the tambourine eg when the video cuts to the guy around 4:45 mark… I’ve only heard it once on a system that cost 5x mine), Riders on the Storm (did the storms and rainfall in the intro sound realistic), Take Five by Dave Brubeck (how clear were the cymbals).
This guy is grossly underrated… as a scientist. The way he takes a complicated problem, breaks it down into small testable hypotheses / questions on which experiments can be run, and then executes the experiments and draw conclusions from the results, really demonstrates mastery in scientific experimental design / set up. He has another video on amplifier tone which is even more epic (because the problem is much more complex).
Each of his videos probably requires hundreds of hours of work; it’s sad, but I don’t think we’ll be seeing many more of such videos.
Thanks for the link Jozsef. Every electric guitar builder and tone-geek in the world should be strapped into chair and forced to watch that video.
And to prove my previous point, the first person he quoted from his survey listed the guitar’s finish as one of their top 5 contributors to electric guitar tone!
Yeah, I think the level of hairsplitting that argues for or against certain types of finish on the basis of how they affect the tone is similar to audiophiles’ fixation on their setup. If someone spends thousands of dollars or even more on something purportedly making a difference in sound, they definitely will want to hear that difference whether it is really there to be heard or not.
I like this thread,
It is a safe space to amdit you don’t always hear these differences and that it is ok to be critical about what is being market and proclaimed by guitarp layers around the world (from novices to well known artists)
Be open, curious and not judgemental.
Give an idea a chance and approach it from many angles.
always glad to see this community has that down-to-earth sense and pragmatic approach <3
Well said!
It’s not easy to do (for some it seems easier than for others, like my mother in law eg. ), but we can try at least!
PS. I like the video - it’s confirming my belief, which is rather well thought through and not so much build on prejudices . There’s also a video on a Fender built cardboard electric guitar that sounded totally normal - err - as far as I could hear with my leass than ideal ear!
or that much wood, either…
