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The First Tone That Made You Say... "Whoa!"


Hamerhack

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Although I didn't start playing electric guitar until many years later, I'll never forget the first time I heard the opening riff of "Over, Under, Sideways, Down". That tone!!!

Other early ones:

The lead in Mitch Ryder's "Sock It To Me, Baby"

Count 5: "Psychotic Reaction"

What were the first tones that really caught your ear?

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ZZ Top: "Cheap Sunglasses" - listen to the solo starting around 1:25 min.

SRV: "Say What" & "Mary Had a Little Lamb" - these days that guitar tone has been so overdone by everybody and dragged through mud and crap that I can't really stand it anymore, but for me there was a big "Whoa..." factor back in the 80's.

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There's too many for me. Depends on the genre of music for too. Here's a few

For Rock

Jimi

EVH

Angus

Jeff Beck (rock and fusion really)

Gary Moore

Sykes

For Metal

Pantera

Metallica

Acoustic

Tommy E

Blues

SRV "Little Wing" and pretty much everything else he did. He had great tone for what he played.

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I guess I was too naive to differentiate between "riffs" and "tone" back then, but while a lot of mid-'60s RIFFS (including the Yardbirds' stuff, "Psychotic Reaction", etc.) caused me to do an impersonation of Nipper, the RCA mascot, the first TONE that caused me to do likewise was on "Sunshine of Your Love."

Many folks call it the "woman tone" on accounta that's the term Clapton used; I called it "oozy-bloozy"...

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Marty Robbins-Don't worry about me-I think the guitar solo is one of the first distorted tones out there.

Carcass-Necrotisim cd, The guitar tone is like a Mack truck, at the time I heard it (1991) I'd never heard a guitar tuned down to A, just brutal sounding.

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I forget the tunes, I was a little squirt, but some cowboy trio was playing an intermission at a rodeo in a big-ass arena in St. Louis when I was about 4. They dragged their gear out to the middle of the floor and just turned everything all the way up and hoped for the best. This was about 1956 and as far as PA was concerned, well, forget it. Anyway, the lead guitarist had his tweed Fender (probably) amp pointed up right at us, up in the nosebleed seats. I'm guessing it was a Tele he was playing. Now, imagine the opening lick of Johnny Cash's Folsom Prison Blues done on a dimed tweed amp (but very little distortion) in a huge barn of an arena. That tone changed my life. It took me 6 years to get a guitar and another year and a half to get an electric, but that was it. I was a goner before I ever hit a lick.

I should add that it was all reinforced when I started swiping my dad's baseball listenin' radio and got whapped by Duane Eddy and Link Wray (and my dad when he caught me.... ).

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The Beatles, "I feel Fine". A neighbor kid played that record for me and the guitar feeding back at the beginning killed me. At the same sitting, he played "Purple Haze" and the whole Sgt Pepper album. My life changed for me at the age of 6.

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On a recording it was SRV's first album. The tune was "Its floodin' down in Texas".

Live it was The Allman Bros. What a memorable show.

I had a great date with me, and we were way up close, leaning on the stage. When Betts stepped forward to start singing Ramblin' Man he almost stepped on our fingers. (Well ok....almost)

Same summer, same great date (what a honey, wonder what she's doin' these days?) Muddy Waters opening for Eric Clapton in Madison, WI. Johnny Winter playing guitar in Muddy's band. All 3 them played Mojo Workin" together. That was the opening show of a Clapton tour. He was hospitalized the next day(?) with bleeding ulcers & cancelled the rest of the tour.

noonan

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And how many of you heard those tunes while listening to that little am radio snuck under your pillow at night.

Yeah, I'm old!

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I remember being a kid and loving that crackling, AM radio breakup of Denny Laine's intro to "Band on the Run", by Wings. It made me feel all tingly.

The next one was (oddly enough), the intro chords to "Love is Like Oxygen" by Sweet. Next was Brian May in "Rhapsody", but that was right around the time I started getting more into music and listening to guitar. I was into old KISS in 6th Grade, but probably couldn't pick out anything in particular there.

I got into Cheap Trick right after that and the first guitarist I remember being floored by was Neil Geraldo.

Right as I started playing guitar, Rick Witkowski's (Crack the Sky) tearing-up-the-speaker-cones tone was "IT "! That stuff still haunts me...

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Oddly enough (?), my memories were pretty close to BroChris', but I remember hearing all of that echo-chambery phaser stuff from EVH and hearing the Cars before hearing "Heartbreaker" with Geraldo. I was pretty big into music early on and fortunately have about 7-800 killer 45rpms of some of those gems that I picked up . Just need a jukebox.

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"

The First Tone That Made You Say... "Whoa!"

"

The first tone that made med say "Whoaaa" was when the guitarrig started to feedback at rehearsal with my first band. I went "Whoaaaa - turn that mother off. It fu*ks my hearing!". :ph34r:

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