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Examples of Crappy Distorted Guitar Tone


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Prong-Force Fed, my favorite Prong CD song wise but what a terrible guitar tone!

One of AC/DC's albums, maybe it was If you want Blood...Some of Angus leads sound like his amp is going directly to the board without a speaker load.

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Other than Cinamon Girl... pretty much everything from Neil Young....

Blasphemy! Get ye gone, Satan!

ep, Neil consistently gets primo tone...EXCEPT for the soundtrack to Rust Never Sleeps. The intro to 'Hey Hey My My' sounds like he overloaded his amp with an Electro Harmonix LPB-1.

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I didn't like Kurt's sound on Nevermind, but In Utero has some amazing distortion..

Ratt and Quiet Riot, Great White-ugh..bad bad bad..

although I do like Slash's "Appetite" distortion...

Ned's Atomic Dustbin had some pretty crappy tone...

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Clapton's post Cream / Derek & Dominoes tone sucks hard imho (not counting the 70's studio classics There's One in Every Crowd and 461 Ocean Blvd)...especially in the 80's with that thin, chorus-laden spooge that was so evident on all of his live Wembley type shows, ilchhhh...

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Pretty much anything Rush has done after the first Album. That first one was killer. After that, they pretty much lost me and their rock vibe.

WHAT? Dude, Alex Lifeson always gets amazing tones. Always.

i'm gonna disagree w/ BOTH of y'all on alex lifeson;

his tone is good to great on ALL the 70's stuff,

but when he switched to stratoids and soilid state amps

sometime after "signals", his tone got sucky. i lost interest

around then, but i noticed that his tone on the

"rush in rio" dvd is good, tho.

here's one that truly sucks; mark farner from grand funk.

i like most of grand funk's tunes and singing, but his tone, ewwwww.

tony iommi's tone went from good to shite between

"sabbath bloody sabbath" (good to great)

and "sabotage" (raspy thin, too much gain),

and sucked up 'til his switch to marshalls and mesas

on "heaven & hell". i lost interest after "mob rules".

I know what you're saying, Alex Lifeson's tone changed a lot when he switched to strats. Maybe his tone wasn't to your liking, but he never had a "sucky" tone. It was just different in order to fit the music they were writing at the time. But those are great strat tones, dude!

Also, Iommi used a Pignose (you know, the little batt. powered one) to record Sabotage. If you listen to the last half of "Megalomania" that's the battery on the amp losing juice. Quite true! He used the Pignose on the entire album. He also used a Strat a lot while recording Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. If you listen close you can tell the difference between the Strat and the SG. He used the SG on "Killing yourself to live" and the Strat on "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath".

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i'm gonna disagree w/ BOTH of y'all on alex lifeson;

his tone is good to great on ALL the 70's stuff,

but when he switched to stratoids and soilid state amps

sometime after "signals", his tone got sucky. i lost interest

around then, but i noticed that his tone on the

"rush in rio" dvd is good, tho.

I totally agree with this statement of Rush as a whole. Their early stuff was fabulous, but then in the 80s they, along with sooo many others, got caught up in the synth stuff (eeewwww). But their recent stuff is back to the early style. They've produced so much good stuff that I can forgive them for their 80s debaucles. I mean, c'mon, has anyone here heard "I Think I'm Going Bald"? . . . . terrible

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I've enver heard a distorted tone as thin and whiny as Reggie (sp) Wooten. If you see the Wooten Brothers you'll have fun, and they all have chops to spare, but he plays this Kramer into a Peavey practice amp and he either uses a broken speaker or some sort of rig with bumblebees in a tin can for his distortion. Amazing.

I Had one of those Peavey Backstage amps for a while, utter crap. Reggie has a ton of uniqueness in his playing and chops to spare, but his rig sucks. He had a rack box just sitting on top of the peavey, and one time actually managed to pull it off the top of the amp and disconnect himself. Dude, spend 30$ for a rack case! It was funny to contrast that to Victor, who had two full racks of the bass rig from hell.

Also, Frank Zappa had chops, but that "fuzz into the board" tone on much of his stuff is terrible.

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i'm gonna disagree w/ BOTH of y'all on alex lifeson;

his tone is good to great on ALL the 70's stuff,

but when he switched to stratoids and soilid state amps

sometime after "signals", his tone got sucky. i lost interest

around then, but i noticed that his tone on the

"rush in rio" dvd is good, tho.

When Alex went to the GK amps is where it went horribly wrong...he has better tone now than he has had in a long time. Those H&K amps are pretty kickass.

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That buzzy ring mod crap that pops up in the middle of Paranoid is pretty bad LOL. But much like the sizzle of the Beatles' Revolution, I wouldn't want it coming out of my amp, but for the purposes of the recording it adds a timeless signature.

I dunno, I like the tones on Painkiller. The solos are searing.

...and sucked up 'til his switch to marshalls and mesas

on "heaven & hell". i lost interest after "mob rules'.

Around the same time, Geezer's recorded bass tone became just about perfect, I've recently noticed.

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I like John Scofield's musicality and melodic improvisation, but I don't like his distorted sound at all.

Brooks? Enlighten me.

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Other than Cinamon Girl... pretty much everything from Neil Young....

Yeah, I have to agree...although it's sort of his trademark sound, so it actually works for him. After 30 + years of it, I figure that sound he gets HAS to be on purpose. I think Neil makes it sound like that to draw attention away from his voice :)

Don't get me wrong, I LIKE Neil Young and anyone else with the balls to be that original.

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Does the lead tone on Sympathy For The Devil annoy anyone? Maybe it's so crappy it's good... :):)

+1, LOL

But the worst ever? Rare Earth Live...the solo in "Get Ready" was (I hope) an excellent joke at the time. Of course, the guy did not even know how to play at all, so the playing actually distracted from the guitar's tone.

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I mean, c'mon, has anyone here heard "I Think I'm Going Bald"?  . . . . terrible

LOL.... that is actually one of my favorite Rush tunes..... I am old enough (and fortunate enough) to have seen them on the "Farewell To Kings" tour, at Warner Theater in DC. What was so cool about that was that obviously Geddy had just discover the mini moog or whatever it was he used. The first half of the concert, the single moog stood on a stand for the parts from the album. They took a brief intermission, the keyboard was removed, and they came out and played all the early stuff.

BTW... That cut is from 1975, not the 80's

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Three pages and no mention of any Motley Crue album?

Tsk Tsk

LOL Lockbody.....

I mentioned Motley Crue in the "Good tone" thread *Ducks for cover* :)

As a kid I wanted that sound that Mick Mars got. Too Fast for Love and Shout at the Devil were benchmarks for my desired tone.

Later on Girls, Girls, Girls and then Dr. Feelgood also had some great guitar tone on them.

Nowadays I covet Nuno Bettencourts tone. :)

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The distorted sound on Jeff Beck's "Blow by Blow" sounds crap to me. I am a big fan of Steve Lukather's sound, but on Toto's "Turn Back" and even worse on "Fahrenheit" I don't like it at all. When Jimmy Page plays live from 80's on...

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Shout at the Devil has a great guitar tone IMHO. Particularly the rhythm stuff.

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