Do you like Joe Pass' playing and tone?

**jzucker** · 01-20-2014, 04:56 PM

just curious. This is a seminal moment in jazz guitar playing and tone IMO...

**Klatu** · 01-20-2014, 04:59 PM

His playing is the best I've ever heard. He's the standard by which all others are judged.

However, his tone is hit or miss for me. I like his tone in the two clips you've posted, but there have been many times where his tone has left me cold.

**jzucker** · 01-20-2014, 05:05 PM

i agree. I don't like the tone on the later efforts but i love most of the stuff he did on capital when he was using the 175. Some of that series was done on a fender. The tone on those was iffy but ridiculously good playing.

**disco~juice** · 01-20-2014, 05:07 PM

In this song Joe's tone is surprisingly good.

Great player, but his average tone is not that good.

Bad tone:

Good tone:

But, tone is taste.
Good playing is fact.

**mr. beaumont** · 01-20-2014, 05:07 PM

Top notch playing, inconsistently good tone...I'd go as far as to say Joe recorded with some of the best and worst tones in jazz guitar history.

**Ronstuff** · 01-20-2014, 05:10 PM

Wow that cut is just great!, I'm discovering that period of Joe's career.

**John A.** · 01-20-2014, 05:22 PM

That album? One of my favorite recordings of any genre, any artist. His playing, tone, everything, are perfect on that, and the album as a whole hangs together beautifully. Sometimes he got a thinner/brighter tone than that, which I don't find as pleasing. But he's may favorite chord/melody solo player overall.

John

**Jim Soloway** · 01-20-2014, 05:30 PM

I've always loved both his playing and tone from the Christmas album he did near the end of his life.

**kris** · 01-20-2014, 05:35 PM

I have a lot of Joe Pass CD's...He is a real jazz master!
Sound in this way is not so important...

**Toddep** · 01-20-2014, 05:48 PM

Great tone

**Loobs** · 01-20-2014, 05:50 PM

Tone is great. Playing is great. What's not to like?

**brad4d8** · 01-20-2014, 06:09 PM

Originally Posted by disco~juice

....But, tone is taste.
Good playing is fact.

Definitely. I like the acoustic type sound on Night and Day and Lush Life, thought that Django was a little muddy. Different ears, I guess.
Brad

**Loobs** · 01-20-2014, 06:42 PM

Good playing is fact? I'd say that's also subjective. You could argue that Kurt Cobain was a great guitarist.

**ecj** · 01-20-2014, 06:50 PM

Joe Pass is the man! In my opinion he and Wes are the two kings of classic jazz on the guitar.

It's ridiculous to think of all the different facets of the instrument that he mastered, and how innovative his solo guitar work was at the time.

I'm still not sure there's anyone who does bebop better on the instrument.

**Woody Sound** · 01-20-2014, 06:56 PM

**jzucker** · 01-20-2014, 07:56 PM

on many of those solo recordings with pablo, they just mic's his guitar. Their recording process for guitar was pretty funky. Still, those "virtuoso" recordings were unbelievable, particularly for the time period.

**AmundLauritzen** · 01-20-2014, 07:56 PM

Love that tone! For Django is probably the one album I have listened to the most after Farlows "The Swinging guitar of...".

On some other recordings he got that horrible "plonk" sound in his tone, like the tone breaks somehow.

**John A.** · 01-20-2014, 09:18 PM

Originally Posted by jzucker

on many of those solo recordings with pablo, they just mic's his guitar. Their recording process for guitar was pretty funky. Still, those "virtuoso" recordings were unbelievable, particularly for the time period.

He definitely had an un-gear-obsessed approach to his sound. I saw him not too long before he died, and he played without an amp plugged directly into the PA. For part of the set he had the volume down on all the way on the guitar, with just the guitar's acoustic sound (he was playing an Epi Joe Pass). So, yeah, his recordings could be funky, but that seems to be an honest reflection of his approach.

John

**disco~juice** · 01-21-2014, 02:35 AM

Originally Posted by Loobs

Good playing is fact? I'd say that's also subjective. You could argue that Kurt Cobain was a great guitarist.

Yes, but who can say Joe is not a good guitar player?
One way road!

**kris** · 01-21-2014, 03:11 AM

There are many guitrists with better tone/sound but they never be Joe Pass.

**Franz 1997** · 01-21-2014, 05:24 AM

Can't imagine anyone here not liking the playing.

Re tone- interesting the variance in sustain between the first example and the NHOP example, where the note sustains a lot. Like most respondents, I like the tone in these examples- but also JP has recorded with that brittle, 'broken' tone which can make listening almost painful.

I feel the same way about some of Jim Hall's recordings - in his classic album with Bill Evans, the playing is fabulous and sometimes quite fast, but the tone is bone-dry, with no sustain, and verges on 'scratchy'. A matter of taste, obviously.

I get the point that the classic 60s jazz guitar sound is about fast attack & little sustain, particularly on quaver runs, but when the note dies almost as soon as it's played, that can be hard to listen to in slow passages IMO.

**oldane** · 01-21-2014, 05:30 AM

Some of the worst Joe Pass tone I have heard (maybe apart from when he played his first ES175 acoustically like on the first Virtuoso record) was the tone he got from his Ibanez signature guitar. It had the one PU placed somewhere midways between where normal brigde and neck PUs would be placed. Rumours tells that Joe Pass didn't like that guitar very much himself but he was obliged to use it because of the endorsement deal.

On this clip he plays the custom ES175 he used late in his life. It had the PU placed closer to the neck than on a standard ES175 (like on an L4 or an L5), which IMHO contributes to the more sweet and spread sound we hear.

**mangotango** · 01-21-2014, 05:43 AM

Yes and Sometimes.

**cosmic gumbo** · 01-21-2014, 05:49 AM

I forgive a lot of guitarists for their tone if their playing transcends it. That includes Django, Pass, Grant Green, Jim Hall, detuned Mike Stern, Sco and his seasick chorus period, Les Paul's wet reverb, etc....

**jzucker** · 01-21-2014, 07:33 AM

Originally Posted by FrankLearns

wonderful, fantastic, outstanding ... I have heard many many Joe Pass performances that did not touch me, but this one I really loved - wonderful chemistry between the two musicians and so beautiful and lyrical ... and I agree that tone he had in that video was beautiful. What was that little amp he was using? I couldn't quite make it out on the video.

Thanks for sharing Armund!

looks and sounds like polytone. beautiful stuff. If you think this isn't gorgeous I'd wonder why you're playing jazz guitar.