What makes tone warm vs. cold, sterile and metallic?

[AlsoRan]

As I stated in the title, what makes a tone "warm" as opposed to metallic and sterile?

[Doctor Jeff]

This is a warm and mellow guitar tone...



This is cold and Metallic guitar tone...



Hope that answers your question...

[fws6]

Me !

[AlsoRan]

This is a warm and mellow guitar tone...



This is cold and Metallic guitar tone...



Hope that answers your question...

Oh, the women they used to put on album covers. They were the subject of many boyhood love affairs.

And, James Hetfield needs to tighten up those arms in the gym if he wants to keep looking tough!

[GNAPPI]

Warm=Gibson Tal Farlow

Cold and metallic= Strat.

:-)

Seriously I think most metallic sounding gits can be toned down with EQ and judicious use of a multi effect pedal.

The thing pedals cannot do for me is play right under my hands and arms.

[mr. beaumont]

Can somebody post a "cold" guitar tone?

I think "warm" is one of the most useless tone words ever coined. For most people, warm just means "I like it."

[hans halmackenreuter]

I don't know what people mean if they say, that something sounds warm and it gets even worse if people say it is more musical sounding.

[BigDaddyLoveHandles]

Fender Tweed versus JC-120?

[goldenwave77]

I think it has to be overtones.

Strats or other solid bodies have fewer of them, I think. (I'd actually like to see an oscilloscope rendering to show this.) BUT solid bodies "cut through" maybe better in a mix, because of this, I think.

Also, I think that a less rich tone is sometimes easier to use when trying to sound things out on my instrument...maybe I'm strange but sometimes I really like an unamplified solid body tone....it's kind of one tone--mostly---and it seems easier to hear pitches, at least to me. Probably more of the fundamental pitch is sounding.

Also, the other overtones seem to die off at different rates...which can kind of muddy things.

A Hammond B3 is warm but less nuanced than a grand piano say....the Hammond is a very artificial, but very pleasing tone.... a Farfisa electric organ, or a Fender Rhodes piano is even more towards the "monotone" spectrum (if I'm right above), but less warm to me.

Any sound engineers here?!....I'm talking through my hat here....what I'm saying is plausible, but I have no idea if it's right.

[vernon]

​eq

[customxke]

One man's "warm" is another man's "muddy".
One man's "sterile and metallic" is another man's "bright".

It's all in the marketing.

[Greentone]

Warm traditionally means 2nd order distortion, cold means 3rd order. Even in the clean, linear range, tubes have some 2nd order, transistors have 3rd order. 3rd order sounds less harmonically pleasing.

[lawson-stone]

Can somebody post a "cold" guitar tone?

I think "warm" is one of the most useless tone words ever coined. For most people, warm just means "I like it."

I've actually asked previously about how we develop some strictly descriptive terms about tone that (a) aren't value-laden and (b) aren't historically referenced (Wes like, you know?) or (c) or equipment oriented "you know, a 175 through a polytone". What are the actual musical descriptors for the timbre and quality of tone in jazz guitar playing?

I think people use "cold" or "Sterile" in two ways... at least maybe I do. One is a very dry, reverb-less sound that lacks sustain. The other might be a kind of jangly, screw-driver-in-the-ear shrillness.

The wave of the note might be revealing? Is the attack sharp, a line straight up, or does it go up more softly? Does it stay level then fall off? How does it decay? The EQ curve also might be involved.

Then again, at one time I thought Johnny Smith's playing was "sterile" because it seemed too cut-and-dried. But then I recovered from that error!

[lawson-stone]

Warm traditionally means 2nd order distortion, cold means 3rd order. Even in the clean, linear range, tubes have some 2nd order, transistors have 3rd order. 3rd order sounds less harmonically pleasing.

My (late, departed) brother was an extreme audiophile and he referred to "even order harmonics" and "odd order harmonics," stating that tubes generally produced even-order harmonics, solid-state tends to produce odd-order harmonics, hence the tubes sounded "warmer."

I never did the research to know if he was just sh**ting me, you know, but it stayed with me.

[mr. beaumont]

Goodness, I'm not smart enough to understand all of that. I'll stick with "i like it" and "I don't."

[joe2758]

Can somebody post a "cold" guitar tone?

I think "warm" is one of the most useless tone words ever coined. For most people, warm just means "I like it."

I think of cold as the sound that comes from a lot of "acoustic electric" flat tops, especially electric classicals. cold and metallic (usually, imo, ymmv, etc etc)

[joe2758]

Warm=Gibson Tal Farlow

Cold and metallic= Strat.

:-)

Seriously I think most metallic sounding gits can be toned down with EQ and judicious use of a multi effect pedal.

The thing pedals cannot do for me is play right under my hands and arms.

good examples. I would say a good funk tone is "cold" rings true to me

edit: imo, ymmv

[BigDaddyLoveHandles]

I think of cold as the sound that comes from a lot of "acoustic electric" flat tops, especially electric classicals. cold and metallic (usually, imo, ymmv, etc etc)

Are you talking about piezo pickups? I put them in a separate category. Not my cuppa tea.

[joe2758]

hey I don't know about piezo pickups but here's some vids to show what I meant:

Here's what I meant by cold in a bad way. yeah sure, his playing doesn't help.

cold in a good way.

anyway who knows I'm just talking out my ass

[AlsoRan]

I never considered that there was a disagreement on what "warm" sound like.

You also reminded me that when I first sampled my Marshall JVM410C, I hated the sound. It was what I would call sterile and cold, which sounds to me like a mono AM radio station to me.

A few years later, a salesman showed me that I needed to let the tubes warm up, and to crank on the channel volume while dialing back on the master volume. Now, the sound was full and much "warmer," like an FM radio station.

I also was thinking that adding more bass and making sure the treble is not "buzzy" or "fizzy" would make a tone more "warm."

In a current thread, someone described there Epiphone Casino as not sounding warm. Can a guitar sound "cold" instead of warm? How about an amp?

I was also thinking that adding more bass helps "warm up" tone.

"Too much going on in this world..."

[Greentone]

Here is a good tutorial that explains why Lawson's brother was correct.

[Jabberwocky]

Broad fundamental tone with abundance of second order harmonics and timbre that only good wood imparts to the tone.

[oldane]

Warm traditionally means 2nd order distortion, cold means 3rd order. Even in the clean, linear range, tubes have some 2nd order, transistors have 3rd order. 3rd order sounds less harmonically pleasing.

A very good definition. Now we only need to work towards a consensus about it .... ;-)

[joe2758]

[Nate Miller]

I've been working with my sound a lot this spring and I found that for me, the "thinner" or "metallic" tone comes from a weaker signal and not enough low mid or bass in the tone adjustments.

"warm" is the presence of mids and a strong low end, but enough treble so as not to be muddy

now keep in mind that I am going to have my amps set so that I don't distort, so the definition Greentone gave, which is a good qualitative description, I don't think can work for me and my "stuck in the 50s" sound