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Simply outstanding. That sharp slide down the neck at the end of his solo.....Wow! Try doing that 10 times in a row and nailing it every time. More difficult than it looks.
To my ears, that guitar and amp setup sounds superb. I need to play a Godin.
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05-26-2023 10:35 AM
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Maybe someday...if I live long enough.
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Joscho Stephan on a Musima 1653 (can be found for $250 to 300):
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I've posted this before, but it really belongs in this resurrected thread.
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If you want beautiful guitar tones, you play a guitar that produces beautiful tones through gear designed for the purpose in a setting where you can hear it. Lesser tones are quite a bit easier to achieve and may, or may not, serve your purpose.
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Face it, you can't buy skills and therefore you can't buy tone.
Some people are more occupied with gear than practice playing. For different reasons; some people make a living maintaining and trading gear, some are collectors, some just want a piece of pop culture for wall decoration etc.
But we all have a thing in common, pros and hobbyist share a passion for music and a dream about reaching out to make the world a better place. The music industry supports a vision, nourish the passion and keeps the dream alive.
Eventually you'll get good and then you realize that music doesn't care about the price tag. But it much depends on adjustment and maintenance. If the instrument can't be set up to meet your requirements it's either a poor instrument or your requirements are irrelevant. You wouldn't know the difference until you've put in the hours. In the meantime the music industry will prey upon your ignorance.
The guitar industry likes you to believe that the more bells and whistles the better the instrument. It's going to be a more expensive instrument for sure, but probably not better. The guitar industry got price strategies for different customer segments. The most expensive pieces are often targeting collectors, not working musicians. Some extremely expensive guitars are treated as objects of art and never gets played. Some working musicians are also collectors and occasionally plays a museum piece on stage to boost myth, desire and monetary value.
Last but not least, pop culture relies on image; style, fashion and vanity. Certain attributes are important, sometimes it could be a name on a headstock and sometimes someone's image is to play cheap guitars. (Kurt Cobain's guitars used to be very cheap. not anymore).Last edited by JCat; 05-27-2023 at 12:27 PM.
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That.s not the Baldwin in the audio, that's a flamenco nylon string.
Originally Posted by jads57
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Musician Tim Fitzgerald playing on an Epiphone Joe pass...
Throwback Tuesday to good times in Istanbul - YouTube
Tim Fitzgerald on Instagram: "Exploring the tune Mr. Walker with Tom Vaitsas on organ and @burakdurmandrums on drums
At Istanbul’s @gregorbythebadau jazz club ?"
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The great Brazilian guitarist Nelson Faria, with his signature guitar....a cheap model, manufactured in Korea by the Brazilian brand Condor...something like a Washburn j6 or Greg Bennett JZ...
At the moment...
also using a Tagima guitar...made in china...also cheap, quite generic...
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Many love to say gear doesn't matter. It's a kind of reverse snobbery to say it's all technique. Except it isn't. Wes on a tele may sound like Wes.. but it sounds like him on a tele. I would rather hear the Gibson. Unless something raw is being sought for artistic reasons, all the examples of great players on cheap guitars would be even better if the guitars were as great as the player. Originally Posted by JCat
And a first year player playing cowboy chords on a good flat top sounds really good. The better the guitar, the better it sounds. Go figure.
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Hey Spook, Originally Posted by Spook410
I didn't say that gear doesn't matter...But one has to know how to make use of it.
(on a side note: a flattop acoustic is never better than its setup. I've got a dirt cheap dreadnought that is as good as any.)
There are obvious differences between acoustic tone and amplified tone and there are obvious differences between acoustic guitars and solidbody electrics. In context, "cheap" is relative to use case and what's relevant or not depends on situation. For example If I need more headroom, maybe I need a bigger amp. If my amp doesn't got reverb, maybe I need a reverb pedal etc. These are things I can buy. Still the gear won't play the guitar for me.
Appearance is another factor we all can relate to. Guitars are beautiful. And yes, we can buy appearance. Whatever color and looks that make us feel good and support the image we want to portray. Relicing for example, is the act of ruining a finish to make the guitar appear old and worn. But it won't make that guitar a better instrument.
I just bought another speaker, not because i need it, but because I want it. Because of this speaker (and for no other reason), I have discovered songs that I have added to my repertoir. I'm very happy.
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Thank you for this !! Stellar ... Originally Posted by ccroft
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Ah! Freedom Jazz Dance!
Killer Trio!!
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Agree! I ran into it when I was thinking of buying a Godin to take on vacation where I didn't want to have an expensive guitar. Jazz Dance is something I've been playing for 5 decades. These guys kill it. In my book it's the best guitar version I've heard. Quite a happy coincidence for me. Originally Posted by xuoham
So I bought one. Kingpin cost $800 Canadian, new w/ case 5 years ago. It's been great on the road. I was lucky to find one of the last black ones, which is fun too. Same exact thing Sylvain's playing. Didn't let me play like him though :-(
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Readers of Consumer Reports magazine know that price and quality don't move in lockstep for just about any product. And, then, with guitars, there's the issue of taste -- Wes' tone aside, there isn't broad agreement on exactly what the goal is.
I don't know if most people would consider a $1600 (maybe a little more now) guitar to be cheap, but Jack Wilkins and Yotam Silberstein both played the Comins GCS-1 on gigs in NYC (Zinc Bar and Dizzy's, respectively).
Other than Wes, I've only heard one guy get his tone. And, it was an L5. So, maybe that undercuts the argument, but if you listen to Tres playing Vera Cruz, you won't think the guitar (Nelson Faria) sounds cheap. As an aside, check out Nico's bassline on that tune - it's astonishing, done with tapping, and there's a youtube video showing how he did it. Another aside: Nelson's youtube "show" involves interviewing and playing with giants of Brazilian music in his kitchen. It's great. One last aside: his book, Brazilian Guitar Styles, is the best instruction book I've ever used -- you can really learn how to play the grooves from this book.
Last edited by rpjazzguitar; 05-28-2023 at 09:28 PM.
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At the time of this recording, Nelson had a Fender telecaster with humbucker on the neck, which was the guitar used on this album....and an old Guild Starfire iii...his signature guitar made in korea is from a few years later! Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
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Also, because prices are so heavily colored by collectability, it's very difficult to sort out the question of price vs quality. There are a lot of very expensive guitars that aren't really better than a bunch of much cheaper ones by any reasonable measure of what constitutes a good guitar. So people can wind up thinking of $1500 guitar as "cheap" because the market will bear 3 times that for something almost the same which happens to be collectible (just because that's what the collectors are focused on). Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
I can think of two. The obvious one is Jimmy Ponder (who played an L5 with his thumb, and was almost a Wes copycat stylistically). The other one is a friend of mine who plays mainly a nylon string and one of the MIC variants of an Ibanez GB10. [He's not a "name" but he's well known in NYC jazz circles]. He mainly uses a somewhat idiosyncratic thumb and index finger right hand technique, and he can sound exactly like Wes at times (not just in the sense of playing like Wes, but actually sounding like him). When he plays the "cheap" GB10 it's uncanny. Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
Great sounding stuff. Thanks for posting. Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
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Thanks, good to know! Originally Posted by caue amaral
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I had a great Dave cliff album years ago that I listened to all the time - wonder where that is now....He's fab.
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I picked up this Dave Cliff CD recently, he gets a great sound out of that guitar. Originally Posted by Groyniad
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Very entertaining thread!
But if you listen with a good speaker or good headphones you'll notice something..... some of these performances have really crappy tone.
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I took a lesson with Lorne once and played that guitar when I was visiting Toronto. Originally Posted by BigToe
Believe me, there's no magic in the guitar. He sure does make it work for him though.
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