Least favorite jazz guitar tone

[Stringswinger]

My view is that a good player sounds great, even if their tone is not my ideal, while a poor player can have my favorite tone and still sound terrible.

That said, a thin, bright tone is my least favorite jazz guitar tone (and out of respect for players who are better than I am, I am not going to name any names here) while a fat, dark (think "Intercontinental" Joe Pass or "For Django" Joe Pass) jazz guitar tone is my favorite.

[sgcim]

That is interesting because I understand George Van Eps from a historical point of view, but to me he did not swing. No sense of real swing or jazz as such. His sound was ok on the guitar but sterile.

I should have been clearer about mentioning Van Eps as someone my CG guitar teacher approved of. It had nothing to do with his playing, because I never brought in a recording of Van Eps' playing, only some of his compositions, which my CG teacher loved.

I don't know anything about Van Eps' training, but he somehow learned how to compose solo guitar music that was on the level of some of the great CG composers. Howard Alden plays some of them.

[sgosnell]

Howard played with Van Eps for some time. That's how he got into the 7-string.

[John A.]

I think there's generally a problem with recording of guitar tones. I've seen Stern and Scofield a bunch of times and their tone works live. I'm not sure what's going on technically, but especially Stern's sound never seem to transfer to recorded media where it will sound much smaller, for want of a better word.
I've seen Lage once, he played the telecaster. Sounded lovely in the room. On recordings I don't think his telecaster sound projects at all, which does make it sound somewhat uninteresting.

Having seen both Stern and Sco live many times, I think Sco’s live tone has translated better to recordings than Stern’s, especially once he started using effects more sparingly. But I don’t think Stern’s has ever really been well captured. Somehow, his stereo setup (which doesn’t even use a chorus) sounds huge in the room, but small and over-chorused on recordings. I’ve been listening to Trip lately, and I think that’s the closest he’s gotten.

[vinlander]

Joe Pass Joy Spring has got to be the dumbest sounding guitar tone. I have nothing iconoclastic to say about the solo. But the way he plays the head is "Flud flud dud duuuudd". Absolutely hate the sound of those wound strings; they sound like a series of little farts. Very nicely recorded by the studio, so you can't blame them for the fact that the guitar sounds like it had been soaking in the tub for an hour before the session (Next to Tal's ES 350).

Basically you don't like the Thunk !