Want to be a better guitarist...NO PEDALS PLEASE!

[lgking]

Some of the best guitar tones came from guys who just plugged straight into their amps. They say the tone is in the fingers. Want to be a better guitarist...play with no peddals, as they will inhibit your ability to develop your own sound.

Albert Collins just plugs straight into a Twin Reverb:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihvvf1R_vWo

Freddie King straight into a Twin Reverb:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eLw0Qf4XNY&feature=related

Mike Bloomfield live at the Fillmore West straight into 2 Twin Reverbs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXnI4AN0TiY

 

[shioks76]

While theres something cool and sexy going straight from guitar to amp, pedals will allow you to create and do so much more. I feel that the effective and musical use of pedals is a skill in itself. Of course you gotta learn how to play the guitar first.

fuzz and wah - jimi hendrix

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHnyvmYnG5s&feature=fvst

ebow and delay - u2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmSd...en u should get what im trying to say by now.

 

[lgking]

I hear what you are saying, and for guys that really do have chops and tone, the addition of effects can be valid. But I know too many players that if you were to take their effects away...they would sound like they had hardly any skills at all.

It's more like a challenge...'think you are any good, let's hear what you sound like with no effects'

Real tone is in the fingers.

 

[djanggo]

i have known some guitarist who plays good without pedals effect,clean tone..but very bad playing with effects settings and cant play clean.....that is why some of us can play good at home but when at the jamming studios with very loud speakers with effects,you find it difficult to play clean...best practise of all,jamming in the studios often with a band is the best...check our tone sound in the mix is better than just playing by yourself...and setting the pedal effects need experience too...train your ears to listen to your guitar sound and tone in a band while jamming....playing in a band often helps us to play with better timing and team player....should train both playing with and without effects.

 

[subversion]

pedals were there to re-create the sought-after/preferred tones coming from a guitar-amp set up. i've always believed in a straight-through plug in & my set-up had been this way since i've acquired the amps i needed. on some days though, it's ear training- using pedals to re-create that tone i could have easily acquired from my straight-through set up. more importantly, the pedal applications don't hamper my techniques & the discipline to play. if you let pedals compromise your playing capacity, it means that you are distracted by tone acquisition.

 

[Godspeed64]

A little too idealistic IMO.

As a guitarist I see it as a responsibility to do what the music requires. If it means that I have to tap dance with my pedals throughout a song even, it is my job to see to it.

Don't think of it as "if you were to take their effects away...they would sound like they had hardly any skills at all". Just know that there is a difference between being a guitarist and being a musician - a great guitarist might not be a good musician and a solid musician might not be a great guitarist.

 

[djanggo]

true....a good musician makes money playing music...a guitarist who are not a good musician wont go nowhere...bedroom shredder maybe.....but you can be both....

A little too idealistic IMO.

As a guitarist I see it as a responsibility to do what the music requires. If it means that I have to tap dance with my pedals throughout a song even, it is my job to see to it.

Don't think of it as "if you were to take their effects away...they would sound like they had hardly any skills at all". Just know that there is a difference between being a guitarist and being a musician - a great guitarist might not be a good musician and a solid musician might not be a great guitarist.

 

[lgking]

If you are on stage several nights a week and your set-list has lots of 'covers', by all means you want to replecate that sound. But the video examples I give are from an era just before people discovered they could modify their sounds through technology (or the technology was there, but they choose to stay true to their roots). And I really have such admiration for the tones they were able to deliver...but I'm an old-school traditionalist. You can see it in their faces how they are really diggin' down deep within themselves delivering strong emotion from their depths onto the guitar strings.

I use to go watch Bloomfield live at bars in San Francisco in the late 60's and early 70's, and he use to just knock me out with the sounds he would deliver.

 

[AEnimic]

THIS. 100% agreed. You may know all the notes on the fretboard and can even play it strung the other way around. But if you can neither create anything that is musical from that, then you are just a great guitarist....a guy who can handstand the longest doesn't make him the best breakdancer.

A little too idealistic IMO.

As a guitarist I see it as a responsibility to do what the music requires. If it means that I have to tap dance with my pedals throughout a song even, it is my job to see to it.

Don't think of it as "if you were to take their effects away...they would sound like they had hardly any skills at all". Just know that there is a difference between being a guitarist and being a musician - a great guitarist might not be a good musician and a solid musician might not be a great guitarist.

 

[lgking]

"pedals were there to re-create the sought-after/preferred tones coming from a guitar-amp set up. i've always believed in a straight-through plug in & my set-up had been this way since i've acquired the amps i needed. on some days though, it's ear training- using pedals to re-create that tone i could have easily acquired from my straight-through set up. more importantly, the pedal applications don't hamper my techniques & the discipline to play. if you let pedals compromise your playing capacity, it means that you are distracted by tone acquisition."

110% agree!​

 

[carboxymoron]

Very narrow-minded view of what it means to be a 'better guitarist', based on a certain range of genres or schools of thought. Not wrong, certainly every one of your examples have better chops than I can ever hope to achieve, but each of my effects are as important, or some more important than the guitar, which is just another piece of the puzzle that enables me to produce the sound that I want.

Blasphemy, I know.

 

[zesn]

Please,
I love my pedals. I use all of them.
Nobody says you have to take them away to be a good musician/guitarist.
One must know how to use his tools.

Guitar, amp, picks, strings, pickups, nuts, bridge, string trees, tuning pegs, and the list goes on..
All these are tools, sure, I buy them because I think they make me sound better.
But should the tools ever distract me from making my craft worthy.
I am a lousy workman.