In your mind, is there such a thing as a default electric guitar sound?

Monson

Monson

Sonic Automatist
All this talk of bird poop and parsley got me thinking.. Some moons ago I got myself a Fender amp, which led me to investigating other Fender amps, and Fender stuff in general, I guess, including amp sims. I realized this was actually my point of departure when I started playing guitar (Strat copies and red knob Fenders), and a lot of the players I listened to back then used Fender amps, and often Fender guitars too. Then there's been other stuff too, yada yada, but here I am full circle in a way. Like I've eaten exotic dishes for years and now I'm back in my ma's kitchen.

Anyway, if I say 'electric guitar', what kind of sound does that immediately make you think of? Like a Les Paul into a Marshall half-stack, a Telecaster and a Princeton, a Casino or a Ric and an AC30? What kind of sound do you have in mind, and would that be your starting point for playing live or recording as well?
 
Kinda depends on the genre.
Of course you can use anything for anything but this is what automatically comes to my mind.
Rock-Strat or LP into Marshall
R&B, funk, country-Tele or Strat into Fender
Brit pop Brit rock-whatever into a Vox
Jazz-hollowbody, semi, or Tele into Fender or a clean solid state amp
 
No but an interesting question is when someone says, 'electric guitar sound', what's the first song that comes to mind?

mine's the moment right after Hendrix says, ohhh foxy lady and rips into it.
 
I owned a Hiwatt many many years ago. It was too loud to be of use for any gig I might do but that was the benchmark clean for me. I've always loved Toy Caldwell's Les Paul tone. Knopfler and Jimi Vaughn come to mind too...
 
Over all the years I have a sound I start with now and it’s been that same sound for 6 years. It’s a mixture I have found at the volume level I like to play at. It’s good for a room with 10 or 15 people 20x 30 feet. Any louder and more eq’ing is needed to find it again. It doesn’t sty the same by just turning up the volume.

My amp is vanilla and I use pedals to mimic tones I like. Like the rhythm part in Cliffs of Dover, the lead part in the song Gravity AC/DC rhythm parts. The song 316. Gary Clark’s version of Third Stone and Bright Lights. In the end I’m really satisfied with it, have a lot of fun and can just get lost while playing.
 
If you say 'electric guitar,' I don't immediately think of a sound. It's too general.

If you say, "Joe Pass," I have a general idea of the guitar sound in my head, but no knowledge about the gear. If you say, "AC/DC," I have an idea about the guitar sounds and a general idea about the gear, SG, Gretsch, Marshall. If you say, "Robbie Robertson," I have an idea about the guitar sound in my head, and I know he played Strat's, but I don't know what amps he preferred to use.

When I played out, the few covers we played, I never tired to sound like the guitars in the original band. I just tried my best to get a good sound with the gear I owned. Pretty quickly, I learned that my 15 watt, VAC Hayseed head into 112 w/Celestion Alnico Blue cut through better than anything else. So, I started using that amp and cab exclusively with various guitars.
 
Way too many great sounds to have just one in my head.

David Gilmour - Comfortably Numb solo
Gary Moore - Messiah Will Come Again
AC/DC - the combination of lead and rhythm
Nile Rodgers - take your pick
Loads more.

Similar to @jrockbridge though, as a pub cover band guitarist, for simplicity, I found an amp around 1996 (Trace Elliot Super Tramp combo) that gave me a good clean, crunch and dirt sounds in one package and that has been the foundation of my rig/sound ever since. I've regularly played guitar straight into amp, leave me alone, but recently been working to add effects to it without getting into a tap dancing nightmare.
 
Some of the responses here have me wondering if there's a need to clarify, are we talking about our ideal electric guitar sound, e.g.: if we have a notion of an ideal or at least preferred electric guitar tone OR was the question just a basic starting tone?

My answer doesn't change, but I know I think of starting with a good clean tone. I also know that for some people, their "clean" tone is really something on the edge of breaking up or using the guitar's volume to dial back a dirty tone...which are both valid and cool sounding.

But again, there's too many sounds to default to or on one, not that some players don't. But I've always loved Andy Summers' sound, which is light years away from Brian May's tone, which is closer to (yet nowhere near the same as) Jeff Beck's tone. And we all know how the player changes the tone. Lukather, Nugent, and countless others have talked about hanging out with Eddie VH and getting to play through his gear right after him, but then it not sounding at all like him. And Beck is good example of someone who's sound evolved over the years, while Brian dialed it in half a century ago and it's still what he's using today.

Then there's the generational thing. Folks that grew up on '70s guitar-based music most likely have a different notion than those that grew up in the '80s. And in the '80s you had the clean chorused & compressed tone with delay/reverb or the various shreddy tones. Of course there's a bunch of stuff in between. Country has based guitar sounds primarily on the Tele, but Brent was featured on so many big tunes playing a guitar that was only really a Tele in shape.

I think the songs themselves can dictate the sounds a player would go for. And even then, many writer guitarists just play one sound throughout many of their tunes. Sometimes those sounds get tweaked in the studio, but live it's often the same basic tone for most songs. We also know that the tone can inspire one to write a different tune than that inspired by another tone. Even trying a new tone might make the writer or band approach a song differently than they'd've ever expected.

Regardless, it's a fascinating question and folks are posting things that I can hear in my head. I know it's subjective as hell, but there aren't many other instruments capable of covering as much tonal and stylistic sounds as guitar. As such, the guitar is one of the coolest instruments ever.
 
My first impulse was to say, "no," but the fact that I'm always sort of reaching for a similar sound whatever amp or guitar I'm playing says otherwise.

So there's that sound, then there's the "clean" sound. So two. :grin:
 
It's weird as I listen to so many different genres and artists with wildlly different tones, but say if I have a gig and need to use whatever amp is available in terms of backline - give me a Marshall JCM800 or something similar and I plug in a Strat (or Superstrat, depending on the genre I'm doing), a drive pedal and a delay and I'm very happy. With that setup I can pull off pretty much anything and it will sound great.
 
Dogsinplastic said:
Some of the responses here have me wondering if there's a need to clarify, are we talking about our ideal electric guitar sound, e.g.: if we have a notion of an ideal or at least preferred electric guitar tone OR was the question just a basic starting tone?

My answer doesn't change, but I know I think of starting with a good clean tone. I also know that for some people, their "clean" tone is really something on the edge of breaking up or using the guitar's volume to dial back a dirty tone...which are both valid and cool sounding.

But again, there's too many sounds to default to or on one, not that some players don't. But I've always loved Andy Summers' sound, which is light years away from Brian May's tone, which is closer to (yet nowhere near the same as) Jeff Beck's tone. And we all know how the player changes the tone. Lukather, Nugent, and countless others have talked about hanging out with Eddie VH and getting to play through his gear right after him, but then it not sounding at all like him. And Beck is good example of someone who's sound evolved over the years, while Brian dialed it in half a century ago and it's still what he's using today.

Then there's the generational thing. Folks that grew up on '70s guitar-based music most likely have a different notion than those that grew up in the '80s. And in the '80s you had the clean chorused & compressed tone with delay/reverb or the various shreddy tones. Of course there's a bunch of stuff in between. Country has based guitar sounds primarily on the Tele, but Brent was featured on so many big tunes playing a guitar that was only really a Tele in shape.

I think the songs themselves can dictate the sounds a player would go for. And even then, many writer guitarists just play one sound throughout many of their tunes. Sometimes those sounds get tweaked in the studio, but live it's often the same basic tone for most songs. We also know that the tone can inspire one to write a different tune than that inspired by another tone. Even trying a new tone might make the writer or band approach a song differently than they'd've ever expected.

Regardless, it's a fascinating question and folks are posting things that I can hear in my head. I know it's subjective as hell, but there aren't many other instruments capable of covering as much tonal and stylistic sounds as guitar. As such, the guitar is one of the coolest instruments ever.
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Great post! I guess I was in a way thinking of an ideal tone, as an abstract thing that can vary from person to person, like a point of reference. Or as in "What exactly does meat and potatoes mean to you?" Like we all grew up somewhere, and everyone else has an accent, if you know what I mean. A kind of sound where you feel at home, as a player and/or as a listener. But that could be a basic starting tone as well, or a desired starting tone, everything at noon and then adjust and explore from there.

When I was talking about the Fender-Fender thing, it was like "Ok, this is like 'normal' to me!". A Les Paul into a Vox is lovely too, but as in a certain spice that is different from 'normal'. Plugging into an Orange is also interesting, like yet another slightly exotic spice. The middle position of a Duesenberg kind of reminds me of something familiar I've heard and tried a thousand times, and yet it's a bit different, and not exactly my 'default'.
 
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