NEVILLE’S ADVOCATE ...
Neville Marten on the guilt of using our eyes rather than our ears – or, indeed, rational thinking – when it comes to quality of tone…
Welcome to my monthly stream of (not necessarily connected or scientific) consciousness. I may have told you this before, but some years ago when I was driving to work, the DJ on the radio played a Rod Stewart track from one of the American Songbook albums. I forget what the song was, but every so often came these short acoustic guitar interjections. Instantly, I knew it was Clapton and, sure enough, at the end of the song my not-evensuspicions were confirmed – I knew it was Eric! So what was it about those few licks that gave the game away? It was an acoustic, so no signature Fender or Gibson tone, no obvious amp or pedal giveaways. It was his touch. His attack, where in the bar he placed the notes and, of course, the note choices themselves.
And think about this: if you were walking down a corridor and Jeff Beck was behind one of its closed doors playing the crappiest guitar through the most disgustingly bad amp on the planet, you’d know it was him. And while Jeff, like Eric, BB, Knopfler, Joe Walsh, Jimi and so many others prefer certain setups, behind all that is who they are, and how they choose to play, sound and express themselves.
If someone puts a guitar in my hands and plugs me into an amp, I’ll fiddle with pickup selectors, knobs, switches and everything else until I’ve got as near to my sound as I can. I think we’re all the same in that regard. Yet we constantly crave the ‘next best thing’.
Over on page 71 this issue Aynsley Lister waxes lyrical about his 1970s Strats. He confesses that everything is ‘wrong’ about them – polyester finish, large headstocks, bullet truss rods, the dreaded three-bolt neck, some with non-staggered polepieces, and that awful cast bridge with equally tone-sucking saddles. And yet he loves their tones and everything about them.
In 1976 I bought a brand-new black Strat that was my main guitar for years. As Aynsley says, all of the above was wrong. And yet I adored that guitar. It played great and I loved the fact that the Mazak bridge (Mazak or zamak, has a base of zinc plus elements of aluminium, magnesium and copper) did rob it of the ear-splitting high-end that afflicts some Strats. Indeed, I played Gary Moore’s Parisienne Walkways on it through my 4x10 tweed-covered Peavey Classic, which must say something!
More Cowbell!
Another thing that I personally don’t like is high-end guitar cables that announce ‘Enhanced high-end’ or some such. I don’t want an enhanced high-end. I like Jimi’s fat live tone and Eric’s live ‘Cream’ tone with their high-end-rob
