You probably don’t call your local music shop, “the guitar store.” They sell basses, amplifiers, drums, and sheet music too. “The music store,” might be more appropriate. Or the actual name of the store. But for me, it’s the guitar store. I’m a guitar player. And exactly three years after I got my first electric guitar, which is four years after I got my first acoustic guitar, my father has agreed to buy me a better amplifier. My playing has progressed. I’ve been practicing almost every night on a smoky club combo that we received from a family friend for free—it was a step up from my first practice amp. I have a few pedals to mess around with that help change my sound so things get sonically interesting, but it’s time to take things to the next level. For a guitar player on the verge of seventeen, that means only one thing.
I’ve seen these amplifiers in the back lines of almost every artist and band that I know. They’re tall, split up into segments: the head, then two larger cabinets. There are usually multiples, neatly stacked next to each other creating a wall of sound. At least in my mind. I’ve never actually stood in front of that many amplifiers to hear what it might sound like.
My guess is loud. Very loud.
And I’m really into tone. It’s a catch-all term for the unique voice that every guitar player on the radio seems to have. You only need to hear a few notes before you know who’s playing. But there are so many variables. Guitars, pedals, amps, strings, picks, humidity… one step at a time. I’ve got a few of those things dialed in. Or do I? I don’t know. I don’t think I’ll ever stop experimenting.
We pick a day and head over to the guitar store. But not our usual one. In fact, I don’t know why we chose this one. Maybe they’re having a sale. Actually, they have to be having a sale. We get close, but it’s hard to find the entrance. The building is sitting in between a fork in the road. We pass it on the left, head for the nearest u-turn, and make our way back. We swing around once more, and finally pull in the driveway.
It’s almost night time and the store’s neon sign is beaming. It’s a triangular shaped building too, kind of cool. We walk up the cement steps and before we can get a few feet into the store, we’re greeted by a salesperson. We mean business. I have the old man with me this time. I don’t think I’d have two legs to stand on otherwise. Just another kid looking for a pack of guitar strings and picks—lost of picks. But it never stopped me from playing through thousands of dollars of gear, looking for something, I don’t know what. Comparing and contrasting this to that. Does something twice as expensive necessarily mean twice as much tone? What does something better by a factor of two equate to in terms of tone? What is a unit of tone?
I trick myself into measuring all of the parameters. The amp I think I have been looking for has a plexiglass panel, and was made in 1968, or maybe 1969. A bunch of people swear by it. I haven’t figured out the complexities of guitar loudspeakers yet, so we’ll just have to consider “the amp” as a single unit consisting of both the head and the cabinets. I’m not looking for a used amp, a vintage amp, but as far as I know, I wouldn’t be able to find one anyway. Who would trade in the holy grail for some modern replica? The salesperson immediately picks up on our vibe and whisks us into a special room with modern replicas. It’s a demo room with glass panels from floor to ceiling. It’s not soundproof, but it’s good enough. I sit on a stool, waiting for a guitar and cable. I ask for a similar guitar to the one I have at home, so it’s apples-to-apples. I’m all set up. I start strumming my first chord and it’s a full on sales pitch, but this one is different. This time, while I’m playing the amp, the salesperson actually turns it up! I start to hear a type of distortion that’s referred to as glassy. This just may be because this amp is powered with glass tubes, but it fits the sound. I instantly hear this amazing tone. It’s not the one I think I’m looking for, but wait… there’s more to this amp’s bag of tricks.
There are push buttons that engage different modes of operation. And guess what! They have a mode of operation that corresponds to the 1968, or maybe 1969 model. This is the one! I set up the push buttons in the right configuration, and start wailing—in my own way. It still sounds like the glassy tone I previously heard, but this has to be what I’m looking for. I mean, it’s the same company, their replica has to be accurate. But there’s one more thing… I read in a magazine that one of my favorite artists used something called a variable transformer to turn the mains voltage down so they can turn their amp up. Turning your amp up is considered a requirement for getting the best tone. I was playing at a pretty loud volume, I didn’t think I wanted to go any further, but I had done my research. A few companies were making power attenuators that you could insert at the output of the amplifier, before the speakers, and really crank it without hurting your ear drums. I quickly spotted the model that the same company that made the amp had available, and it was in the shop! I paused for a moment and discussed my research with our salesperson, then asked if I could play the amp with the attenuator. He laughed and said, “no, what are you kid dangerous or something? I can’t do that, you’ll blow up the amp.” I couldn’t believe it. They were selling a product that I could not try, even on an amp that I was probably going purchase. And I really wanted to try this thing. I mean, it was all about the tone, and this could be the last element in a line of carefully chosen elements that added up to tonal nirvana. Months of research consisting of countless guitar magazine articles and websites browsed through America Online. Information pieced together scouring forum posts, Yahoo! GoeCities websites with way too much character, conversations with employees at other guitar stores. In fact, all of the guitar stores in the area where I lived. I hit every last one.
I brush it off, and we decide to purchase the amp. All in all, it was relatively quick. I realize I spend way more time in guitar stores when I’m not buying something. While we’re finalizing the sale, they start wheeling out the half-stack to our car. It’s called that because a full stack consists of two cabinets, we only bought one. On the ride home I can hardly speak. My dad finds a classic rock station and turns it up. Of course, I strum a few chords before going to bed that night. It won’t be long before the next-door neighbor requests quiet hours.
There is a certain amount of excitement that I still get when I go into a guitar store. I don’t think that will ever fade. It’s a combination of limitless possibilities, mixed with an environment that really isn’t conducive to exploration, guided by a north star vision that one day I’ll be able to walk out with exactly what I want—whatever that is. I would eventually go to a hardware store and buy a variable attenuator, just as my idol did, and hook it up to my modern replica. The difference being that my modern amp was designed with enough gain to achieve what I was looking for, but I didn’t realize that. I would end up starving this amp for power, and it would sound relatively bad. But not to me. From my perspective, I was willing to hear past the abnormality of a high-gain amp that was not functioning correctly, and believe that I had achieved tonal nirvana.
It took me a long time to come around, and when I did, I found one of my passions. Recorded sound, specifically recorded guitar tone, is infinitely interesting to me. And the mythology that we build around our favorite recordings only adds to the allure. Every guitar player in every genre has at least one story that they read or heard about where a favorite artist had some insane configuration of gear that enabled their recorded tone—which can never be re-created.
Well, it’s a new millennium, and I’m here to tell you that with the advent of digital signal processing, we’re fast approaching the point where gear that once handled guitar signals as electrical current, can be accurately reproduced in the digital domain, and easily shared for all to enjoy. With some know-how and a good ear, you can model almost any phenomenon, from aging batteries to poorly biased transistors, to frequency doublers and beyond. It’s a quest for tone that will likely never end, but if I can bring that kid hooking up their modern amp to an attenuator just a little bit closer to the tone they were looking for, then I’ve achieved my goal. Maybe I am kid dangerous after all.
Thanks for reading! I write software for musicians, including an application that captures the sound of vintage guitar amplifiers and effects, you can find it all here!
https://themusicologygroup.com