I've been playing guitar since I was 14 (I just turned 71) and in the early years there were only a couple upper level guitar makers - Fender and Gibson and, to a lesser degree Gretsch. You were either a Fender guy or a Gibson guy, a Ford guy or a Chevy guy, Beatles or Rolling Stones, Triumph or Harley Davidson, etc. Those were simpler times for sure.. So many choices now... - Glen Parker
@@longsnapper5381 sshhh. Don't tell anyone. Then prices will keep going up. I wish no one every told anyone. Those old grecos, Orvilles, tokai are amazing. Some tokai and grecos are as good as anything else ive found. Sometimes the finish work is hit or miss but usually great
I'm a poor musician and brand is still very important. Most brands make budget friendly models but places like AMS and ZZounds are a poor musicians oasis. I've purchased every guitar in the last 5 years from ZZounds and can get mid range models that I can't afford to buy in one purchase for low monthly payments. Now I can get pretty much what I want without breaking me. As long as you have a bank account and income you can get something regardless of how bad your credit is.
Do brands matter? - To us as hobbyists - sometimes, but usually not if the ego is under control. - To the AUDIENCE: Nope. And it never has. They come to be entertained. Can you do that? Yes? Then it doesn't matter what name is on your headstocks or your amps/pedals.
I’m a mechanic by day and what you said at the end was exactly it. “It’s a tool”. In my day job nobody cares if I use a $1000 tool or a $10 as long as the car is fixed. The only one who cares is other mechanics. If it sounds good, and feels good play it!
Yeah... who tf could afford PRS back then. Probably the bands they got to work with. Everyone else was on their Ibanez with the world's skinniest knecks.
33:03 "they're all just tools man" - Rhett Shull I listened to an interview with David Gilmour recently. The interviewer asked him why he was selling off his most iconic guitars, and David's reply was almost the exact same words. Me, I'm a reborn guitarist, and the more I try different guitars, effects, amps etc, the more I'm prone to believe this too. In the last 3 or 4 years, the thing that has improved my "tone" the most, is practising, combined with constantly trying to learn new things, songs, licks, theory, etc, and how to play them better. I'm not saying that there aren't better tools, but that I believe the difference they make is not as much as the difference becoming a better player does.
Here to respond a year later, winner winner chicken dinner, without a doubt the number 1 thing which has improved my “tone” has been my level of play and implication of technique. Than again I probably shouldn’t be talking, I’ve been playing acoustic almost exclusively for twenty years lol. Cheers Mate.
I've played bass for 30 years. Owned lots of basses, now have 3. Ibanez SR 500, original one bought new in 94. Ibanez frettless musician and a Sigma mahogany acoustic. Had Fenders etc but stuck with these and made PU changes here and there. Freinds say Can't believe u kept an Ibanez over a Fender but to me it felt, sounded and played better. And yes a lot of your tone etc is in your hands, not all teky stuff. Cheers Ps, I have friends who have expensive guitars and and the biggest names and they are average players, it's what they wanted and that's fine, but you can't buy skill, talent and some practice.
I have not owned a TV for a decade and I recon I never will again. I got better things to do with my time, and if I want to watch something it will be something of my own choosing at a time of my choosing. TV is for those who have given up on life.
I appreciate the relaxed way Beato runs these things. More than once I've seen the guys hop up to go grab something and he doesn't tense up or panic, he just does what any of us would do, watch and wait. And, they are respectfully quick.
Also, Beano album was a Les Paul....Kind of an important piece of musical history - Les Paul through Overdriven Marshall... but whatever, I love hearing these guys talk.
Which one was the partscaster he assembled from a batch of '50s Strats he bought off Gruhn's? Late 80‘s was when the whole signature model came into existence, so that’s probably where Rhett was confused.
I confess that I have been a gear snob for many years of my life. I’ve had core PRS guitars, Suhr guitars, American fenders, Japanese fenders(which were way better and cheaper) the best of Ibanez, Kramer, etc. etc. A couple of weeks ago I was at one of my favorite music stores in North Georgia shout out to Bighams Music and Dalton! While I was there I was playing different guitars cause they always have interesting stuff and I saw this beautiful swamp ash guitar on the wall. I took it down and played it. It played flawlessly. The fretwork was awesome. The pickups were great. I knew it was a PRS because of the shape. I thought it was a re-issue of the American made swamp specials. I was wrong. It was an SE swamp ash special. I was floored I had been ignoring the SE guitars for so many years. I bought one and have been playing it ever since it is so much fun to play and the sounds that you get are phenomenal! So I guess I am no longer loyal to brand or manufacturing plant.
I never really associated PRS as a "metal" guitar brand. Before Tremonti i think the brand was known more for Carlos Santana, the complete opposite of a metal player. I associated PRS more as the snooty, wine drinking, i have money to burn crowd. Metal has always been considered "underground" so players wouldn't necessarily pursue a PRS as their first guitar, because economically they couldnt afford it. I dont know if you guys confused PRS with ESP?? ESP is most definitely a "metal" brand. You dont see many pop, country and jazz players playing ESPs. As for "NuMetal" the brand i associate the most with that generation is Ibanez, specifically their 7 strings, since all these new bands were playing downtuned music and really, Ibanez were the only game in town at that time that had a decent range of 7 strings.
Gear snobs should be subjected to a blindfold test on you tube so we can all have a laugh. Jeff Healey, who's life was a blindfold test, loved his Squire.
Eddys Vault he played in a way that fret work and neck edges being rounded didn’t matter that much. The difference between a great or mediocre guitar is mostly the work put into the neck. A great neck melds with your hand. Other than that it’s electronics that matter. The body and even neck wood aren’t THAT important. It’s how they’re worked.Actual wood species matters a lot more in drums believe it or not. Especially solid wood shells. But it even makes a big difference with drums made from plies.
I had the pleasure of meeting Jeff once at his bar in Toronto. He's easily the nicest and most down-to-Earth musician I've ever met in my life. He had that really cool lap-style of guitar playing that I think was unique to him. What a terrible loss it was when he was taken from us. RIP good buddy!
When I was about to graduate from my Squire Strat, I looked at the quality of the Fenders on the rack and decided to just keep the Squire and upgrade the pickups. The quality and tolerances of a Chinese made Squire is amazing. However, you have to be a guy who just doesn't care about the name on the headstock.
Awesome point. I just bought a tele vintage vibe. Put a Seymour hot rail in the bridge. Sounds good. Tuning keys are getting upgraded plus the saddles and ashtray bridge. I call it the super squire lol
its amazing how much a silly "water slide fender stratocaster decal " can make your own brain think your guitar is somehow better. squire makes some great guitars and with electronic uphgrades and good setups they can be main gigging guitars
Doing live production and actually loading in audio gear, and getting everything set up, you quickly learn to appreciate the quality behind certain brands. When you open a case full of mic and speaker cable, you appreciate it when it's Conquest cable or Whirlwind cable. You see Switchcraft connectors or Neutrik connecters and know that you're not going to have to dig a broken connector out of your microphone or pins out of your board later. You know the 10 stagehands marching over that cable aren't going to hurt it. You know the Crown amps are going to power up and not hiss and pop. Those Yamaha BR speakers might be ten years old but they're still solid. In some cases, brand loyalty is important because it means you're not going to have to dick around with stupid problems when you're on a schedule.
In the early 2000s I bought a Marshall jmp-1 pre amp second hand, and the master volume pot packed up so I phoned Marshall (I live in the UK), and ordered a new one, they sent it out for free! I fitted it and it worked fine, then it started cutting out they sent me a new transformer, but that didn't cure it so I took it to the factory, they do a repair service there, but the problem was intermittent and difficult to to diagnose, so I left it with them, they contacted me saying they couldn't find the fault so they would replace the circuit board for just the cost of labour!! Now the jmp-1 is made of several boards but they are manufactured under the Lean system as one board then that single board is broken up and soldered together to complete the unit , so I had a board with my name on it running through the Marshall factory under the Lean system, I rang them to see if it was ready, and asked can I have a factory tour? Course you can they said!! I went up there to pickup my preamp a very friendly guy took me and my mate round the factory, we bought t shirts etc and then I came to pay for my preamp repair, now this was a £500 preamp and they'd replaced all the electronics inside, they charged me £40 labour...just think about that... What a wonderful experience , I'm a dyed in the wool Marshall fan,
Im in the U.S. and I'm just a little jealous. Great story I have Jim Marshalls book "The Father of Loud". I've wanted to see the factory ever since. God bless and stay happy and safe.
Bryce Archer exactly. I have not listen those bands in years but in my days all tree used ibanez. System used iceman, but korn and limpbizkit used 7 strings.
I think they kinda lumped nu-metal with all Modern metal with that discussion. PRS and Mesa is basically Mark Tremonti and alot of those guys who are the faces of Modern Metal.
Its all in the fingers...True that.. Some people (top musicians) can make almost anything sound good, its timing, feel and musicality with a dash of mojo on top.
To try and hold on to the decades old conception of brand loyalty in music is to get suckered in by the marketing strategies of these often interchangeable international corporations for the sake of nostalgia and percieved "prestige."
Judging from a lot of music I'm hearing the last decade, bands are more obsessed with the production than they are about actual songwriting. Just my opinion.
You're not far out Matt. It's overdub vocals, meaningless guitar solos that are dropped in as infills and everything else that sounds like it's been put together on a laptop.
No, brand loyalty does not matter, but we as musicians tend to gravitate towards what we're comfortable with...over the years I've played music I tried many different things but have settled on a pretty consistent formula of Warmoth Strat style guitars with Gibson scale necks ans Seymour Duncan pickups as defining what works best for me...
yes. well done. that's exactly what I have done. I've been buying, playing and building electric guitars since 1974. My 2003, 24 fret, Gibson scale Strat is an emerald green ash Warmoth body with a 24 fret maple neck. Its in their customer pictures for Strats on line. Today, 2018, I'm building custom 24 fret, 24" scale Telecasters with Strat head stocks and humbuckers in the neck pup. The tone versatility and ease of play is great. And, I've been using a lot of Paulownia for less weight and its amazing grain and staining quality.
You guys may dig the guitar I JUST got, it's a made in Korea fender factory master builder chambered series telecaster but it's totally dressed up like a Les Paul custom with the Gibson scale and two badass Duncan humbuckers set neck through with smooth neck heel Tom bridge solid mahogany body and top chambered and it plays and sounds better than my dad's Les Paul custom 3 pick up so I love it !
I was always a Gibson guy, and a few years ago decided I was going to scale down musically and go all acoustic. While playing strictly acoustic music has actually been great I recently decided I wanted to add very light electric guitar elements back into the mix, and basically get an electric just for playing around on. Problem is that I sold off all my electric guitars. I wanted a new les paul but didn't want to pay for a Gibson, especially since it was mainly just to play around on at home. So I bought a $150 epiphone special, as far as I know, the bottom rung of the epiphone les paul line. This guitar is great. Right out of the gate I liked the fact that it's much lighter than my Gibsons were, and its beautiful. TV yellow, worn vintage looking finish, and the fingerboard looks really nice. But it also has a great sound, loaded with P90S. I can't actually remember ever having as much fun playing around on my Gibsons as I have already had kicking around on this guitar that cost literally a 10th what my Gibsons did when I bought them back in the mid and late 90s. Hats off to epiphone. I will never buy a high end guitar (at least not a new one) again. If there's any brand loyalty here, it would be for epiphone.
Rhett said it best when it comes to music gear: "they're just tools for a job." At the end of the day, the gear you pick is important, but what you do with that gear is more important.
I've always cared more about how a guitar plays and sounds than what's written on the headstock. The best guitar I ever played was a $500 Parker Fly Mojo and to this day I regret not buying it. It was on a shelf next to high end Gibson's and American Fenders, and it was the better guitar for me.
I went the opposite way with the Tube Screamer. There are so many clones, so many companies that make a "Tube Screamer", I actually just went with the original. I don't have days (weeks?) to try every TS on the market. If the Ibanez is worth cloning so many times, it's worth having on my board.
Couldn’t agree more. I watched about10 minutes of this video and felt like I was back in 10th grade.... daydreaming. I’ve been playing guitar for 42 years and hardly used anything but an overdrive and compression pedal through a Twin Reverb with a Strat and Tele. Simple and easy
When I was a kid we grew up reading liner notes on albums and then cassettes. Knowing what the big musicians were using meant a lot. For a long time it was Gibson, Fender, Marshall & a couple of others all around most of the time. It was easier to become brand loyal based on chasing the tones of the bigger artists. I never thought of Mesa as a "metal" amp. I guess because I heard that Prince used them. I don't know why they never capitalized on that fact. Even some big country artists used Mesa. They never capitalized on that either. Garth Brooks uses a PRS that Zack from Shinedown gave to him. Yeah having it all in a stomp box or on a computer takes away from being able to compare & truly hear the differences in amps and pedals. Most kids will never know what it's like to feel the rumble of a Marshall ripping your guts out or the smooth warmth of a Fender Twin. Most of today's production takes away from that because so much of the production sounds the same. It's all so compressed that it squeezes the life from the music.
When I think of Mesa Boogie sound, I still think almost exclusively of Carlos Santana in the mid/late 70's. Yeah, I know the Dual Rectifier sound is also very specific and associated with Mesa, but it still seems like "that other Mesa Boogie" to me. Also, have to love the Triple Rectifier. The new Mesa amp, now with 50% more rectifier!
I owned a dual rectifier for a while. It was honestly a very flexible amp that could yield some great classic rock tones. Yes it does metal great but it could do so much more. Now though when people want versatility its Axe FX or the Boss Katana or a Helix etc... The modelers have taken over.
I was told by a famous guitarist, which I won't name. That it doesn't matter what the brand of your guitar is, it matters that you can play it well. If it feels good to you then it will show in your play style. Don't be afraid of change, the guitar you love today may not be the same you love tomorrow.
When it comes to guitars, you need to like how it looks on you, howi it sounds to you, and how it feels to you. I have 3 Gibson LP's, a Fender Strat, a PRS, a Carvin, and a Godin. I started on a Strat but I shifted to the warmth of Gibson's humbuckers as my playing developed.
Brand loyalty really works if you have a pseudo endorsement or acknowledgment from the company. Prince had everything under the sun but rarely acknowledged brand endorsements.
I've had a Fillmore 50 1x12 combo since they shipped, so about 4 months in live settings. Sounds great in 50 and 25 watt mode. It's modeled on the Fender Deluxe Reverb circuit, a tweet circuit. Not a Plexi thing. Two channels of awesomeness. I also play a Mesa Mark V, which I almost NEVER use for metal (it’s an incredible blues and funk and country and classic rock amp)...brilliantly versatile but yeah, it kills it with high gain too. Was never a fan of the Recitifier...Mark V sounds nothing like the Rectifiers. I'm 48, for reference, I grew up seeing Lukather and Schon and Prince and Santana and Brad Gillis and such playing Mesas so the nu metal thing wasn't my influence with liking Mesas.
I'm really into Godin. I love the tech involved in their guitars, the second-to-none versatility that they offer, the top-notch quality coupled with down-to-Earth pricing and the fact that a lot of people don't know much about them adds a mystique for me.
A Godin Freeway Graphite was the only EMG loaded guitar i ever owned. Awesome quality for the money. I always wished they would reissue the Exit 22 with some upgrades.
Godin makes great guitars. I have one and I love it. Eastman, although it is a Chinese company, is probably my favorite brand. They make absolutely stellar instruments, and although not cheap, reasonably priced foe what you get.
Brands don't matter... it's what they do with their instruments that counts. For instance, Musicman (and Sterling) and PRS guitars have the best non-locking tremolo implementation out there in terms of tuning stability, give Floyd a run for it's money. This isn't so much a result of the trem, but the headstock, and those are considered Intellectual Property of each brand and can't be copied without permission (although the same basic principals can and have been replicated by other manufacturers). Likewise, only one brand does guitars with the classic Alnico Jazzmaster pickups: Fender. And only one brand doing guitars with Jumbo MFD pickups: G&L. The same can be said for Rickenbackers and their pickups. And because all of these require their specific routing, the most straightforward way to get into those tones is to buy a guitar of those brands.
You need to do a topic on the use of pedals while gigging live. I have friends who believe they sound great with their pedal boards with multiple effects and up close to the amp, it sounds good but when you go into the audience, the lets say distortion or overdrive sounds awful. And if you tell them not to play with a pedal or the pedal board fails they panic and end up can't play the gig without pedals.
I'm old enough to remember that back in the 60's and 70's that simply getting an accurate, detailed, clear, and balanced amplified signal was the most difficult task with any audio/music amplifier/preamplifier. Not to mention the weakest links in the signal chain, the microphones, pickups, and speakers. Those days are history, and the cost of developing and manufacturing a clean sounding, high headroom, quiet, balanced, and accurately detailed amplification circuit is a hundred times more economical then back when many of the names like Studer/Revox, Neve, Tandberg, Ampex, Crown, Maxell, BASF, Dolby, and DBX were some of the "brand names" that were essential to having a clean signal to work with.
For mass marketed guitars I am interested era and factory. Those 2 factors will determine the quality of any mass marketed guitar. Give me a guitar that was made while a company was financially sound (not cutting corners) from a factory that has a track record of excellent quality control.
First off, great video. I appreciate the content you create. It continues to help my understanding of music. For the subject at hand, I think brand loyalty is more associated with a player or a positive experience with music: great video, concert, recording, etc. Like many guitarist Jimi Hendrix’s influence transitioned into my first guitar, a strat. My Carlos Santana albums impacted my purchase of a PRS. A Dave Mathews concert led me to purchasing an acoustic guitar.
What you said about Jack Pearson and his Squire at the end of this Video says it all. It's all about the player. I love the Trevor Wilkinson guitars, the Vintage brand, because properly set up, they can be every bit as good or better as Fender or Gibson etc at a fraction of the price. That has led me to have loyalty to that brand.
I'm a old geezer (59). I was a loyal Gibson player. In 1972 I was 12 and my dad bought me a 1960 LP. I still have that and I also having a nice collection of the Golden year Gibson's that I bought in the 70's and what I inherited from my father. So I have the best of the McCarty era Gibson's. Since 2008 I have been a PRS player. I have a few but my main players are 2 SC245's. My 2014 is loaded with the stock 57/08's and my 2013 is loaded with a set of MojoTone Classic 59's. I also have a fixed bridge Tremonti and a Custom 24/Floyd. I'm just amazed at the quality instruments that Paul's crew builds. He should be so proud of his people. I took a tour of his Stevensville plant and that was great experience. You can tell everyone there took pride in what they were doing. PRS is really the best guitar made today!!!
Idk why but I love metal guitars. I do not play metal but they are pretty versatile imo. My Ibanez rg can get pretty much any tone I'm looking for and it's so damn comfortable.
Dual rectifiers came out in 1989 and predate nu-metal by half a decade. I think Rhett is confusing his own perception with the market's perception. John Petrucci has made Mesa the progressive rocker's choice of amp since 1992 from the TriAxis, rectifiers, Mark IIc+, roadking and everything since. It's a great video but I think the discussion gets muddled between brand loyalty of the average Joe, professional brand associations, personal perception and pre-endorsement deal era artists using whatever they needed to get the tones they wanted.
Chris Brooks Guitar could not agree more Chris. How do you not think of John Petrucci when you think of Mesa? Correct me if I’m wrong but he is the only Mesa artist ever to get a signature amp. I have a feeling a hell of a lot more Mesa amps have been sold over the years because of JP than because of Nu Metal. His signature Music Man guitars are the second highest selling signature guitars in the world behind only the Les Paul. The dude has a massively loyal following. When I think Mesa I think JP and Metallica. Not to mention that Ibanez had a huge fingerprint on Nu Metal. Sure, some guys were using PRS, but Ibanez was everywhere with the genre too.
@@BrickWilliamsGuitar It's crazy how Meshuggah and Foo FIghters both used the Dual Rec, so the typecasting isn't justified. I think at this point the JP series is so massive and diverse that they don't even feel like signature guitars at this point.
Actually, what “matters” is the human behind the mixing board, the production team, and the actual artist performing (time stamp 14:10). Gear in the right hands can sound great so long as it’s functional / playable. Brand bunnies can chase their $10,000 piece of gear, but a good artist can make a $150 piece of gear sound great. That’s a truth that will never change.
A good artist can also show you the true difference between a $300 guitar and a $2000 guitar. Average home player can't play the $300 guitar to its limits.
You are on point with this, but I think you can even go further. I am wondering what your opinion is on, DOES YOUR GUITAR AMP MATTER ANYMORE? Does the use of a large array of foot pedal effect boxes added to the technique of miking your amps to play through the PA system in a typical garage type rock band, make it irrelevant what guitar amp you are using? I am from the old school of playing in a rock band and feel that the unique sound of your specific guitar played through your specific amp is what gives you your unique sound. When you look at footage of bands like, say "The Beatles" it seems to me that a big part of how they achieved their sound ( aside from genius levels of talent) was because of what a Gretsch or Rickenbacker sounded like playing through Vox A30 amps. If a current band can use a pedal effect board that is designed to digitally recreate the sound of a Vox , or a Marshall, or Fender etc...and then mikes the amp so most of what you are listening to is your PA system speakers playing what a microphone is picking up at 2" in front of your amp speaker. At some point does what amp you are using start to become less important than your effects boxes and your PA system? Why bother setting up a Marshall stack to play a live show if what your audience is listening to is what the PA mike picks up from one speaker? Wound't the net result be about the same if you just used a 5W Crate, or your smart phone guitar player app? Please help me. Are my observations of current band technique just a reluctance to accept new tech as a major factor in what is making modern music be what it is, or is there really something going on here that makes me feel as I do about all this?
Brand loyalty is silly, unless you find a brand that makes “your” guitar. Once you find your dream setup, then all the power to you. However, limiting your options by just sticking to one brand is like shooting yourself in the foot over pride.
I used to be in hard rock bands and guitarists are the MOST conscious of having "that look." If their hero plays an LP, that's just what it has to be. Interesting talk of all those recording devices and effects. Thanks for sharing.
I'm brazilian and around here we got no acquisitive power at all, so in my perspective I grew up dreaming about the marshall les paul combination, but I can't afford most of th gear i want even though I'm a simple gear guy, I've learned throughout the years that you can do a lot with not a lot of cash and if you really gets into the stuff on your budget range and compare them you can get an ideal sound anyways
Oi colega! Vou te responder no nosso idioma: acho que aqui no BR existe um fetiche ainda maior com marcas consagradas. Talvez uma strato feita por um luthier de altíssima qualidade seja BEM melhor que uma Fender Americana... E vai custar metade do preço... Ex: Stratocaster NZaganin custando o mesmo preço de uma Fender mexicana...
@@maurawl eu concordo totalmente! Caso eu tivesse a grana pra comprar uma Les Paul Standard eu compraria uma Dunamiz DZ59. Os únicos poréns de guitarras de luthier é que elas exigem um conhecimento prévio do comprador para que ele saiba o que quer, e o valor de revenda é bem pior. Eu concordo também com a parte que a galera se fantasia mais ainda aqui no Brasil, mas eles estão sendo bem bobos e esnobes né kkkkkk. Abraço!
@@Haroun-El-Poussah Yeah! There are some amazing luthiers down here and we got the best wood in the world! And that's the way to go really, the price you'd pay for a Les Paul studio you can buy the finest handmade Les Paul made to your measurements and that's awesome but still very expensive. About the electronics boutique gear is way much cheaper than an usual Marshall or whatever. Thank you for your advice, it was really cleaver and useful!! Be well!
The last Les Paul I've seen Gibson release with brazilian rosewood was 14,000 dollars. There's a luthiery called dunamiz that is just amazing, their version of a 59, with brazilian rosewood, hand made PAF's clones that I like way better than the burstbuckers goes for around 14,000 BRL, that would be something around 2,5k US$. Cheaper than a Les Paul Standard.
September 1969 I was in Manny's in NYC shopping for a new guitar. Eric Clapton walked in to try out some LP's. I was checking out an SG Standard. He and I traded some blues licks. He bought the LP and jumped in a cab with his new Les Paul abd left. Speaking of Mesa Boogie the original finger jointed hardwood cab with 1-12" speaker open back c9mbo came out in the mid-70's. Sanatana made them famous in the mid-70's. I was using a Heatjkit Stero tube amp with parametric eq. and a cab built in my garage. I had a Stromberg Carlson 12" speaker in it. It sounded great. Now I use a Roland Blues Cube with my Music Man Silhouette. I only play Silhouettes and will never use any other amps. The best solid body guitars and the best amps.
I'm left handed and I want a reasonably priced 5 string bass and amp. Any suggestions? And yes I want a left handed guitar. That should be a given but I was talked into buying a right handed bass and it was a disaster
I wish I had listened to my guitar teacher when I first started playing, when he recommended I learn right-handed. Now when I walk into a music store and see walls of beautiful right-handed instruments, but over in the corner are only the seemingly-required-by-law lefty Squier Strat, lefty Epiphone Les Paul, and then one other random lefty-maybe a chipped old BC Rich!-I feel totally left out. I played for more than 20 years before I ever got to lay my hands on a non-Squier Telecaster, and I’ve still never even seen a lefty Mustang or Rickenbacker with my own eyes. If you’re right-handed and decide you like the sound of a Strat, you can often pick from more than a dozen in a single store to find the one that calls to you. As a lefty? You find what little is available and make do. Unfortunately it makes perfect business sense. Only about 10% of the population is left-handed, and a lot of lefty musicians play right-handed. If you need to stock 100 right-handed guitars to be profitable, why on earth would any store then also stock an additional 100 lefties to appease 5-10% of their customers? You were right, Mr. Reis.
I think Mesa/Boogie is doing a fantastic job at branching past metal, they've just been so ultra successful in the metal landscape because Randall Smith's gain-staging is legendary. The Rectifier series is straight metal, but I feel the Mark series is uber-versatile, and their new California Tweed and Fillmore series are glorious examples of how good Mesa/Boogie is at making amps as a whole. I'm looking forward to the day they make a Plexi-style head.
To me buying musical gear is like drinking wine, I may have things I like, but I'm always open to trying something different. My first guitar was a Gibson Les Paul Deluxe that I bought new in 1973. Subsequent vintages of Gibson were pretty disappointing so, I never bought another new guitar from then, but it pushed me into buying a new PRS which has been my go to guitar for over 25 years. When it comes to pedals, I usually by 2 or 3 pedals from one company, play them for awhile before return to my usual set up, until I get bored again. You guys also made a good point about the changing standards that certain companies have gone through can make it hard to know what to expect. Which is where the internet and especially You Tube are helpful. Rick, I watch your videos a lot and most of them are very helpful. There is so much great stuff out there, You are both right when you characterized the present as aGolden Age for musicians. Thank you.
That live Derek & the Dominos should sit next to the Allmans in everyone's collection. I wonder how Little Feat's live one would have been without the horns. 2 other great live ones were Dave Mason's Certified Live & REO Speedwagon's live one from when they still had the bald bass player & only did man's music, & no little girl songs.
I've owned many guitars over the years. The first couple of electrics I got when I was a teenager were crappy. My first good guitar was a 74 SG. I then got one of the first Roland synth rigs with the blue floor box and the Ibanez double cutaway that Robert Fripp used in the new King Crimson. The synth was great in the studio but unusable live due to heat related tuning issues. The guitar was a dream to play. Caveat: if you have a great guitar NEVER let it go. I traded the synth rig for a 1984 strat with locking tremelo and nut for the road to back up a wonderful 74 strat that I bought from a guy in town who collected Les Pauls for 300 bucks. I needed a strat backup for my 74. Big mistake. The 1984 sucked. After our second tour I ordered a custom G&L SC300 from my local store ( I bought just about everything there because I always paid my bills and they would let me take anything out for a couple of weeks to try out ). The G&L came in with about four other G&Ls. This was about 1986 and G&L was just being distributed in Canada. I tried it in the store and it was nice but a G&L ASAT T style black with 3 single coils and strat wiring with a maple neck caught my eye. It was a fantastic guitar. I bought it instead of the SC300. Serial number is 00079. Since then I've acquired 3 more ASATs from that store as well as a number of amps and pedals.They're great guitars. Horror story...that year my SG was stolen off the stage between sets and about a month later I let a friend pack up my 74 strat when we were loading out of a local club. He didn't unscrew the whammy bar. The next time I opened the hard case the bar had broken off flush with the bridge. Me and Dave the owner of the store tried to drill out the rest of the bar but it was hardened steel and the bridge was soft metal and the pressure ruined the bridge. We ordered an exact replacement bridge and whammy from Fender but the guitar never sounded the same and wouldn't stay in tune so I had to sell it. Caveat: NEVER LET ANYONE HANDLE YOUR GUITARS UNLESS THEY ARE A GUITAR TECH. A few months later I met a young cabinet maker at a gig who told me he was building guitars on the side and could he bring one to the club the next night. It was a pink handmade strat and after a couple of days I bought it for 400 bucks. I thought he was crazy! A few years later he showed up at the same club with a transparent red finish handmade copy of an early PRS with PRS pickups and electronics/hardware. I bought it the next day again for 400 bucks! It's now been my number one guitar for the last fifteen years. Finale: One sunny Saturday I was sitting in my favourite dive at the bar when a decrepit looking guy sat down beside me and told me he was waiting for a bus and could I buy him a beer because he was broke.. He had a gig bag with him. I asked him to show me the guitar. I couldn't believe it...it was a cherry 74 SG exactly like the one that was stolen years before. He asked me if I wanted to buy it. I qiuckly checked it out and said " how much do you want for it ? ". He said it was his passed on dad's, he didn't know how to play it and he'd let it go for 50 bucks. I bought him a beer and raced to an ATM to get the money. I got back and bought him another beer and the deal was made. After a setup and new strings at Dave's store it played and sounded exactly like my lost Gibson. I guess luck goes around in circles :)
I've always been a bargain hunter, so I try to find quality musical equipment at fair and reasonable prices. I don't care about the brand so much, or where it's made. If it looks good, feels good, plays good, and sounds good, then it IS good. It's really that simple.
Not to be a nit-picker or anything, but ... Point of Fact: Clapton played a Sunburst '59 Less Paul through a Marshall Combo amp on the John Mayall Bluesbreakers (Beano) Album. This guitar and amp are shown in a photo right on the back cover. He also played that same guitar on the early Cream Sessions. He picked up an ES 335 some time during the recording of Wheels of Fire. I saw Cream play at my High School (Staples) on 27th of March, 1968in Westport, CT. At that time, they were right in the middle of the WOF recording sessions at Atlantic. He played a Gold Top on the first song and his Psychedelic SG for the rest of the 2 1/2 hour performance. I think he stopped playing his SG because it sadly suffered a neck break. His 335 experience was short; less than a year. He just happened to be playing that guitar at the Fillmore West when they recorded Crossroads and Spoonful. So it went down in history. He switched to a reverse Firebird for the Goodbye Tour ( seen on 11th of October, 1968 in New Haven, CT ). He kept playing the Firebird through the Blind Faith tour the following year ( seen on 13th of July, 1969 in Bridgeport, CT ). He briefly played a '59 Sunburst Telecaster Custom with Blind Faith when they played Hyde Park on the 7th of June 1969. THEN ... the world changed. I saw him playing his sunburst Strat at the Fillmore East with Delaney and Bonnie and Friends on the 6th of February, 1970. ( The "Friends" that night were; Jim Gordon, Bobby Whitlock, Carl Radle AND ... wait for it ... L'angelo Mysterioso (George Harrison) on his Gretsch Tennessean in the second set.) It's been the stratomacaster ever since. But not the same one. Like most guitarists his love affairs with instruments do not last long. Life is too short not to seek different experiences. Plus, he probably wears them out. Rendered in the spirit of Good Vibrations, Good Day Sunshine, Good Lovin', Good Golly Miss Molly, Let the Good Times Roll and Goodknight! E
Wow thanks i wish i knew that much detail about his guitars. I love Eric's tone on the Beano/Cream albums, but which guitar is know for the "Woman Tone"? (was it a Strat?)
You've got it dead right. When Rhett burbled on about Clapton's guitars I chuckled when he said Clapton changed to a Strat in the late 80's early 90's.
I play PRS simply because I love the aesthetic, I love the bird inlays, the head stock shape, the finish. The sound is great but many brands offer great sounds. Many of my favourite players play Les Paul or Fenders. I play thrash with my PRS, you can play whatever you like with and brand, there are no rules
@@RickBeato I'm from India and I go through all your videos and share them among my friends circle, I spend almost 2 hours everyday talking about your videos to one of my friend, he is a good jazz musician and he enjoys all your videos too. Here in India people only are fit for playing the movie songs that are produced in other languages. When I go out for a gig we end up discouraged as most of them would come over and ask us if we can play the vernacular songs. But we don't perform any of the songs from our country. We ended up producing our own album and we are done with our video shoot too. Then we sat down and consulted among ourself saying that no company here are interested in buying our music or releasing it. Can you do a video on this type of situation that other artists are facing in other countries, thank you Rick.
As for professionals, it generally depends on sponsorship these days. As for the rest of us, whatever feels and sounds right is what's right for you. Brands don't necessarily matter. My three favorite guitars are a PRS, Alhambra an Epiphone (Joe Bonamassa 2014).
I worked for Gibson in 93-94. I machined all the solid bodies, fingerboards, and some necks. I own (4) 1994 Gibsons that I made. Centennial Standard, Quilted Classic, SG Standard, Nighthawk SP3 plus a 1994 Blues King and a late 1993 Houndog Dobro by Gibson. Despite all that I also own an 89 Fender Strat made in USA, a 1978 USA Fender Telecaster, a 2012 left-handed USA Fender Strat, a 1970 Ibanez acoustic 6 string, and a 2018 PRS A60E acoustic electric. Of all those I would say the one I enjoy the most is the Ibanez. The PRS is awesome as well but the Ibanez is my beater. None of the others really compare to that old beat up flat top. I've recorded with that instrument 100's of times where I've only recorded the Blues King 10x maybe and the PRS 20x maybe. Not that they aren't good instruments it's the tone of that Ibanez that's next level for me. I don't know why it sounds so good but none of my other guitars come close. It is the cheapest guitar I own as far as cost goes but you would have to kill me to take it from me. If the house was burning down and I had time to save one, that's the one I'm grabbing. Brands aren't what they used to be. There is no prestige playing a $10k guitar and sounding like Alfalfa with three strings out of tune. Give me a good sounding guitar and you can have those money pits with the fancy name on it...
Well, some new guys who have “brand loyalty” that I can think of from the top of my head would be: Plini: strandberg Mateus Asato: suhr Nick Johnston: schecter Rabea Massad: chapman And many more. But I think it just comes down to brand endorsement. A lot of younger players don’t have that yet, but once they do they’ll have an association with some brand.
@@Kurtster600 Yea, but that's a specific rig for a specific project. It's an all-covers show, using loads of different tunings and setups, and the Shuriken guitar plus the Helix let him and Leo do the whole shows with a very stripped down and easy to transport and set up rig.
Benji P.C. Yeah, I was about to put Polyphia there, but they’re also kinda known for using Music Man back then. (Btw, super psyched cos I’m abt to see them tmr when they come to Bangkok)
When it comes to stringed instruments, craftsmanship is everything, regardless of who or what company builds them, and especially now that there is so much technology, knowledge and experience invested in building them.
I'm a Gibson guy, because I fell in love with all their body designs over the years more than any other brand. I am all about cosmetics and tone, and man, Gibson has just delivered what I like to look at and listen to. I think it all boils down to what vibes with a person, and that's gonna depend on a lot of factors that are too complex for any algorithm to figure out. I own a Gibson Flying V, an Epiphone Les Paul, a Fender American Texas Special Stratocaster, a Jay Turser semi-hollow body, and an Ibanez semi-hollow body. I'm definitely not about the "only a Gibson is good enough" way of thinking ;) there's a use for every tool in my arsenal, but at the end of the day, I'd trade em all for my Gibson V cause I vibe with it
This is really interesting. It makes me think of two things. One is that I think a lot of players only had one instrument and maybe a familiar back up. So the instrument became associated with them as an image. Then again what kind of guitar did Pete Townsend play? All of them of course. But I always think of him playing through Vox even though that was just a portion of his career. The other thing that comes to mind is that brands I wouldn’t have touched in the 80s and 90s are actually making good stuff now. Maybe it wasn’t even budget crap back then we just thought of it as budget crap. I wouldn’t take anyone serious that was playing a Peavy bass through a Crate amp. With the exception of Isoa Tomita no professional would have been caught dead playing anything with the Casio name on it. Were we just being snobs? Oh, for sure that too. But it implied a level of commitment and the seriousness associated with good playing. Or so I believed. Now? I’ll play anything that does the job. But I still have my American Fender Jazz because it’s that one bass that I have always played. I don’t “play bass” I play *that* bass. I’m not picky anymore about what I play it through because my Acoustic B4 died a hero’s death on stage on the last night of tour providing the loveliest distortion I ever heard. Side story: my amp repair guy refused to repair it without a huge deposit saying because if he repaired it and I didn’t pick it up he wouldn’t be able to sell it for enough money to cover the cost of the repair. It didn’t get repaired. My other instrument is keyboard. I can’t keep up with those changes. Even the jankiest garbage today is light years beyond what we had in the 80s, 90s and 00s. Even the cool analog stuff of yesteryear is available again. And that’s if you are dead set against modelling, which is crazy cool. I love my old Vox Super Continental. It’s pretty much all I play now. But would I take a fragile, electronic antique out on the road? Nah, I’m shopping for something else right now to do that. Nord, Suzuki-Hammond, some cheapo interface with software I never heard of? If I feel confident the cheapo gear isn’t going to leave me stranded in the middle of a set, I’m going for that. The hard part in my case is to emulate my Vox I need draw bars, 2 manuals and bass pedals. To make it worse I’d prefer not to drop a couple grand for gear I would only use at gigs. I’m going off topic and this is already a longer reply than I intended to write.
Great interview Rick. I caught your interview with PRS, which pulled me in because I was one of his first apprentices in Annapolis. And your interview with Rhett was fascinating. I'll be watching more of your stuff. Very nice!
Andertons blindfold challenges show clearly that brand and cost mean little nowadays, epic video on new Gibson and Epiphone Les Paul's... No difference! Also Behringer X32 series desks have proved equal or superior to major names at 3 times the price...it was a game changer and caused brands like Allen & Heath, made on the same Chinese trading estate to radically drop prices...
I started as a Les Paul guy. Because of some of my favorite musicians use them and their tone was something that resonated with me. Tried Strats didn't care for them. Then I picked up an American Standard Tele that I fell in love with. I have now different brands they all play and feel different which I like because it becomes a partnership. The guitar in a sense tells me how it wants to be played and I love that. There is only one thing that most of my guitars have in common DiMarzio Pickups (Except Gretsch and PRS). Have different brand amps, most of them have shrunk in size, I no longer own 100w tube stacks. Now my amps are mostly 15w tube amps and all the effects are digital mostly Line 6 (HD500 and Helix) that I feed to the little amps and go directly out to the mixer.
I guess I'm loyal to PRS...yes they are expensive, but holy cow man they are amazing! beautifully made, perfectly finished and feel and sound great! They are very diverse guitars, which is something I have always loved in a guitar. I love the way a guitar looks as much as the way it feels and sounds. How many of us have put our beautiful guitar on the stand and from across the room thought " that thing is sick!' makes me wanna play It that much more, which is what it's all about anyway. I know there are other guitars that are awesome as well, but I like them...my .02
I really love how my PRS custom 22 has humbuckers that twang and sounds very telecaster like for humbuckers just by Turing the volume pot down tiny bit but has that Van Halen Harmonic shimmer when cranked so they make awesome pickups and guitars !!!😉
PRS to me are a standard for higher end gear, I'm a metal guy so I have an 05 Standard 22 for drop C to go with a custom European 7 string multiscale. But I also have an 07 Custom 22 with the stock Dragon IIs that I just go back to to play. It's weird I can't play Ibanez Wizard thin necks but can go back to a multiscale 7 and switch to PRS wide-fat necks and still feel right at home.
I've been strictly a Fender Stratocaster player for about 30 years. Only recently I found a Fender Telecaster that I've fallen in love with. I'm still a better player on a Stratocaster. So what did I just do? I just purchased a Gibson Les Paul Special P90. It hasn't arrived yet. Let's see how it goes.
For me, as an upcoming young musician right now I cannot afford expensive guitars, but I think is a thing of how you feel playing the guitars, for me Epiphone models right now are everything to me, I’ve tried Fenders, Squiers, Grestchs, etc... and is weird but i love everything Epiphone/Gibson mades, and you could call it loyalty, but is something more than that, i feel inspired by each model, differently, don’t get me wrong, I won’t deny a fender, but it’s something in that Gibson/Epiphone models that calls me and I cannot resist
I play G&L, Fender, PRS, older Hamer USA (HBs & P90), Gibson (60 reissue custom shop Special VOS), '64 Hagstrom III, and Curtis NovaK customs (Tele Replitar & a Les Paul-ish with Filtertrons disguised as P90s)... Just added a new semi-hollow Excel by D'Angelico for the 335 sound. They all have their own useful voices and I make a habit of playing them all. My go-to gig guits are the 22 fret PRS S2 Custom (First run Nitro finish) and either of my late 80's G&L Legacy's with old Van Zandt's installed. I am loyal to good guitars!! I have been a Boogie guy since the early 80s and have several variants (All voiced differently), but the Boogies are all old now, but every bit as good as new. I do have brand loyalty to Mesa amps
For me brands definitely matter. You kept the topic mostly on guitars, a bit about mic's etc...As a drummer, when I 1st started playing, I've found you can get just about any top of the line drum kit sound great. However, when it comes to cymbals, there is Paiste, and everything else. I started as a kid w/Sabian, but never really liked the sound, so i moved to Zildjian. I figured ya can't get a better sounding cymbal (I mean look at all the tee shirts, and artists endorsed), but no matter what line I used, I never found anything all purpose. When I got my first Paiste Sig line sound edge hi hats, I fell in love. Great sound, super versatile, even has a great bell (making playing Police tunes way easier) I than went to a 2002 crash. Great cymbals! They cut through, can be warm, bright, and everything in between. I found out shortly after 2002's are made with B8 alloy. Ever heard what Sabian tried to do with B8? Garbage!, Yet the 2002's/Giant Beats is the John Bonham sound! Even their cheap PST line is far superior to any entry level cymbals. So yeah, I'll only use Paiste now, and don't see that changing.
I own about a dozen guitars but I'm primarily a keyboard player. My first was an American Strat bought back in the 90's. For a long time I felt a loyalty toward Fender especially with amps. As I started to aquire more guitars I branched out to Squire, Gretsch (both Fender brands), Epiphone, Martin (X series) and lastly Gibson. I got my first Les Paul last year, an entry level Tribute model for under $1K (which is my own self-imposed budget limit for a guitar). It was almost a religious experience for me when I received the guitar and opened the box (I took pictures before, during and after) since I had waited about 25 years to finally get a Gibson. It's a decent guitar (not great) but I was proud to finally own a real U S of A Gibson.
From an ex-drummer’s perspective, I’ve had a lot more experience choosing gear. I was taught the basics by a drummer who played in the Quantico Marine corp band. About gear, he told me that you can make a 50 gallon fuel barrel sound great if you know how to tune it. I used to play for money, so my criteria for choosing drum stuff was: can it take an ass whupin? Best kit I ever had (and I’ve had quite a few) was an 1980s Tama Imperialstar 5 piece. The old Zola coated Imperialstar shells in my opinion, was the Sure SM58 of drums. As for tone? Every drummer who heard me play remarked on how great that kit sounded. I later bought a used set of Kent drums. The shells were sturdy, also Zola coated and the lugs, though different in design, were interchangeable with the Imperial star’s. They sounded just as nice. Today, saddled by limited budget, I’m looking for a new kit just to dork around with, and brand has little to do with it. I see a lot of good stuff out there, and all have their pros and cons.
I think overall, most brands have caught up with manufacturing techniques and quality. There was a time when Honda cars stood on their own for quality, (like em or hate em, that's not the point). Other brands have caught up. My 2008 Kia Sportage has 177K on it and it looks like new and I've spent very little on maintenance. I have a Korean Dillion PRS semi-hollow body copy. I dropped some SD pickups in it and had the frets leveled and it's a decent guitar. Sounds good and plays great. On the other hand, I have a Samick Strat copy that sounds like pure ass if you run it through any kind of distortion. Clean, however, it sounds decent and would be okay for a song or two in a set.
First guitar was a Cimar Stratocaster (1982) which I still own today. I stuck with the strat shape because as much as I love the sound of a Les Paul, I find the strat shape much more comfortable. I know own mostly Ibanez Prestige RGs and Ss. I do own a Les Paul Gold Top, and a genuine Fender Strat, but both of those are not my working girls. Amps? This side of things was driven by budgetary constraints. In my country at that time, Marshall and Fender amps were way beyond my means. My parents went on a shopping trip to Hong Kong and returned with a Yamaha G212 100w combo amp that was, super crisp and clean, reliable and louder than I could use. I used it for probably fifteen years. Since then I've had various Marshalls (still have one I use often) and a couple of Mesa Boogies that cost me an arm, a leg and a spleen, but worth every stitch.
I think for certain instruments, yes. My guitar player owns 9 guitars, some are from different companies, along with some pedals that are from different companies. My main instrument is drums and I own three different kits; Premier, Mapex, and SJC. But since the very beginning, I've always used Zildjian cymbals, so that's brand loyalty for me, but I do like other cymbal companies like Meinl and Sabian. For me, I like to keep my gear consistent. So my main kit is my SJC kit with Zildjian cymbals and Evans drumheads. Hardware wise, it's a mixture between Tama, Yamaha, Pearl, PDP, Mapex, and SJC. I just buy new hardware whenever something finally breaks down. When it comes to a recording studio, there's really no brand loyalty. People buy new gear all the time or keep using the same gear for years because it works for them.
Pros play a few guitars they really like, and if a company sends them stuff that's good that they can tour without fear of damaging anything valuable they have, they use that. Everything else is just marketing. Incidentally is it a rock myth that Slash's Appetite Les Paul was not in fact a Gibson, but a custom build?
It was built by Kris Derrig and purchased for Slash (which he was supposed to pay off over time) because he recorded most of that album on shitty guitars. He used the Derrig Les Paul for all of the solos (as legend has it).
i am a bass player who dabbled in guitar and bought a used Morris six string for 500 bucks. it was made by a Japanese company, called Moridaira, as a copy of the Washburn Wings, which were made by Matsumoku. when i started taking guitar a little more seriously, i decided to get myself a really "good" instrument. i checked out a bunch of guitars that were priced at multiples of the cost of the Morris. i couldn't find anything that was actually better. the Morris has a brass nut, set neck, individual coil-split switches for neck and bridge and those pickups don't even need replacing. i would be loyal to Morris if they were still in business.
I've seen Al DiMeola play live 3 times in the past 4 years. Once at Niagara Falls and twice in Ohio at the Kent Stage. The first two times he mostly played a Les Paul. The last time he played one of his PRS signature models exclusively. I read PRS was on him about playing the Les Paul. I was in the first 4 rows for all the shows. Al is fantastic and makes anything sound good but his tone with the Les Paul was noticeably better.He used the same Fuchs amp and pedal board.
Helix was a game changer for me for so many reasons. Ease of setup/tear down at shows, variety of tones (can’t afford a Vox, Fender, 5150, JCM800, Friedman, Hiwatt) and going direct helped streamline my old band’s IEM system. Before Helix I was constantly selling my amps to fund the latest amp that I was into and always feeling that the grass was greener after a few months. It totally killed my G.A.S. as far as guitar goes.
I've been playing guitar since I was 14 (I just turned 71) and in the early years there were only a couple upper level guitar makers - Fender and Gibson and, to a lesser degree Gretsch. You were either a Fender guy or a Gibson guy, a Ford guy or a Chevy guy, Beatles or Rolling Stones, Triumph or Harley Davidson, etc.
Those were simpler times for sure..
So many choices now...
- Glen Parker
I'm a Gibson, Chevy, Beatles, Triumph kinda of guy.
Hi Glen, nice to hear you’re still playing guitar at 71. Keep on rocking sir.
I'm the same vintage Glen. Don't forget Rickenbacker.
@@danielhall3105 Yes, Rickenbacker!
@@longsnapper5381 sshhh. Don't tell anyone. Then prices will keep going up. I wish no one every told anyone. Those old grecos, Orvilles, tokai are amazing. Some tokai and grecos are as good as anything else ive found. Sometimes the finish work is hit or miss but usually great
To a poor musician you have to love what you have, it is your best friend
Lawrence Rasmus contentment exactly!
Get yourself a sugarmama, treat her good in the bed and she'll treat you good for man toys!
Lawrence Rasmus that’s why I play Epiphone and Yamaha. Nothing in my mic locker is worth more than $350.
I feel this sooo much. I only got a acoustic guitar. But i want either kiesel mo7x or a fender strat.
I'm a poor musician and brand is still very important. Most brands make budget friendly models but places like AMS and ZZounds are a poor musicians oasis. I've purchased every guitar in the last 5 years from ZZounds and can get mid range models that I can't afford to buy in one purchase for low monthly payments. Now I can get pretty much what I want without breaking me. As long as you have a bank account and income you can get something regardless of how bad your credit is.
Do brands matter?
- To us as hobbyists - sometimes, but usually not if the ego is under control.
- To the AUDIENCE: Nope. And it never has. They come to be entertained. Can you do that? Yes? Then it doesn't matter what name is on your headstocks or your amps/pedals.
100% AGREED! Play what you like and what you can afford.
I don't know about that. I don't care how good a band is, if I saw them playing instruments without headstocks I wouldn't take them seriously.
True dat!
I’m a mechanic by day and what you said at the end was exactly it. “It’s a tool”. In my day job nobody cares if I use a $1000 tool or a $10 as long as the car is fixed. The only one who cares is other mechanics. If it sounds good, and feels good play it!
I actually think of Ibanez being associated with nu-metal moreso than PRS.
I totally agree I am shocked that they said PRS because in the 80 90 and even now most shredders are playing Ibanez.
@@foxybrown2 Yep. PRS IS in the metal scene, but to a much lesser extent than Ibanez ever was.
"THE BEST METAL AND HARD ROCK RIGS FROM PRS GUITARS" (PRS Website)
I must agree!
Yeah... who tf could afford PRS back then. Probably the bands they got to work with. Everyone else was on their Ibanez with the world's skinniest knecks.
33:03 "they're all just tools man" - Rhett Shull
I listened to an interview with David Gilmour recently. The interviewer asked him why he was selling off his most iconic guitars, and David's reply was almost the exact same words. Me, I'm a reborn guitarist, and the more I try different guitars, effects, amps etc, the more I'm prone to believe this too. In the last 3 or 4 years, the thing that has improved my "tone" the most, is practising, combined with constantly trying to learn new things, songs, licks, theory, etc, and how to play them better. I'm not saying that there aren't better tools, but that I believe the difference they make is not as much as the difference becoming a better player does.
Here to respond a year later, winner winner chicken dinner, without a doubt the number 1 thing which has improved my “tone” has been my level of play and implication of technique. Than again I probably shouldn’t be talking, I’ve been playing acoustic almost exclusively for twenty years lol. Cheers Mate.
That same guy has every expensive trendy piece of gear they make.
I've played bass for 30 years. Owned lots of basses, now have 3. Ibanez SR 500, original one bought new in 94. Ibanez frettless musician and a Sigma mahogany acoustic.
Had Fenders etc but stuck with these and made PU changes here and there.
Freinds say Can't believe u kept an Ibanez over a Fender but to me it felt, sounded and played better.
And yes a lot of your tone etc is in your hands, not all teky stuff. Cheers
Ps, I have friends who have expensive guitars and and the biggest names and they are average players, it's what they wanted and that's fine, but you can't buy skill, talent and some practice.
.!
I’ve lost my loyalty to TV now. I watch more TH-cam than anything. I’m lying in bed watching this and thoroughly enjoying this chat.
Excellent!
Except Google are watching what you are doing in bed.... personally, I put on a gimp mask when I watch TY...😂😂😂😂
same here Larry. For every hour of TV I watch, I watch 5 hours of TH-cam.
My exact position. TV sucks.
TH-cam, watch what you want, when you want with minimal commercial interruptions.
I have not owned a TV for a decade and I recon I never will again. I got better things to do with my time, and if I want to watch something it will be something of my own choosing at a time of my choosing. TV is for those who have given up on life.
I appreciate the relaxed way Beato runs these things. More than once I've seen the guys hop up to go grab something and he doesn't tense up or panic, he just does what any of us would do, watch and wait. And, they are respectfully quick.
Clapton was a Strat guy from 1970 on (think Layla Album). He transitioned from Gibson to Fender when he transitioned from Heroin to Alcohol abuse.
Yeah, he was definitely the Strat to Duane's Les Paul on the Layla album. He dabbles with other guitars occasionally but he's still mostly Strat.
Also, Beano album was a Les Paul....Kind of an important piece of musical history - Les Paul through Overdriven Marshall... but whatever, I love hearing these guys talk.
This sounds terrible, like really terrible, but Clapton’s music got boring when he stopped doing hard drugs 😂
He played, and toured with, an explorer on one of his mid 70s albums.
Which one was the partscaster he assembled from a batch of '50s Strats he bought off Gruhn's?
Late 80‘s was when the whole signature model came into existence, so that’s probably where Rhett was confused.
I confess that I have been a gear snob for many years of my life. I’ve had core PRS guitars, Suhr guitars, American fenders, Japanese fenders(which were way better and cheaper) the best of Ibanez, Kramer, etc. etc. A couple of weeks ago I was at one of my favorite music stores in North Georgia shout out to Bighams Music and Dalton! While I was there I was playing different guitars cause they always have interesting stuff and I saw this beautiful swamp ash guitar on the wall. I took it down and played it. It played flawlessly. The fretwork was awesome. The pickups were great. I knew it was a PRS because of the shape. I thought it was a re-issue of the American made swamp specials. I was wrong. It was an SE swamp ash special. I was floored I had been ignoring the SE guitars for so many years. I bought one and have been playing it ever since it is so much fun to play and the sounds that you get are phenomenal! So I guess I am no longer loyal to brand or manufacturing plant.
I never really associated PRS as a "metal" guitar brand. Before Tremonti i think the brand was known more for Carlos Santana, the complete opposite of a metal player. I associated PRS more as the snooty, wine drinking, i have money to burn crowd. Metal has always been considered "underground" so players wouldn't necessarily pursue a PRS as their first guitar, because economically they couldnt afford it. I dont know if you guys confused PRS with ESP?? ESP is most definitely a "metal" brand. You dont see many pop, country and jazz players playing ESPs.
As for "NuMetal" the brand i associate the most with that generation is Ibanez, specifically their 7 strings, since all these new bands were playing downtuned music and really, Ibanez were the only game in town at that time that had a decent range of 7 strings.
Exactly!
Well said. A PRS is for a dentist playing on the weekend at the golf club.
Digiphex Electronics or for aliens like Emil Werstler lol
Apparently you have never heard of Opeth or Porcupine Tree or Periphery
For sure, some of the most visible nu metal acts played Ibanez Universes
Gear snobs should be subjected to a blindfold test on you tube so we can all have a laugh.
Jeff Healey, who's life was a blindfold test, loved his Squire.
Eddys Vault ....Good point! What do blind people like. *Better yet, “What do deaf people like?* ....
Squier
Eddys Vault he played in a way that fret work and neck edges being rounded didn’t matter that much. The difference between a great or mediocre guitar is mostly the work put into the neck. A great neck melds with your hand. Other than that it’s electronics that matter. The body and even neck wood aren’t THAT important. It’s how they’re worked.Actual wood species matters a lot more in drums believe it or not. Especially solid wood shells. But it even makes a big difference with drums made from plies.
I had the pleasure of meeting Jeff once at his bar in Toronto. He's easily the nicest and most down-to-Earth musician I've ever met in my life. He had that really cool lap-style of guitar playing that I think was unique to him. What a terrible loss it was when he was taken from us. RIP good buddy!
@Nintariz You could say the same thing about cocaine.
When I was about to graduate from my Squire Strat, I looked at the quality of the Fenders on the rack and decided to just keep the Squire and upgrade the pickups. The quality and tolerances of a Chinese made Squire is amazing. However, you have to be a guy who just doesn't care about the name on the headstock.
Squier
Awesome point. I just bought a tele vintage vibe. Put a Seymour hot rail in the bridge. Sounds good. Tuning keys are getting upgraded plus the saddles and ashtray bridge. I call it the super squire lol
its amazing how much a silly "water slide fender stratocaster decal " can make your own brain think your guitar is somehow better.
squire makes some great guitars and with electronic uphgrades and good setups they can be main gigging guitars
I got a 80s squire strat and i love the maple neck and playability of it.
I have USA fenders, musicman basses.... a Chinese made squier classic vibe precision bass is my main player after an electronics and hardware swap.
Doing live production and actually loading in audio gear, and getting everything set up, you quickly learn to appreciate the quality behind certain brands. When you open a case full of mic and speaker cable, you appreciate it when it's Conquest cable or Whirlwind cable. You see Switchcraft connectors or Neutrik connecters and know that you're not going to have to dig a broken connector out of your microphone or pins out of your board later. You know the 10 stagehands marching over that cable aren't going to hurt it.
You know the Crown amps are going to power up and not hiss and pop. Those Yamaha BR speakers might be ten years old but they're still solid.
In some cases, brand loyalty is important because it means you're not going to have to dick around with stupid problems when you're on a schedule.
Interesting conversation. Rhett's a really thoughtful dude as well. Love his channel.
In the early 2000s I bought a Marshall jmp-1 pre amp second hand, and the master volume pot packed up so I phoned Marshall (I live in the UK), and ordered a new one, they sent it out for free! I fitted it and it worked fine, then it started cutting out they sent me a new transformer, but that didn't cure it so I took it to the factory, they do a repair service there, but the problem was intermittent and difficult to to diagnose, so I left it with them, they contacted me saying they couldn't find the fault so they would replace the circuit board for just the cost of labour!!
Now the jmp-1 is made of several boards but they are manufactured under the Lean system as one board then that single board is broken up and soldered together to complete the unit , so I had a board with my name on it running through the Marshall factory under the Lean system, I rang them to see if it was ready, and asked can I have a factory tour? Course you can they said!! I went up there to pickup my preamp a very friendly guy took me and my mate round the factory, we bought t shirts etc and then I came to pay for my preamp repair, now this was a £500 preamp and they'd replaced all the electronics inside, they charged me £40 labour...just think about that... What a wonderful experience , I'm a dyed in the wool Marshall fan,
Wow!
For my money, that says it all! Thanks.
Im in the U.S. and I'm just a little jealous. Great story I have Jim Marshalls book "The Father of Loud". I've wanted to see the factory ever since. God bless and stay happy and safe.
@@jimdoner3443 thanks Jim😁
PRS = New Metal????
New Metal for me is 7 strings Ibanez
They mean Nu Metal like system of a down, korn, and limp bizkit
Bryce Archer exactly. I have not listen those bands in years but in my days all tree used ibanez. System used iceman, but korn and limpbizkit used 7 strings.
@@ALTPRNT And none of those guys are known for using PRS.
7 string ibanez is old metal now. Now it’s multiscale kiesels, ormsbys, mayoneses.
I think they kinda lumped nu-metal with all Modern metal with that discussion. PRS and Mesa is basically Mark Tremonti and alot of those guys who are the faces of Modern Metal.
Its all in the fingers...True that.. Some people (top musicians) can make almost anything sound good, its timing, feel and musicality with a dash of mojo on top.
So true
Yup. I watched John 5 play a “Hello Kitty” guitar. He sounded incredible. And I’m not even a big fan of the guy.
To try and hold on to the decades old conception of brand loyalty in music is to get suckered in by the marketing strategies of these often interchangeable international corporations for the sake of nostalgia and percieved "prestige."
Judging from a lot of music I'm hearing the last decade, bands are more obsessed with the production than they are about actual songwriting. Just my opinion.
Melody harmony rhythm and tonal quality, the four aspects to music. People are crazy about rhythm and tonal quality more now it seems
This is exactly what I about to say!
You're not far out Matt. It's overdub vocals, meaningless guitar solos that are dropped in as infills and everything else that sounds like it's been put together on a laptop.
No, brand loyalty does not matter, but we as musicians tend to gravitate towards what we're comfortable with...over the years I've played music I tried many different things but have settled on a pretty consistent formula of Warmoth Strat style guitars with Gibson scale necks ans Seymour Duncan pickups as defining what works best for me...
yes. well done.
that's exactly what I have done.
I've been buying, playing and building electric guitars
since 1974.
My 2003, 24 fret, Gibson scale Strat is an
emerald green ash Warmoth body with a 24 fret maple neck.
Its in their customer pictures for Strats on line.
Today, 2018, I'm building custom 24 fret, 24" scale Telecasters
with Strat head stocks and humbuckers in the neck pup.
The tone versatility and ease of play is great. And,
I've been using a lot of Paulownia for less weight
and its amazing grain and staining quality.
You don't choose your axe it chooses you
I built a 24.75 scale warmoth strat with Wilkinson 100 2 point trem and locking tuners. Everything ax pickups. Great guitar.
You guys may dig the guitar I JUST got, it's a made in Korea fender factory master builder chambered series telecaster but it's totally dressed up like a Les Paul custom with the Gibson scale and two badass Duncan humbuckers set neck through with smooth neck heel Tom bridge solid mahogany body and top chambered and it plays and sounds better than my dad's Les Paul custom 3 pick up so I love it !
I got a used strat and replaced the neck with a warmoth neck, and it is an amazing sounding and looking guitar
I was always a Gibson guy, and a few years ago decided I was going to scale down musically and go all acoustic. While playing strictly acoustic music has actually been great I recently decided I wanted to add very light electric guitar elements back into the mix, and basically get an electric just for playing around on. Problem is that I sold off all my electric guitars. I wanted a new les paul but didn't want to pay for a Gibson, especially since it was mainly just to play around on at home. So I bought a $150 epiphone special, as far as I know, the bottom rung of the epiphone les paul line. This guitar is great. Right out of the gate I liked the fact that it's much lighter than my Gibsons were, and its beautiful. TV yellow, worn vintage looking finish, and the fingerboard looks really nice. But it also has a great sound, loaded with P90S. I can't actually remember ever having as much fun playing around on my Gibsons as I have already had kicking around on this guitar that cost literally a 10th what my Gibsons did when I bought them back in the mid and late 90s. Hats off to epiphone. I will never buy a high end guitar (at least not a new one) again. If there's any brand loyalty here, it would be for epiphone.
I happen to like my SG quite a lot. As well as my jazz bass. But am I loyal to Gibson or fender? No. Just got good deals on good gear.
Rhett said it best when it comes to music gear: "they're just tools for a job." At the end of the day, the gear you pick is important, but what you do with that gear is more important.
Play what you like and what works for you. It's pretty simple!
I've always cared more about how a guitar plays and sounds than what's written on the headstock. The best guitar I ever played was a $500 Parker Fly Mojo and to this day I regret not buying it. It was on a shelf next to high end Gibson's and American Fenders, and it was the better guitar for me.
I have a cherry Parker Fly Mojo and it's by far my favorite guitar. Everything about it is just superb.
I went the opposite way with the Tube Screamer. There are so many clones, so many companies that make a "Tube Screamer", I actually just went with the original. I don't have days (weeks?) to try every TS on the market. If the Ibanez is worth cloning so many times, it's worth having on my board.
Yeah the behringer tube screamer copy uses the same chips, and sounds identical to guitarists when they do blind listening tests.
Paid 20 bucks for my TS9 turbo, worth every penny 😆
I've been playing guitar for 33 years. I can relate to about 3.3% of what these guys are talking about.
Couldn’t agree more. I watched about10 minutes of this video and felt like I was back in 10th grade.... daydreaming. I’ve been playing guitar for 42 years and hardly used anything but an overdrive and compression pedal through a Twin Reverb with a Strat and Tele. Simple and easy
When I was a kid we grew up reading liner notes on albums and then cassettes. Knowing what the big musicians were using meant a lot. For a long time it was Gibson, Fender, Marshall & a couple of others all around most of the time. It was easier to become brand loyal based on chasing the tones of the bigger artists.
I never thought of Mesa as a "metal" amp. I guess because I heard that Prince used them. I don't know why they never capitalized on that fact. Even some big country artists used Mesa. They never capitalized on that either.
Garth Brooks uses a PRS that Zack from Shinedown gave to him.
Yeah having it all in a stomp box or on a computer takes away from being able to compare & truly hear the differences in amps and pedals. Most kids will never know what it's like to feel the rumble of a Marshall ripping your guts out or the smooth warmth of a Fender Twin. Most of today's production takes away from that because so much of the production sounds the same. It's all so compressed that it squeezes the life from the music.
When I think of Mesa Boogie sound, I still think almost exclusively of Carlos Santana in the mid/late 70's. Yeah, I know the Dual Rectifier sound is also very specific and associated with Mesa, but it still seems like "that other Mesa Boogie" to me. Also, have to love the Triple Rectifier. The new Mesa amp, now with 50% more rectifier!
I owned a dual rectifier for a while. It was honestly a very flexible amp that could yield some great classic rock tones. Yes it does metal great but it could do so much more. Now though when people want versatility its Axe FX or the Boss Katana or a Helix etc... The modelers have taken over.
I was told by a famous guitarist, which I won't name. That it doesn't matter what the brand of your guitar is, it matters that you can play it well. If it feels good to you then it will show in your play style. Don't be afraid of change, the guitar you love today may not be the same you love tomorrow.
Gibson has become the Harley Davidson of the music industry...a "Lifestyle"corporation; smh.
Frankula Wolfenstein it’s more or less a dad brand now
It's easier to sell emotion than a physical product. They sell a sense of belonging.
Hassan Kamal dad brand? 😂😂😂😂
When it comes to guitars, you need to like how it looks on you, howi it sounds to you, and how it feels to you. I have 3 Gibson LP's, a Fender Strat, a PRS, a Carvin, and a Godin. I started on a Strat but I shifted to the warmth of Gibson's humbuckers as my playing developed.
@@guitarplayer2846 so are you trying to justify your dad brand guitar, even though you don't want to be a dad you just want to be cool !??!
Brand loyalty really works if you have a pseudo endorsement or acknowledgment from the company. Prince had everything under the sun but rarely acknowledged brand endorsements.
I've had a Fillmore 50 1x12 combo since they shipped, so about 4 months in live settings. Sounds great in 50 and 25 watt mode. It's modeled on the Fender Deluxe Reverb circuit, a tweet circuit. Not a Plexi thing. Two channels of awesomeness. I also play a Mesa Mark V, which I almost NEVER use for metal (it’s an incredible blues and funk and country and classic rock amp)...brilliantly versatile but yeah, it kills it with high gain too. Was never a fan of the Recitifier...Mark V sounds nothing like the Rectifiers. I'm 48, for reference, I grew up seeing Lukather and Schon and Prince and Santana and Brad Gillis and such playing Mesas so the nu metal thing wasn't my influence with liking Mesas.
I'm really into Godin. I love the tech involved in their guitars, the second-to-none versatility that they offer, the top-notch quality coupled with down-to-Earth pricing and the fact that a lot of people don't know much about them adds a mystique for me.
A Godin Freeway Graphite was the only EMG loaded guitar i ever owned. Awesome quality for the money. I always wished they would reissue the Exit 22 with some upgrades.
Godin makes great guitars. I have one and I love it. Eastman, although it is a Chinese company, is probably my favorite brand. They make absolutely stellar instruments, and although not cheap, reasonably priced foe what you get.
Brands don't matter... it's what they do with their instruments that counts.
For instance, Musicman (and Sterling) and PRS guitars have the best non-locking tremolo implementation out there in terms of tuning stability, give Floyd a run for it's money. This isn't so much a result of the trem, but the headstock, and those are considered Intellectual Property of each brand and can't be copied without permission (although the same basic principals can and have been replicated by other manufacturers).
Likewise, only one brand does guitars with the classic Alnico Jazzmaster pickups: Fender. And only one brand doing guitars with Jumbo MFD pickups: G&L. The same can be said for Rickenbackers and their pickups. And because all of these require their specific routing, the most straightforward way to get into those tones is to buy a guitar of those brands.
You need to do a topic on the use of pedals while gigging live. I have friends who believe they sound great with their pedal boards with multiple effects and up close to the amp, it sounds good but when you go into the audience, the lets say distortion or overdrive sounds awful. And if you tell them not to play with a pedal or the pedal board fails they panic and end up can't play the gig without pedals.
I'm old enough to remember that back in the 60's and 70's that simply getting an accurate, detailed, clear, and balanced amplified signal was the most difficult task with any audio/music amplifier/preamplifier. Not to mention the weakest links in the signal chain, the microphones, pickups, and speakers.
Those days are history, and the cost of developing and manufacturing a clean sounding, high headroom, quiet, balanced, and accurately detailed amplification circuit is a hundred times more economical then back when many of the names like Studer/Revox, Neve, Tandberg, Ampex, Crown, Maxell, BASF, Dolby, and DBX were some of the "brand names" that were essential to having a clean signal to work with.
For mass marketed guitars I am interested era and factory. Those 2 factors will determine the quality of any mass marketed guitar. Give me a guitar that was made while a company was financially sound (not cutting corners) from a factory that has a track record of excellent quality control.
G&L guitars for me are the best bang for the buck.
Just bought one and tomorrow should be NGD... I'm excited... I bought a Fallout... I'm intrigued by the HB-Paf combo and split capability
@@notebender4 congrats I like the fallout alit. I also like the Asat Special when clean tones are needed.
G&L are great instruments and have been for a long time. Great value to be sure.
G&L L-2000 bass is good. Very versatile and big sound if needed.
thats my thinking. I bought a legacy, then an asat, and then a fallout, then a commanche. so I guess i'm brand loyal after all.
First off, great video. I appreciate the content you create. It continues to help my understanding of music. For the subject at hand, I think brand loyalty is more associated with a player or a positive experience with music: great video, concert, recording, etc.
Like many guitarist Jimi Hendrix’s influence transitioned into my first guitar, a strat. My Carlos Santana albums impacted my purchase of a PRS. A Dave Mathews concert led me to purchasing an acoustic guitar.
What you said about Jack Pearson and his Squire at the end of this Video says it all. It's all about the player. I love the Trevor Wilkinson guitars, the Vintage brand, because properly set up, they can be every bit as good or better as Fender or Gibson etc at a fraction of the price. That has led me to have loyalty to that brand.
I'm a old geezer (59). I was a loyal Gibson player. In 1972 I was 12 and my dad bought me a 1960 LP. I still have that and I also having a nice collection of the Golden year Gibson's that I bought in the 70's and what I inherited from my father. So I have the best of the McCarty era Gibson's. Since 2008 I have been a PRS player. I have a few but my main players are 2 SC245's. My 2014 is loaded with the stock 57/08's and my 2013 is loaded with a set of MojoTone Classic 59's. I also have a fixed bridge Tremonti and a Custom 24/Floyd. I'm just amazed at the quality instruments that Paul's crew builds. He should be so proud of his people. I took a tour of his Stevensville plant and that was great experience. You can tell everyone there took pride in what they were doing. PRS is really the best guitar made today!!!
The brand I associate with nu metal is Ibanez
Ibanez was the brand for nu metal then it became prs in thr early 2000s
Jackson, Dean etc.
Schecter for me.
Idk why but I love metal guitars. I do not play metal but they are pretty versatile imo. My Ibanez rg can get pretty much any tone I'm looking for and it's so damn comfortable.
And Jackson when they were kids.
Carlos Santana is my favourite New Metal guitarist....just can't beat his PRS through a Mesa "metal" tone....
It's "Nu Metal". Referencing the early 2000s radio rock like Korn, Linkin Park, etc. Many know for playing PRS
I like 'what's nu pussycat' by tom jones.
He does evidently sound somewhat metallic;-) ( Prank alert! )
You beat me to it!
Dual rectifiers came out in 1989 and predate nu-metal by half a decade. I think Rhett is confusing his own perception with the market's perception. John Petrucci has made Mesa the progressive rocker's choice of amp since 1992 from the TriAxis, rectifiers, Mark IIc+, roadking and everything since. It's a great video but I think the discussion gets muddled between brand loyalty of the average Joe, professional brand associations, personal perception and pre-endorsement deal era artists using whatever they needed to get the tones they wanted.
Chris Brooks Guitar could not agree more Chris. How do you not think of John Petrucci when you think of Mesa? Correct me if I’m wrong but he is the only Mesa artist ever to get a signature amp. I have a feeling a hell of a lot more Mesa amps have been sold over the years because of JP than because of Nu Metal. His signature Music Man guitars are the second highest selling signature guitars in the world behind only the Les Paul. The dude has a massively loyal following. When I think Mesa I think JP and Metallica. Not to mention that Ibanez had a huge fingerprint on Nu Metal. Sure, some guys were using PRS, but Ibanez was everywhere with the genre too.
@@BrickWilliamsGuitar It's crazy how Meshuggah and Foo FIghters both used the Dual Rec, so the typecasting isn't justified. I think at this point the JP series is so massive and diverse that they don't even feel like signature guitars at this point.
Actually, what “matters” is the human behind the mixing board, the production team, and the actual artist performing (time stamp 14:10). Gear in the right hands can sound great so long as it’s functional / playable. Brand bunnies can chase their $10,000 piece of gear, but a good artist can make a $150 piece of gear sound great. That’s a truth that will never change.
A good artist can also show you the true difference between a $300 guitar and a $2000 guitar. Average home player can't play the $300 guitar to its limits.
Brand loyalty can hold you back. As far as I’m concerned they are all tools in a tool box and you should use what ever is needed to get the job done.
Having a signature sound in your record is the important part. Brands and models helps to achieve that just as the rest of the chain of tools
You are on point with this, but I think you can even go further. I am wondering what your opinion is on, DOES YOUR GUITAR AMP MATTER ANYMORE? Does the use of a large array of foot pedal effect boxes added to the technique of miking your amps to play through the PA system in a typical garage type rock band, make it irrelevant what guitar amp you are using? I am from the old school of playing in a rock band and feel that the unique sound of your specific guitar played through your specific amp is what gives you your unique sound. When you look at footage of bands like, say "The Beatles" it seems to me that a big part of how they achieved their sound ( aside from genius levels of talent) was because of what a Gretsch or Rickenbacker sounded like playing through Vox A30 amps. If a current band can use a pedal effect board that is designed to digitally recreate the sound of a Vox , or a Marshall, or Fender etc...and then mikes the amp so most of what you are listening to is your PA system speakers playing what a microphone is picking up at 2" in front of your amp speaker. At some point does what amp you are using start to become less important than your effects boxes and your PA system? Why bother setting up a Marshall stack to play a live show if what your audience is listening to is what the PA mike picks up from one speaker? Wound't the net result be about the same if you just used a 5W Crate, or your smart phone guitar player app? Please help me. Are my observations of current band technique just a reluctance to accept new tech as a major factor in what is making modern music be what it is, or is there really something going on here that makes me feel as I do about all this?
These two are the best in the guitar world for just discussing various aspects of the musician today.
Brand loyalty is silly, unless you find a brand that makes “your” guitar. Once you find your dream setup, then all the power to you. However, limiting your options by just sticking to one brand is like shooting yourself in the foot over pride.
I used to be in hard rock bands and guitarists are the MOST conscious of having "that look." If their hero plays an LP, that's just what it has to be. Interesting talk of all those recording devices and effects. Thanks for sharing.
I'm brazilian and around here we got no acquisitive power at all, so in my perspective I grew up dreaming about the marshall les paul combination, but I can't afford most of th gear i want even though I'm a simple gear guy, I've learned throughout the years that you can do a lot with not a lot of cash and if you really gets into the stuff on your budget range and compare them you can get an ideal sound anyways
Oi colega! Vou te responder no nosso idioma: acho que aqui no BR existe um fetiche ainda maior com marcas consagradas. Talvez uma strato feita por um luthier de altíssima qualidade seja BEM melhor que uma Fender Americana... E vai custar metade do preço... Ex: Stratocaster NZaganin custando o mesmo preço de uma Fender mexicana...
@@maurawl eu concordo totalmente! Caso eu tivesse a grana pra comprar uma Les Paul Standard eu compraria uma Dunamiz DZ59. Os únicos poréns de guitarras de luthier é que elas exigem um conhecimento prévio do comprador para que ele saiba o que quer, e o valor de revenda é bem pior. Eu concordo também com a parte que a galera se fantasia mais ainda aqui no Brasil, mas eles estão sendo bem bobos e esnobes né kkkkkk. Abraço!
@@gratao25 é isso!!! Um abração!
@@Haroun-El-Poussah Yeah! There are some amazing luthiers down here and we got the best wood in the world! And that's the way to go really, the price you'd pay for a Les Paul studio you can buy the finest handmade Les Paul made to your measurements and that's awesome but still very expensive. About the electronics boutique gear is way much cheaper than an usual Marshall or whatever. Thank you for your advice, it was really cleaver and useful!! Be well!
The last Les Paul I've seen Gibson release with brazilian rosewood was 14,000 dollars. There's a luthiery called dunamiz that is just amazing, their version of a 59, with brazilian rosewood, hand made PAF's clones that I like way better than the burstbuckers goes for around 14,000 BRL, that would be something around 2,5k US$. Cheaper than a Les Paul Standard.
September 1969 I was in Manny's in NYC shopping for a new guitar. Eric Clapton walked in to try out some LP's. I was checking out an SG Standard. He and I traded some blues licks. He bought the LP and jumped in a cab with his new Les Paul abd left.
Speaking of Mesa Boogie the original finger jointed hardwood cab with 1-12" speaker open back c9mbo came out in the mid-70's. Sanatana made them famous in the mid-70's. I was using a Heatjkit Stero tube amp with parametric eq. and a cab built in my garage. I had a Stromberg Carlson 12" speaker in it. It sounded great. Now I use a Roland Blues Cube with my Music Man Silhouette. I only play Silhouettes and will never use any other amps. The best solid body guitars and the best amps.
Ask a Lefty about guitar brands.
You'll get some really interesting pov's.
I'm left handed and I want a reasonably priced 5 string bass and amp. Any suggestions? And yes I want a left handed guitar. That should be a given but I was talked into buying a right handed bass and it was a disaster
I would enjoy hearing your point of view. That could be very educational.
@@overcomer4226 Look into the Sire Marcus Miller catalog
I wish I had listened to my guitar teacher when I first started playing, when he recommended I learn right-handed. Now when I walk into a music store and see walls of beautiful right-handed instruments, but over in the corner are only the seemingly-required-by-law lefty Squier Strat, lefty Epiphone Les Paul, and then one other random lefty-maybe a chipped old BC Rich!-I feel totally left out. I played for more than 20 years before I ever got to lay my hands on a non-Squier Telecaster, and I’ve still never even seen a lefty Mustang or Rickenbacker with my own eyes. If you’re right-handed and decide you like the sound of a Strat, you can often pick from more than a dozen in a single store to find the one that calls to you. As a lefty? You find what little is available and make do.
Unfortunately it makes perfect business sense. Only about 10% of the population is left-handed, and a lot of lefty musicians play right-handed. If you need to stock 100 right-handed guitars to be profitable, why on earth would any store then also stock an additional 100 lefties to appease 5-10% of their customers?
You were right, Mr. Reis.
It hurts. I’m right handed but play left....
This was a nightly debate in the Berklee dorms.
I love all of these videos and always learn something/many things every view!
I’ve been a Carvin/Kiesel guy pretty much exclusively since ‘07. They’re well-built, sound good, and not terribly expensive.
With Kiesel you pay the builder not the dealer . Much better for the musicians.
The most underrated guitar ever.
And you deal with a neurotic owner with awful customer support
@@totalynotfunnyguy6581 Ditto.
Correcting young Rhett, Clapton played a Gibson Les Paul for the BluesBreaker album NOT 335.
I think Mesa/Boogie is doing a fantastic job at branching past metal, they've just been so ultra successful in the metal landscape because Randall Smith's gain-staging is legendary. The Rectifier series is straight metal, but I feel the Mark series is uber-versatile, and their new California Tweed and Fillmore series are glorious examples of how good Mesa/Boogie is at making amps as a whole. I'm looking forward to the day they make a Plexi-style head.
To me buying musical gear is like drinking wine, I may have things I like, but I'm always open to trying something different. My first guitar was a Gibson Les Paul Deluxe that I bought new in 1973. Subsequent vintages of Gibson were pretty disappointing so, I never bought another new guitar from then, but it pushed me into buying a new PRS which has been my go to guitar for over 25 years. When it comes to pedals, I usually by 2 or 3 pedals from one company, play them for awhile before return to my usual set up, until I get bored again. You guys also made a good point about the changing standards that certain companies have gone through can make it hard to know what to expect. Which is where the internet and especially You Tube are helpful. Rick, I watch your videos a lot and most of them are very helpful. There is so much great stuff out there, You are both right when you characterized the present as aGolden Age for musicians. Thank you.
The Allman Brothers Band: At Fillmore East, #2 greatest live album of all time according to Rolling Stone; #1 for me.
Great video Rick!
That live Derek & the Dominos should sit next to the Allmans in everyone's collection.
I wonder how Little Feat's live one would have been without the horns. 2 other great live ones were Dave Mason's Certified Live & REO Speedwagon's live one from when they still had the bald bass player & only did man's music, & no little girl songs.
I've owned many guitars over the years. The first couple of electrics I got when I was a teenager were crappy. My first good guitar was a 74 SG. I then got one of the first Roland synth rigs with the blue floor box and the Ibanez double cutaway that Robert Fripp used in the new King Crimson. The synth was great in the studio but unusable live due to heat related tuning issues. The guitar was a dream to play. Caveat: if you have a great guitar NEVER let it go. I traded the synth rig for a 1984 strat with locking tremelo and nut for the road to back up a wonderful 74 strat that I bought from a guy in town who collected Les Pauls for 300 bucks. I needed a strat backup for my 74. Big mistake. The 1984 sucked. After our second tour I ordered a custom G&L SC300 from my local store ( I bought just about everything there because I always paid my bills and they would let me take anything out for a couple of weeks to try out ). The G&L came in with about four other G&Ls. This was about 1986 and G&L was just being distributed in Canada. I tried it in the store and it was nice but a G&L ASAT T style black with 3 single coils and strat wiring with a maple neck caught my eye. It was a fantastic guitar. I bought it instead of the SC300. Serial number is 00079. Since then I've acquired 3 more ASATs from that store as well as a number of amps and pedals.They're great guitars. Horror story...that year my SG was stolen off the stage between sets and about a month later I let a friend pack up my 74 strat when we were loading out of a local club. He didn't unscrew the whammy bar. The next time I opened the hard case the bar had broken off flush with the bridge. Me and Dave the owner of the store tried to drill out the rest of the bar but it was hardened steel and the bridge was soft metal and the pressure ruined the bridge. We ordered an exact replacement bridge and whammy from Fender but the guitar never sounded the same and wouldn't stay in tune so I had to sell it. Caveat: NEVER LET ANYONE HANDLE YOUR GUITARS UNLESS THEY ARE A GUITAR TECH. A few months later I met a young cabinet maker at a gig who told me he was building guitars on the side and could he bring one to the club the next night. It was a pink handmade strat and after a couple of days I bought it for 400 bucks. I thought he was crazy! A few years later he showed up at the same club with a transparent red finish handmade copy of an early PRS with PRS pickups and electronics/hardware. I bought it the next day again for 400 bucks! It's now been my number one guitar for the last fifteen years. Finale: One sunny Saturday I was sitting in my favourite dive at the bar when a decrepit looking guy sat down beside me and told me he was waiting for a bus and could I buy him a beer because he was broke.. He had a gig bag with him. I asked him to show me the guitar. I couldn't believe it...it was a cherry 74 SG exactly like the one that was stolen years before. He asked me if I wanted to buy it. I qiuckly checked it out and said " how much do you want for it ? ". He said it was his passed on dad's, he didn't know how to play it and he'd let it go for 50 bucks. I bought him a beer and raced to an ATM to get the money. I got back and bought him another beer and the deal was made. After a setup and new strings at Dave's store it played and sounded exactly like my lost Gibson. I guess luck goes around in circles :)
I've always been a bargain hunter, so I try to find quality musical equipment at fair and reasonable prices. I don't care about the brand so much, or where it's made. If it looks good, feels good, plays good, and sounds good, then it IS good. It's really that simple.
Spot on philosophy 👌
My first experience with PRS was seeing David Grissom from the Joe Ely Band - talking mid to late eighties.
He can rock a guitar big time.
Not to be a nit-picker or anything, but ... Point of Fact: Clapton played a Sunburst '59 Less Paul through a Marshall Combo amp on the John Mayall Bluesbreakers (Beano) Album. This guitar and amp are shown in a photo right on the back cover. He also played that same guitar on the early Cream Sessions. He picked up an ES 335 some time during the recording of Wheels of Fire.
I saw Cream play at my High School (Staples) on 27th of March, 1968in Westport, CT. At that time, they were right in the middle of the WOF recording sessions at Atlantic. He played a Gold Top on the first song and his Psychedelic SG for the rest of the 2 1/2 hour performance. I think he stopped playing his SG because it sadly suffered a neck break.
His 335 experience was short; less than a year. He just happened to be playing that guitar at the Fillmore West when they recorded Crossroads and Spoonful. So it went down in history.
He switched to a reverse Firebird for the Goodbye Tour ( seen on 11th of October, 1968 in New Haven, CT ).
He kept playing the Firebird through the Blind Faith tour the following year ( seen on 13th of July, 1969 in Bridgeport, CT ).
He briefly played a '59 Sunburst Telecaster Custom with Blind Faith when they played Hyde Park on the 7th of June 1969.
THEN ... the world changed. I saw him playing his sunburst Strat at the Fillmore East with Delaney and Bonnie and Friends on the 6th of February, 1970. ( The "Friends" that night were; Jim Gordon, Bobby Whitlock, Carl Radle AND ... wait for it ... L'angelo Mysterioso (George Harrison) on his Gretsch Tennessean in the second set.)
It's been the stratomacaster ever since. But not the same one. Like most guitarists his love affairs with instruments do not last long. Life is too short not to seek different experiences. Plus, he probably wears them out.
Rendered in the spirit of Good Vibrations, Good Day Sunshine, Good Lovin', Good Golly Miss Molly, Let the Good Times Roll and Goodknight!
E
Wow thanks i wish i knew that much detail about his guitars. I love Eric's tone on the Beano/Cream albums, but which guitar is know for the "Woman Tone"? (was it a Strat?)
You've got it dead right. When Rhett burbled on about Clapton's guitars I chuckled when he said Clapton changed to a Strat in the late 80's early 90's.
Another fact: Clapton is a skull-crushingly dull guitarist.
I play PRS simply because I love the aesthetic, I love the bird inlays, the head stock shape, the finish. The sound is great but many brands offer great sounds. Many of my favourite players play Les Paul or Fenders. I play thrash with my PRS, you can play whatever you like with and brand, there are no rules
Rick, the. Concept in the brand loyalty is that most of them like to get sponsored by the brand and endorsed. But still I agree with you.
Nitin Sam Paul that is true :)
That's correct!
@@RickBeato I'm from India and I go through all your videos and share them among my friends circle, I spend almost 2 hours everyday talking about your videos to one of my friend, he is a good jazz musician and he enjoys all your videos too. Here in India people only are fit for playing the movie songs that are produced in other languages. When I go out for a gig we end up discouraged as most of them would come over and ask us if we can play the vernacular songs. But we don't perform any of the songs from our country. We ended up producing our own album and we are done with our video shoot too. Then we sat down and consulted among ourself saying that no company here are interested in buying our music or releasing it. Can you do a video on this type of situation that other artists are facing in other countries, thank you Rick.
As for professionals, it generally depends on sponsorship these days. As for the rest of us, whatever feels and sounds right is what's right for you. Brands don't necessarily matter. My three favorite guitars are a PRS, Alhambra an Epiphone (Joe Bonamassa 2014).
I feel it should be mentioned for brand loyalty, Steve Vai and the Ibanez Jem guitars
I worked for Gibson in 93-94. I machined all the solid bodies, fingerboards, and some necks. I own (4) 1994 Gibsons that I made. Centennial Standard, Quilted Classic, SG Standard, Nighthawk SP3 plus a 1994 Blues King and a late 1993 Houndog Dobro by Gibson. Despite all that I also own an 89 Fender Strat made in USA, a 1978 USA Fender Telecaster, a 2012 left-handed USA Fender Strat, a 1970 Ibanez acoustic 6 string, and a 2018 PRS A60E acoustic electric. Of all those I would say the one I enjoy the most is the Ibanez. The PRS is awesome as well but the Ibanez is my beater. None of the others really compare to that old beat up flat top. I've recorded with that instrument 100's of times where I've only recorded the Blues King 10x maybe and the PRS 20x maybe. Not that they aren't good instruments it's the tone of that Ibanez that's next level for me. I don't know why it sounds so good but none of my other guitars come close. It is the cheapest guitar I own as far as cost goes but you would have to kill me to take it from me. If the house was burning down and I had time to save one, that's the one I'm grabbing. Brands aren't what they used to be. There is no prestige playing a $10k guitar and sounding like Alfalfa with three strings out of tune. Give me a good sounding guitar and you can have those money pits with the fancy name on it...
Well, some new guys who have “brand loyalty” that I can think of from the top of my head would be:
Plini: strandberg
Mateus Asato: suhr
Nick Johnston: schecter
Rabea Massad: chapman
And many more. But I think it just comes down to brand endorsement. A lot of younger players don’t have that yet, but once they do they’ll have an association with some brand.
Rabea used a full line 6 setup for the tour he did with frogleap
@@Kurtster600 Yea, but that's a specific rig for a specific project. It's an all-covers show, using loads of different tunings and setups, and the Shuriken guitar plus the Helix let him and Leo do the whole shows with a very stripped down and easy to transport and set up rig.
Polyphia have been known for using Ibanez for most of their career, and they're also responsible for helping the launch of the new AZ series.
Benji P.C. Yeah, I was about to put Polyphia there, but they’re also kinda known for using Music Man back then.
(Btw, super psyched cos I’m abt to see them tmr when they come to Bangkok)
When it comes to stringed instruments, craftsmanship is everything, regardless of who or what company builds them, and especially now that there is so much technology, knowledge and experience invested in building them.
Have to admit, I am a bit loyal to the Beato brand! ;)
Happy Thanksgiving Rick, Rhett and your families!
Thanks Jason! Same to you!!
So true. Hes a good dude, in the end thats what u leave with!
I'm a Gibson guy, because I fell in love with all their body designs over the years more than any other brand. I am all about cosmetics and tone, and man, Gibson has just delivered what I like to look at and listen to. I think it all boils down to what vibes with a person, and that's gonna depend on a lot of factors that are too complex for any algorithm to figure out. I own a Gibson Flying V, an Epiphone Les Paul, a Fender American Texas Special Stratocaster, a Jay Turser semi-hollow body, and an Ibanez semi-hollow body. I'm definitely not about the "only a Gibson is good enough" way of thinking ;) there's a use for every tool in my arsenal, but at the end of the day, I'd trade em all for my Gibson V cause I vibe with it
This is really interesting. It makes me think of two things. One is that I think a lot of players only had one instrument and maybe a familiar back up. So the instrument became associated with them as an image. Then again what kind of guitar did Pete Townsend play? All of them of course. But I always think of him playing through Vox even though that was just a portion of his career.
The other thing that comes to mind is that brands I wouldn’t have touched in the 80s and 90s are actually making good stuff now. Maybe it wasn’t even budget crap back then we just thought of it as budget crap. I wouldn’t take anyone serious that was playing a Peavy bass through a Crate amp. With the exception of Isoa Tomita no professional would have been caught dead playing anything with the Casio name on it. Were we just being snobs? Oh, for sure that too. But it implied a level of commitment and the seriousness associated with good playing. Or so I believed.
Now? I’ll play anything that does the job. But I still have my American Fender Jazz because it’s that one bass that I have always played. I don’t “play bass” I play *that* bass. I’m not picky anymore about what I play it through because my Acoustic B4 died a hero’s death on stage on the last night of tour providing the loveliest distortion I ever heard. Side story: my amp repair guy refused to repair it without a huge deposit saying because if he repaired it and I didn’t pick it up he wouldn’t be able to sell it for enough money to cover the cost of the repair. It didn’t get repaired. My other instrument is keyboard. I can’t keep up with those changes. Even the jankiest garbage today is light years beyond what we had in the 80s, 90s and 00s. Even the cool analog stuff of yesteryear is available again. And that’s if you are dead set against modelling, which is crazy cool. I love my old Vox Super Continental. It’s pretty much all I play now. But would I take a fragile, electronic antique out on the road? Nah, I’m shopping for something else right now to do that. Nord, Suzuki-Hammond, some cheapo interface with software I never heard of? If I feel confident the cheapo gear isn’t going to leave me stranded in the middle of a set, I’m going for that. The hard part in my case is to emulate my Vox I need draw bars, 2 manuals and bass pedals. To make it worse I’d prefer not to drop a couple grand for gear I would only use at gigs.
I’m going off topic and this is already a longer reply than I intended to write.
Great interview Rick. I caught your interview with PRS, which pulled me in because I was one of his first apprentices in Annapolis. And your interview with Rhett was fascinating. I'll be watching more of your stuff. Very nice!
Andertons blindfold challenges show clearly that brand and cost mean little nowadays, epic video on new Gibson and Epiphone Les Paul's... No difference!
Also Behringer X32 series desks have proved equal or superior to major names at 3 times the price...it was a game changer and caused brands like Allen & Heath, made on the same Chinese trading estate to radically drop prices...
I started as a Les Paul guy. Because of some of my favorite musicians use them and their tone was something that resonated with me. Tried Strats didn't care for them. Then I picked up an American Standard Tele that I fell in love with. I have now different brands they all play and feel different which I like because it becomes a partnership. The guitar in a sense tells me how it wants to be played and I love that. There is only one thing that most of my guitars have in common DiMarzio Pickups (Except Gretsch and PRS).
Have different brand amps, most of them have shrunk in size, I no longer own 100w tube stacks. Now my amps are mostly 15w tube amps and all the effects are digital mostly Line 6 (HD500 and Helix) that I feed to the little amps and go directly out to the mixer.
I guess I'm loyal to PRS...yes they are expensive, but holy cow man they are amazing! beautifully made, perfectly finished and feel and sound great! They are very diverse guitars, which is something I have always loved in a guitar. I love the way a guitar looks as much as the way it feels and sounds. How many of us have put our beautiful guitar on the stand and from across the room thought " that thing is sick!' makes me wanna play It that much more, which is what it's all about anyway. I know there are other guitars that are awesome as well, but I like them...my .02
I really love how my PRS custom 22 has humbuckers that twang and sounds very telecaster like for humbuckers just by Turing the volume pot down tiny bit but has that Van Halen Harmonic shimmer when cranked so they make awesome pickups and guitars !!!😉
PRS to me are a standard for higher end gear, I'm a metal guy so I have an 05 Standard 22 for drop C to go with a custom European 7 string multiscale. But I also have an 07 Custom 22 with the stock Dragon IIs that I just go back to to play. It's weird I can't play Ibanez Wizard thin necks but can go back to a multiscale 7 and switch to PRS wide-fat necks and still feel right at home.
they just seem so mehhhhhhhhhhhh
I've been strictly a Fender Stratocaster player for about 30 years. Only recently I found a Fender Telecaster that I've fallen in love with. I'm still a better player on a Stratocaster.
So what did I just do?
I just purchased a Gibson Les Paul Special P90.
It hasn't arrived yet. Let's see how it goes.
You have now have the perfect trio of guitars in my opinion!
I think Ibanez makes great guitars, and I would recommend them to anybody. But there are so many great brands out there.
For those two US-guys, only US-brands count. Blind on both eyes.
I have been thinking about getting an Ibanez
Dean👍
For me, as an upcoming young musician right now I cannot afford expensive guitars, but I think is a thing of how you feel playing the guitars, for me Epiphone models right now are everything to me, I’ve tried Fenders, Squiers, Grestchs, etc... and is weird but i love everything Epiphone/Gibson mades, and you could call it loyalty, but is something more than that, i feel inspired by each model, differently, don’t get me wrong, I won’t deny a fender, but it’s something in that Gibson/Epiphone models that calls me and I cannot resist
Godin has it all with a generous portion of loyalty.
I play G&L, Fender, PRS, older Hamer USA (HBs & P90), Gibson (60 reissue custom shop Special VOS), '64 Hagstrom III, and Curtis NovaK customs (Tele Replitar & a Les Paul-ish with Filtertrons disguised as P90s)... Just added a new semi-hollow Excel by D'Angelico for the 335 sound. They all have their own useful voices and I make a habit of playing them all. My go-to gig guits are the 22 fret PRS S2 Custom (First run Nitro finish) and either of my late 80's G&L Legacy's with old Van Zandt's installed. I am loyal to good guitars!! I have been a Boogie guy since the early 80s and have several variants (All voiced differently), but the Boogies are all old now, but every bit as good as new. I do have brand loyalty to Mesa amps
I totally agree with Rick; It's all good!! Technology has come so far. I just wish I was 24 years old again.
For me brands definitely matter. You kept the topic mostly on guitars, a bit about mic's etc...As a drummer, when I 1st started playing, I've found you can get just about any top of the line drum kit sound great. However, when it comes to cymbals, there is Paiste, and everything else. I started as a kid w/Sabian, but never really liked the sound, so i moved to Zildjian. I figured ya can't get a better sounding cymbal (I mean look at all the tee shirts, and artists endorsed), but no matter what line I used, I never found anything all purpose. When I got my first Paiste Sig line sound edge hi hats, I fell in love. Great sound, super versatile, even has a great bell (making playing Police tunes way easier) I than went to a 2002 crash. Great cymbals! They cut through, can be warm, bright, and everything in between. I found out shortly after 2002's are made with B8 alloy. Ever heard what Sabian tried to do with B8? Garbage!, Yet the 2002's/Giant Beats is the John Bonham sound! Even their cheap PST line is far superior to any entry level cymbals. So yeah, I'll only use Paiste now, and don't see that changing.
When I think about it; the only brand loyalty I have is my strings, picks, tubes and cables.
I own about a dozen guitars but I'm primarily a keyboard player. My first was an American Strat bought back in the 90's. For a long time I felt a loyalty toward Fender especially with amps. As I started to aquire more guitars I branched out to Squire, Gretsch (both Fender brands), Epiphone, Martin (X series) and lastly Gibson. I got my first Les Paul last year, an entry level Tribute model for under $1K (which is my own self-imposed budget limit for a guitar). It was almost a religious experience for me when I received the guitar and opened the box (I took pictures before, during and after) since I had waited about 25 years to finally get a Gibson. It's a decent guitar (not great) but I was proud to finally own a real U S of A Gibson.
Man, Rhett’s really hung up on nu-metal! Dude, that was nearly 20 yrs ago! Let it go! :D
Last time pop music was guitar based
@bongo155 i mean, i've never been a nu metal guy but the early slipknot and system of a down music was pretty good
@bongo155 that is likely, yes.
@@raulperez2308 soad first 2 albums were excellent really.
From an ex-drummer’s perspective, I’ve had a lot more experience choosing gear. I was taught the basics by a drummer who played in the Quantico Marine corp band. About gear, he told me that you can make a 50 gallon fuel barrel sound great if you know how to tune it. I used to play for money, so my criteria for choosing drum stuff was: can it take an ass whupin? Best kit I ever had (and I’ve had quite a few) was an 1980s Tama Imperialstar 5 piece. The old Zola coated Imperialstar shells in my opinion, was the Sure SM58 of drums. As for tone? Every drummer who heard me play remarked on how great that kit sounded. I later bought a used set of Kent drums. The shells were sturdy, also Zola coated and the lugs, though different in design, were interchangeable with the Imperial star’s. They sounded just as nice.
Today, saddled by limited budget, I’m looking for a new kit just to dork around with, and brand has little to do with it. I see a lot of good stuff out there, and all have their pros and cons.
I think overall, most brands have caught up with manufacturing techniques and quality. There was a time when Honda cars stood on their own for quality, (like em or hate em, that's not the point). Other brands have caught up. My 2008 Kia Sportage has 177K on it and it looks like new and I've spent very little on maintenance. I have a Korean Dillion PRS semi-hollow body copy. I dropped some SD pickups in it and had the frets leveled and it's a decent guitar. Sounds good and plays great. On the other hand, I have a Samick Strat copy that sounds like pure ass if you run it through any kind of distortion. Clean, however, it sounds decent and would be okay for a song or two in a set.
First guitar was a Cimar Stratocaster (1982) which I still own today. I stuck with the strat shape because as much as I love the sound of a Les Paul, I find the strat shape much more comfortable. I know own mostly Ibanez Prestige RGs and Ss. I do own a Les Paul Gold Top, and a genuine Fender Strat, but both of those are not my working girls.
Amps? This side of things was driven by budgetary constraints. In my country at that time, Marshall and Fender amps were way beyond my means. My parents went on a shopping trip to Hong Kong and returned with a Yamaha G212 100w combo amp that was, super crisp and clean, reliable and louder than I could use. I used it for probably fifteen years. Since then I've had various Marshalls (still have one I use often) and a couple of Mesa Boogies that cost me an arm, a leg and a spleen, but worth every stitch.
When I was a kid my parents caught me smoking. They then made me smoke a whole pack, to teach me an important lesson about brand loyalty.
Me too, been a Marlboro man since I was seven.
@@MyDrugHell great,
have fun drowning in your own lungs
@@johnmcminn8288 it wasn't actually a serious comment, but hey..
I think for certain instruments, yes. My guitar player owns 9 guitars, some are from different companies, along with some pedals that are from different companies. My main instrument is drums and I own three different kits; Premier, Mapex, and SJC. But since the very beginning, I've always used Zildjian cymbals, so that's brand loyalty for me, but I do like other cymbal companies like Meinl and Sabian. For me, I like to keep my gear consistent. So my main kit is my SJC kit with Zildjian cymbals and Evans drumheads. Hardware wise, it's a mixture between Tama, Yamaha, Pearl, PDP, Mapex, and SJC. I just buy new hardware whenever something finally breaks down. When it comes to a recording studio, there's really no brand loyalty. People buy new gear all the time or keep using the same gear for years because it works for them.
Pros play a few guitars they really like, and if a company sends them stuff that's good that they can tour without fear of damaging anything valuable they have, they use that. Everything else is just marketing.
Incidentally is it a rock myth that Slash's Appetite Les Paul was not in fact a Gibson, but a custom build?
Yes it's a custom build I believe.
No myth, it was not a Gibson
It was built by Kris Derrig and purchased for Slash (which he was supposed to pay off over time) because he recorded most of that album on shitty guitars. He used the Derrig Les Paul for all of the solos (as legend has it).
i am a bass player who dabbled in guitar and bought a used Morris six string for 500 bucks. it was made by a Japanese company, called Moridaira, as a copy of the Washburn Wings, which were made by Matsumoku. when i started taking guitar a little more seriously, i decided to get myself a really "good" instrument. i checked out a bunch of guitars that were priced at multiples of the cost of the Morris. i couldn't find anything that was actually better. the Morris has a brass nut, set neck, individual coil-split switches for neck and bridge and those pickups don't even need replacing. i would be loyal to Morris if they were still in business.
I've seen Al DiMeola play live 3 times in the past 4 years. Once at Niagara Falls and twice in Ohio at the Kent Stage. The first two times he mostly played a Les Paul. The last time he played one of his PRS signature models exclusively. I read PRS was on him about playing the Les Paul. I was in the first 4 rows for all the shows. Al is fantastic and makes anything sound good but his tone with the Les Paul was noticeably better.He used the same Fuchs amp and pedal board.
i have so many different guitars and my favorite to play is my yamaha sgv800, so you just need to play what feels right to you
If Slash had a day job he’d still be playing Chinese knock offs of LP’s, not Gibsons.
He had a custom Derrig, better than the real thing.
His les Paul originally wasnt made by Gibson it was a small builder ofcourse Gibson just had to jump on board few years after
Helix was a game changer for me for so many reasons. Ease of setup/tear down at shows, variety of tones (can’t afford a Vox, Fender, 5150, JCM800, Friedman, Hiwatt) and going direct helped streamline my old band’s IEM system. Before Helix I was constantly selling my amps to fund the latest amp that I was into and always feeling that the grass was greener after a few months. It totally killed my G.A.S. as far as guitar goes.