WORST tone you've ever heard?!?

[annostyle]

We all praise good tone, but what about bad tone? I have to go with Type O Negative as having the worst guitar tone. Just awful.

[baytamusic]

This d-bag at Guitar Center today on the new Egnater pile of poop-tone.

[Van Cleef]

for me -

pretty much anything drop-tuned with the mids scooped out of existence, and run through a mesa with heaps of compression....

if the vocalist is screamo-ing over the top of it - that tends to make it even worse

[TESLA_EL34]

all those musicians with their marshall mg's with a lot of gain and crappy untuned guitars.
they sound like a tone snob's nightmare. scooped mids hi gain and ..... it's a nightmare.
try to locate those MG's at your next gig. they are everywhere!

seriously it's not hard to get a useful SOUND of the marshall mg. while many people hate em,
i think you can still get some useful tones. but many people think that more gain means more rock...

but you could give these guys a jcm800 and they still would sound like crap in the ass.
and i agree egnater is crap

[jason41224]

yeah, often it's not the amp. it's the player. i want to make a metal amp and put in a mids knob without the pot attached to give a placebo affect. so when idiots try dialing out the mids, they'll get the same tone it would actually do the world a favor too, you know. and them.

[Randy Bass]

The sound of children singing is pretty annoying to me . If you mean music or amp tones, I would say most of Dimebag Darrell's fast squealy leads had harsh, terrible tone. Apologies to those who don't speak ill of the dead ! He did a great job with Planet Caravan though.

[misterMagoo]

but you could give these guys a jcm800 and they still would sound like crap in the ass.

What an awesome saying. I'm using that tomorrow.

[bmxbandit]

Any tube amp turned down past 3.

[Borderline Productions]

Joanna Newsom's singing voice. My kid played her CD, and I thought it was joke (like TIny Tim). Then found out that hideous voice was serious - seriously hideous. Haven't heard a guitar in a while that sounds as bad as that chick sings.

[Wendigo]

I actually have a recording of Eric Clapton jamming with some other guys (Maybe Jeff Beck and J.J. Cale?). His tone is simply abyssmal....just a pathetic little squeak, almost like they went straight into the mixer with the out of phase second position on his strat.

[Wendigo]

Joanna Newsom's singing voice. My kid played her CD, and I thought it was joke (like TIny Tim). Then found out that hideous voice was serious - seriously hideous. Haven't heard a guitar in a while that sounds as bad as that chick sings.

Oh jesus you weren't kidding man ....never heard of her before....now I'm sorry I did:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGViUabMt14&feature=fvst" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[OU818]

Joanna Newsom's singing voice. My kid played her CD, and I thought it was joke (like TIny Tim). Then found out that hideous voice was serious - seriously hideous. Haven't heard a guitar in a while that sounds as bad as that chick sings.

Oh jesus you weren't kidding man ....never heard of her before....now I'm sorry I did:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGViUabMt14&feature=fvst" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

To be fair, that was an awful recording.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mb5Jp_du ... re=related" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

This is more bearable. Not a voice I would find myself liking, but better sounding than the link you posted.

[sidvicious]

newsom: terrible. people actually pay to listen to that?! pile of poop, she makes yoko ono sound not so bad.

a lot of the amps in the 70's sounded like crap. there was a great deal of movement among companies and solid state took over for a while for profit reasons. many of the amps were simply terrible. of these particular amps, when you'd hit the distortion channel, it sounded like rattling tin foil, or like a broken speaker. for those that remember, unless you lived in a large metropolitan area, a tube amp, or good tube amp, was very hard to find in those days, and when you did find one, the price was too high.

carvin made great gains in this period by offering tube amps at affordable prices.

as for a specific example of bad tone, this one will surprise you. stevie ray vaughan did a live show, i think on austin city limits, and he'd switched to the dumble amp. his lead tone sounded like utter crap. it could have been how the sound was finally mixed because i can't imagine srv putting up with stage sound like that. it was over-overdriven with too much pre-amp gain, nothing like the cranked twin or marshall that we'd become accustomed to hearing.

[nguideau]

for me -

pretty much anything drop-tuned with the mids scooped out of existence, and run through a mesa with heaps of compression....

if the vocalist is screamo-ing over the top of it - that tends to make it even worse

This.

More in general, you can always tell when someone doesn't know how to dial in their amp. Which is silly, because it isn't hard. I think so many of us think that we'll find this specific spot on each dial that makes the amp sound how we want it. And that is true if your amp never leaves the same room, you always play with the same guitar and pedals, and hell even that the temp./humidity never changes.

But obviously all those things change. So I think it's really just about understanding that and not being afraid to turn the dials till your ears smile, and forget about what you're seeing on the dial.

[GuitaristZ0S0]

worst tone goes to.......

EGNATOR TWEAKER

my god i spent a solid hour trying to find a half way decent tone and got nothing!
Terrible distortoin and a strange kind of clean

The rebel 30 combo wasnt a bad amp but man was this TERRIBLE!