Guitarists with Great/Bad tone
 

I can't play the guitar for shit, but love to listen. Anyway, which guitarists do you think have the best and worst tone?

Great:
Iommi
J. Osborne of Electric Wizard
Birdmen of Alkatraz
Wayne Rogers

I like the sound Roy Harper gets on hs acoustic guitar, and as for the electric, you can't go wrong with Tom G Warrior from Celtic Frost.

Matt Pike of Sleep/High on Fire comes to mind.
Link Wray
Jay Reatard

Hot:

Greg Ginn in his prime i.e. before his playing got derailed by John McLauglin-style jazz-fusion-metal nonsense.
Keith Richards / Mick Taylor circa "Exile on Main Street"

Not:

The inevitable Malmsteen / Satriani /Vai axis of widdle.
Much Flea-style jazz-rock-funk bass fusionry.
Paul Weller's sub-Steve Marriot sweaty rock clumping of recent years.
Me.

The guitar tone on the old Smashing Pumpkins albums (Gish,Siamese Dream) is amazing...so gotta go for Billy Corgan

Thurston and Lee's tone has to be my favourite

Has anyne said Tom Morello as being bad? If not that is my pick.

Great:
Tom Verlaine
Lee Underwood
Nick Drake
Jeff Buckley
Jeff Beck (when his music is worth a listen)
Johnny Marr
David Bowie & Tim Buckley on 12-string acoustic guitar
John McGeoch (when he played with Siouxsie)
Mick Taylor
Markus Acher from the Notwist
David Gilmour
Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond
Will Sergeant
Of course Thurston and Lee

Jandek rules in both categories at once!

i have bad tone.
cant ever get the sound I want.
Im getting close though.

Steve Albini, king of tone

You can always tell it's his guitar when you hear it. I've never heard a guitar sound anything like his

good tones:
polvo people
jesu/godflesh j. broaderick tones
steve albini
napalm death guitarist
dude from unsane/cutthroats 9
alex newport
trey spruance (really, the best guitarist around, period..)
paul leary
dudes from neurosis
wes borland
dude from deftones
dude from jawbreaker
fucking champs guys!!!!!!!!
deerhoof peeps
ponytail peeps
johnny marr
helios creed (no shit, eh?)
early misfits guitar (so fuzzy!)
man or astroman
dick dale
fripp (usually)
erase errata (until nightlife...)

not-so-good tone:
dude from phish (every song i've heard has the same shitty tone)
dude from system of a down (too dry)
sun city girls dude (though he is an amazing guitarist; it's probably the production is what usually makes his guitar tone kinda lack)
...
uh... That's about it. Most "professional" bands have good guitar tones and good drummers, if nothing else.

The Fucking Champs' tone is godawful glassy techy ickiness.

Nah, it's awesome and beautiful. Highly melodic. A metal band with neoclassical aspirations? Perfect.

Speaking of which, I forgot to mention the dude from Necrophagist.. he has a similiar tone on his solos.. amazing.

Zebulon Pike>The Fucking Champs

T and Lee

I agree with ´clone abouy Jus Oborn.
Also Tim Cedar of Part Chimp and Rowland S. Howard of The Birthday Party

Ryan Jarman
Jack White
Kurt Cobain
Thurston Moore

(all good)

kurt cobain?! huh?

oh..

shittiest tone in the world (and no the band isn't better because of it): magik markers.

Loren Mazzacane Connors

Andy Gill-Gang of Four
Bernard Sumner-Joy Division
Smashing Pumpkins guitar tones (except for some on Machina)
J Mascis
King Buzzo
My Bloody Valentine's guitar tones
Joey Santiago of the Pixies

which is to say Steve Albini again

Steve Albini, ofcourse... the man's like a total genious

tom verlaine (yeah everything is awesome and that clean sound is perfect but listen to little johnny jewel where he doesnt plug in an amp and listen to the beautifull sound created with almost nothing.
will and jim reid- fuzz gods
ron asheton-think 1969, no fun and many many more...
hendrix-he's just a pure genious when it comes to tone.
stever turner & mark arm- some more fuzz gods.
lou reed. ofcourse.
adam and jimmy (swervedriver) - perfect tone
keith richards!
t-boy and lee-man

and ofcourse:

J MASCIS

R S Howard, as stated above

marc ribot!!!!!!
nels cline!
and a lot of others mentioned here....

oh, i just thought of my favorite

whoever the fuck was playing in captain beefheart's magic band (so, that's like 5 or 6 different guitar players.. and no i'm not counting the tragic band)

uh.

i can't really apply the good / bad tone - in guitar especially. there's tones - every tone can be useful to some purpose. some tones might not be fitting for a particular genre. in that case - i would classify that "wrong tone".


anyhow...
long list. i'll do it later.

Ten of my personal favorites....

John Lennon (for his White Album-era tone)
George Harrison (of course I love some of his Beatle-era tones to but I especially love his post-Beatles slide tone)
Eric Clapton (especially the vintage stuff, from his much imitated "beano" tone with John Mayall on through his infamous "woman tone" with Cream and his early Strat tones in the seventies)
Keith Richards
Mick Taylor
Lou Reed
Sterling Morrison
Evan Dando
Thurston Moore
Lee Ranaldo

^completely seconded

modest mouse live has really shitty guitar tone the treble is always was to high but they still have great live performances. Playing live seems to fuck up a lot of gutarist tone

Jack White's guitar tone is awesome...

Pavement's guitars on Slanted and Enchanted sound awful. Great album though.

I love the guitar tones on Slanted. Perfume-V sounds perfect. Jagged and distorted but strangely beautiful. Proof that Pavement could have easily been a great shoegaze band!

It's never cool to bump your own thread, but seeing as how the 'fave riff' thread is starting to bleed into matters of tone, and cos this thread is over a year old and people's minds change about this kind of stuff ....
BUMP!

ac/dc has a great tone

I just basically want the cleanest tone possible. I'm usually not a fan of distortion. The best clean tone I've heard in a while is probably Suishou No Fune's.

depends...
in utero: yes, great
nevermind: not really

Ben Chasny
John Fahey
Tom Carter
Some Robert Fripp is quite rad

These are the ones I'm digging at the moment.

On the subject of Fahey, anyone know what effect pedal he used on those last few albums? It's a weird echo. He used it on EVERY SONG. It sounds great.