Why Guitar Tone Matters
How does your guitar sound? The answer is at the core of your guitar’s tone, as well as your tone as a musician. From jam sessions and practice hours and even future recordings and live performances, your tone is what makes you stand out. The different elements that play off each other can be complex and take time to tweak, but finding the best tone for your guitar, your music and how you play is how you can get a sound that is all your own.
Factors That Affect Your Guitar Tone
Many factors can change and affect your tone, including:
- The guitar you play
- How you play
- The environment you're playing in
- The equipment you use (pedals, amps, etc.)
- Pickups
- Strings
- Picks
For example, even if you use the same amp to rehearse that you use at gigs, the volume in a venue can completely change your tone compared to your practice setup. And when you get into the weeds of smaller details, you’ll notice playing with a thicker or thinner pick can make a difference, and so can the gauge and material of your strings. The journey to find your tone takes experimentation, but you can use this guide to make some smart first steps if you have a good idea about how you want your guitar to sound.
How Does Guitar String Gauge Affect Tone?
The material and the gauge of your strings affect the tone of your guitar. Some strings have a distinctive tone all their own — pure nickel sets are known for their warmer sounds, while stainless steel options are on the brighter end of the spectrum. If you want a more balanced tone to start building your tone from, nickel-plated strings are a great option.
String gauge is also important for tone. Ultra Light or Extra Light gauge strings provide a less sustained, thinner tone that stands out as brighter and sharper. They are also easier to fret and bend, making them easier to play. Heavy gauge strings offer a fuller, thicker tone with better sustain, but are harder on the fingers. Standard Light or Medium gauge strings are a good middle ground, with more sustain than lighter strings and easier playability than heavier strings.
SIT Strings has strings in a wide range of gauges and a variety of materials, giving you options to experiment with when trying to find your tone. Check out our classic
Power Wound nickel-plated electric strings for a great base sound and any kind of gauge that you want to try out. Want to emphasize brightness in your tone? If you’re looking for a mellow sound and great feel, you can’t go wrong with some
Power Groove pure nickel strings.
How Your Guitar Setup Impacts Tone
Your guitar setup is more technical than trying out different strings, but some minor adjustments here can make a big difference. For example, adjusting your pickups to the perfect position for increased output, without the annoying wolf notes and unintended sounds. You can also raise the action of your guitar — essentially the height of your strings from the fretboard — to enhance your tone and get rid of lingering buzzing from your strings. Keeping your guitar intonated, or in tune with itself, by shortening or lengthening the length of each string is also important for a consistent tone. Finally, making truss rod adjustments as the seasons change is another key piece of setup that can dramatically improve your tone and how you play.
If you aren’t confident in setting up your guitar on your own, or just want to make sure the job gets done right, consider going to a local guitar tech or luthier for help. They can perform these tasks and can also make minor adjustments and recommendations that will help bring out the unique tone you’re looking for.
Dialing in a Good Amp and Pedal Setup
If we are talking Electric, knowing how to find the right mix from your amp is vital for getting the best tone from your guitar. No matter if you love playing an old-school tube, a reliable solid state model or a brand new hybrid amp, take the time to play and experiment with the EQ setting to see how the different levels of bass, mid and treble, as well as the amount of gain distortion, can affect how your guitar sounds.
If you’re anything like most electric guitar players, you’ve got at least a couple (or a couple dozen) pedals that you want to include in your setup. The types of pedals you use can dramatically impact your tone, so try out a few variations to find the best fit. As a general rule, though, set up your input level and heaviest impact effects earlier in your signal chain. Go with pedals like wah, fuzz, and treble booster at the front, and then your favorite distortion or overdrive pedals. After that, go with modulation pedals like tremolo, phase shifter and chorus effects. If you are going to play with a delay or reverb pedal, they are usually best suited to the end of the signal chain. However, like any rules, these are made to be broken so try out all sorts of different signal chain configurations to find what works best for your tone and how you like to play.
The Influence of Technique on Tone
A pristine signal chain and the perfect setup can get you a good way down the road toward finding your guitar’s best tone, but your technique and play style will still have a huge impact on how you sound. Hard, aggressive play, especially with a metal or heavy pick, will sound much different than the same notes played by gentle finger picking or with a more flexible pick, so be sure that the tone you are searching for is compatible with the type of music you’re playing. Even the aggressiveness of how you bend strings and when you palm mute can have a big impact, so it is crucial to practice and learn how to match your playing technique to your desired tone.
Great Tone Is Never Finished
As with pretty much all good things, finding the perfect tone takes time and practice. As you start to shape your tone and make it uniquely your own, pay attention to the details that affect your sound. Begin with things that are easy to try out and change, like experimenting with the
many different types of strings you can find at SIT Strings, and then dive into the differences that pedals, setups, amps and playing techniques can make. Once you understand what does and doesn’t work for your sound, you can start refining your experimentation to really hone in on the tone that you can call your own.
