Worst guitar sound you have heard in person?

[ScottJPatrick]

Went to a wee session with a new band last night, usual mix of songs, some good, some not so. Bass player and drummer good, singer had his moments but the other guitar player? Possibly the worst tone I have ever heard in person.

He was playing a Mexican HSS strat which probably wasn't the main problem, but he was playing through a Katana amp on a cleanish setting and boosting it with a couple of Tube Screamers and a Blackstar LT dual along with a wah pedal for effect. Shrill and brash are two words that come to mind but even they don't convey how awful it was. Not sure if the Katana had metal dustbin lids as speakers but that's what it sounded like, strange thing is he didn't seem to notice.

Ceramic pickups through tube screamers into a small tranny amp, truly truly horrible.

 

[hemingway]

Mine

 

[mandoloony]

I used to play with someone who really didn't understand how to set up his guitar. Granted, it's very subjective, but every single note that came out of his amp was at least 50% fret buzz. When this was pointed out, he claimed it was just the natural price of having a playable guitar. In order to get low action, you had to be in buzz city. Every chord, every note, no way around it.

 

[Festofish]

I’ve heard the worst wrong tone. I saw Suicidal Tendencies in the 2000s and the guitarists were all Fender cleans. I think they were ****ing with me subliminally!
Mike was phenomenal as I expected.

 

[jackal]

Combining a lousy tone with a wildly out of tune guitar is the worst. A local organization was having an open house with live music, so I thought I'd check it out. I was standing in line for an ID check and could hear the band who were playing "Driving my life away". Every time that phrase came along the guitarist would emphasize the two beats after. You couldn't even tell if he was pounding the correct chord as the sound was "Clank, Clank", wildly dissonant. It was so awful I just turned around and went home.

 

[Mike Eskimo]

Clapton

1990

 

[Durtdog]

I’ve played with a guy a few years back who sounded like a swarm of bees with chainsaws. He had some great gear, but no matter what new gear he bought, always dialed in the same tone.

 

[Gimble]

Second on Clapton…

San Antonio Alamodome back in late 1990‘s.

It was a muffled mess.

And to make it worse he did not speak a word to the crowd, just went from song to song with that awful sound not interested at all that there were even fans presents.

Oddest, most awkward concert ever!

Also, my first and last time seeing him.

After so long looking forward to seeing him live it was a big let down.

I also saw Jimmy Page on his solo Outrider tour back in1989, he was blotto drunk and drooling on himself, but he played and sounded pretty good, at least.

 

[Dismalhead]

I used one of these for probably 8 years back in the '80s - DOD American Metal pedal. Sounded like a high-pitched can of bees. Terrible sound.

 

[ficelles]

Worse sound ever was deliberately bad... a guitarist/vocalist I was playing bass with at a trio gig was losing his audience big time, insulting them down the mic for not liking his music, and when they started to heckle back he set his amp for the most horrendous harsh distortion I have ever heard and turn it to 11. The audience left, and not long after so did I. We no longer work together

 

[Fiesta Red]

A dude I jammed with once. He was one of those types of people who’d choose weird pieces of gear—not because of necessity/poverty/“it’s all I can afford” or because they sounded good—but because he wanted to prove some kind of point that the amp, effects or even the guitar didn’t matter whatsoever.

He showed up with a good MIA standard Strat and some kind of over-processing multi-effect unit (it might have been a Boss?)…that he plugged into a powered stage monitor. There also seemed to be waaaay too many wires and guitar cables, considering his rig was (basically) just three pieces.

I (politely, in a roundabout way) said, “that’s an interesting setup” and asked him if this was his “small jam” setup (since we were having a jam session in a small environment), and he said, “No, the effects and amp sounds from my multi-effect unit is where the sound comes from—I just need the monitor as a power amp. It’s the same as plugging into a PA instead of an amp. Nothing matters except my hands and what type of pickups I use.”

He also vaguely insinuated that any rig with analog and/or individual effects pedals into a tube amp was “more style and sentimentality towards old-style gear than actual substance,” because his “multi effect unit could do all that and more…”

Then he glanced at my rig (which is just what he described) and kinda clammed up.

Ok.
I’ll give your rig a listen.
I might learn something.

He had no less than four effects (heavy distortion, some kind of chorus/modulation, heavily gated reverb, and a boost—possibly some compression as well) turned on all at once, along with an amp simulator (I think he said it was a Marshall sim?), along with a noise gate that cut off all sustain…if he’d turned off a couple of the effects, it *might* have been a little better, but after I asked him what effects he was using and how did he decide what to use in his ME unit, he said, “that’s my sound…”

He was also (somehow) overdriving/distorting the speaker in the powered monitor…not “running an overdrive into the clean powered monitor,” but rather, distorting the speaker of the monitor by running it so hot and loud. Super-high gain, pushing the slave volume to “11” and riding the master volume for loudness control. The thing dang near sizzled. Harsh, unmusical, bright, square-wave distortion…and that was without the effects!

It was everything anyone ever complained about as far as over-processed, sterile or shrill guitar tones.

Just for grins, I asked him if we could trade rigs for a song or two—he ran through my pedalboard and into my amp, I plugged into his rig—and I confirmed, “No, it’s not his playing, it’s his rig…this thing is terrible!” I removed the ME unit and plugged straight into the powered monitor, and it sounded better but still very harsh.

He was not a bad player, but that rig was just horrible. I liked the songs he played (a lot of CCR and other late 60’s rock), but the sound was like shrapnel slowly piercing your taint.

He also “oversang”…like a dude with no soul who’s trying (and failing) to imitate Otis Redding or Stevie Wonder.

To be honest, it kinda pissed me off. At the time (due to other obligations), I didn’t have a lot of spare time to jam, record, rehearse or perform—or even hang out—and I wasted the evening by listening to that crap.

 

[Flyboy]

Not a guitar, but a bass: Billy Sheehan's sound.

 

[CCK1]

I used one of these for probably 8 years back in the '80s - DOD American Metal pedal. Sounded like a high-pitched can of bees. Terrible sound.

Agreed, I still have mine, it's so bad, I hesitate to let anyone else have it. The more of these that exist, and aren't used, the better off we are!

 

[arlum]

I was playing my Black with Gold Hardware 2002 Les Paul through my Boogie Mark III Blue stripe when out of nowhere I heard my guitar tone turn ugly as the amp head popped, sizzled, smoked and proceeded to glow in the back from a small flame inside. It was toast. I've never forgotten the awful tone of my guitar, my amp or the wail that came from my throat right after.

 

[CCK1]

Used to play in a band with a guy that had a cheap B.C. Rich guitar that he had installed a top mount Kahler on. He was certainly no luthier, and the bridge was mislocated to the point that any chord or triad above about the 6th fret was horribly out of tune. To top it off, he played through one of those terrible Peavey solid state amps using the built in distortion. I kept hoping the amp would fail, but those Mississippi Peavey's never fail.

 

[runstendt]

Besides my own tone, which I'm seemingly always tinkering with and never quite satisfied by, the worst tone I heard was a local cover band a few years back. The band was tight, the mix was spot on, but one of the guitarists had the thinnest sounding Les Paul I'd ever heard. I had no idea that humbuckers could produce such a small sound. It actually sounded weaker than a cheap, single-coil Strat copy. I couldn't wrap my head around it.

 

[Hodgo88]

Professionals, that award would go to C.C. DeVille during his solo at the Skid Row/Dokken/Poison concert in 2008. That might have been his playing too, but it was just a shrieky mess of pentatonic nonsense with some EVH licks littered in there.

Amateurs, me ca. 2003 with a Line 6 Spider II and a Surfing with the Alien tab book.

 

[Dave Hicks]

Most any acoustic amplified via a piezo.

Years ago, we heard the Down from the Mountain tour - pretty much all acoustic instruments. The mandolins, which were miked, had more body and presence than any of the guitars, which had quacky, nasal pickups.

D.H.

 

[Old Plank]

A harsh, wildly distorted metal sound and style, in an otherwise straight-ahead country band; the player and the band were excellent but the bad (to me) guitar sound was further "glarified" by its presence in a country setting. Still, it was kind of fun and interesting to see!

 

[Tele-beeb]

I have posted about this sound/amp on this forum… the fabled ‘Honk Whistle!’
For years I was part of an annual performance with a player who had a nice pro-built Strat style paired with an amp that is famed with the shape a Borg would approve of. Many like it, but somehow he dialed in and produced the sound… ‘honk/whistle.’
Just piercing.