Worst guitar sound you have heard in person?

[David Barnett]

Roy Buchanan playing a Guild "Tele" with EMG pickups through two JC120 amps. Good god it was shrill.

 

[johnny k]

Any strat

Any strat position 2 or 4

Any strat position 2 or 4 and reverb

I never got why people liked strats. Even the shape is not good looking. Some people can play them, see the surf guys. Other than that, if i had a monkey paw and 3 wishes, i would change all the strats in the world into telecasters. Or maybe reject the strat blueprint from fender. What a happier place and more cool looking place the world would be.

Anyone has a spare monkey paw ?

 

[Short on cash]

I never got why people liked strats. Even the shape is not good looking. Some people can play them, see the surf guys. Other than that, if i had a monkey paw and 3 wishes, i would change all the strats in the world into telecasters. Or maybe reject the strat blueprint from fender. What a happier place and more cool looking place the world would be.

Anyone has a spare monkey paw ?

Don't hold back !

 

[archetype]

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

Producer Jerry Wexler called that "oversouling."

 

[johnny k]

Don't hold back !

I am a bit harsh on stratocasters, we need a guitar for everyone. I even own some deans, bc rich and a japanese copy of a strat. All in good fun. I still like what the surf heads do with strats. Dick dale, hank marvin...

 

[Short on cash]

I am a bit harsh on stratocasters, we need a guitar for everyone. I even own some deans, bc rich and a japanese copy of a strat. All in good fun. I still like what the surf heads do with strats. Dick dale, hank marvin...

"we need a guitar for everyone"

 

[johnny k]

"we need a guitar for everyone"

Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder.

 

[FenderGyrl]

Telecaster thru a 100 Watt Marshall.
Drenched in Reverb.

I took the filters off of two cigarettes and used them for earplugs. Just so I could get to the bar for alcohol to take out.
<Laughing>

Stones Bridges to Babylon tour.
The big stage...Awful.
The small stage ... Amazing.

It was worth the money just seeing them on the little stage.

Just goes to show....
FG

 

[Jakedog]

Worst live guitar sound I ever heard-

The Outfield. 1999. Just horrific. Original guitar and bass player/singer. New drummer.

Drummer was absolutely incredible. One of the best live drum performances I’ve ever seen. Just nailed the snot out of everything.

Singer/bassist was on FIRE. Played his arse off and could still sing every one of those beautiful melodies and crazy high parts perfectly.

Guitarist sang all the harmonies beautifully. The vocals sounded just like Play Deep. Picture perfect. Really impressive.

That guy’s guitar sound was beyond awful. Just worse than you could possibly imagine no matter how vividly I could describe it. He was playing a Gibson Lucille into a Johnson Millenium amp, and it was just… At first I thought maybe it was broken, or a joke. But he seemed to really be enjoying it. The only words that come readily to mind are “clank” and “fizz”. But both really thin and weedy sounding. And zero sustain on any note. Clean or dirty it was just plink, plink, plink.

I tried to just focus on the parts that were really good. Which was everything but the guitar.

 

[robt57]

Me, a few minutes ago. I dug out a Nashville high strung acoustic I forgot I had. Just tuning it gave me brain farts until I remembered it. Then couldn't remember the songs I use to play on it without googling...

 

[Kandinskyesque]

I've been gathering in some demos of my original material band I was in during the 90s/00s from various old drives this week.

I find listening to them a penance for one reason only, the other guitarist who was also the main writer.
He was one of those guys who considered that his writing meant that any guitar practice or knowledge of his instrument was unnecessary.

If there was any confirmation I needed that a large part of tone is in the hands, then these demos done that job.

The rig we used for his tracks was great as was his guitar: an Ibanez 2680 Bob Weir that he'd had since the early 80s, well set up; into an MXR compressor very lightly applied; into a Mesa Boogie Mk4.
I'd spent days with my guitar tech mate getting a tone, it sounded great for what was going to be recorded.

The problem was this guitarist's technique. He had the grip on a guitar neck of a world champion arm wrestler. An absolute string strangler, he could pull any note on the fretboard sharp.
Any suggestions of using a heavier gauge of strings (it would help provide some resistance) were rejected.
He wrote good songs but had Dunning-Kruger syndrome when it came to his guitar playing or his ears.

I used to keep all my recordings but yesterday quite a few of them went into the delete forever bin on account of unlistenable guitar tracks.

 

[Danb541]

I saw the band Living Color in the early 90's. Vernon Reed had terrible tone.

 

[loopfinding]

Any death metal song.

most death metal bands do that annoying scooped mids thing, and then top it off with some really bad sounding scoopy plinky bass tone. i don't really get why, it doesn't sound heavy, it sounds weak. the drums have to carry the whole thing. the music could be so much heavier borrowing tones from thrash or d-beat punk stuff (and i think that's why some modern bands have).

there are definitely good mid-forward sounds lurking in there though. i think this distorted tone could totally work outside of metal:

 

[Esquire Jones]

So many of these horror stories could be easily turned around into something wonderful and even beautiful.

A simple twink of the tone knob on the guitar.

A slight turn; barely a nudge.

A minuscule twist is all it would take.

Think of the world we could have…

 

[Esquire Jones]

I saw the band Living Color in the early 90's. Vernon Reed had terrible tone.

I thought it was just me.

Over-processed and fizzy.

 

[Marc Morfei]

About 5 years ago I auditioned with a band before joining my current group. They rehearsed in the guitar player's basement. He had dozens of amps and guitars all over, and this gigantic pedalboard with every effect known to man. I couldn't tell you if the guy could play or not, because you couldn't make out a note of it. It was just fuzz. Like the static on an old TV turned up to 10. And this was not high-gain music, it was just basic stuff like Beatles and Tom Petty.

 

[johnny k]

most death metal bands do that annoying scooped mids thing, and then top it off with some really bad sounding scoopy plinky bass tone. i don't really get why, it doesn't sound heavy, it sounds weak. the drums have to carry the whole thing. the music could be so much heavier borrowing tones from thrash or d-beat punk stuff (and i think that's why some modern bands have).

there are definitely good mid-forward sounds lurking in there though. i think this distorted tone could totally work outside of metal:

let's agree to disagree. See my cannibal corpse hammer smashed face guitar only post page 3.

 

[Mike Eskimo]

I agree with you. Piezo with compressor, chorus, reverb and delay from a cheap multieffect is even worse

Yep. Continuing that thought, a friend of a friend...was playing at a local brewpub. Songwriter type, had an acoustic playing through a pedal board. I don't even like thinking about it; couldn't even ask him what the what was. Quacky and nasal would have been an improvement. And have heard many other acoustics, which were otherwise at least passable instruments sound like a metallic, nasty tin bucket. Sheesh.

Of course, my tone is always stellar...

I once saw Neil Young and his wife Peggy (RIP) walk out on stage in the middle of a James Taylor concert. It was all set up. They weren’t stage rushing.. Early 2000’s.

Neil had a beat to hell D 45 with a wireless pack on his strap, and what looked to be a sunrise in the soundhole.

When he started playing, it sounded like an acoustic guitar. A really really good acoustic guitar right in front of you.

Dude ! What the hell ?! It’s not that hard ! Neil has had really really good acoustic guitar sound consistently through his career. No matter how he chooses to put it across to the audience..

It just boggles my mind when I see top level acts pull out an acoustic guitar in the middle of the show and it sounds like s***.
In 2022/23 !

I think this usually comes down to bad audio management. I saw Soundgarden some years ago when Cornell was still with us. The venue was generally good to excellent in terms of sound, but somebody at the board was way over-volumed and turned everything into garbage. The guitar work sounded like a badger being tortured.

I saw the black keys at their home shed near Akron this summer. They were great. The sound was freaking horrible, and I knew if Dan Auerbach was out on the lawn with the rest of us. He would’ve raised holy hell.

I saw the band Living Color in the early 90's. Vernon Reed had terrible tone.

I thought it was just me.

Over-processed and fizzy.

Yeah, I saw them at the first lollapalooza, and I always thought of it like the dying death throes of the rackmount era.

It wasn’t horrible horrible but it was sure as hell not organic sounding…

 

[radtz]

The Plasmatics opening for Kiss in the 1980's. Sounded like a a choir of small chainsaws attacking lots and lots of angry bees - and all of the bees were screaming at the top of their little bee lungs.

 

[loopfinding]

let's agree to disagree. See my cannibal corpse hammer smashed face guitar only post page 3.

yeah CC was precisely what i was thinking of, haha. that sound to me just sounds like the death metal version of ...and justice for all.

whereas morbid angel once they hit covenant is more like an updated/heavier version of reign in blood, which is more my taste.