“The guitar is so much more personal”: Former Black Crowes guitarist Marc Ford on why he’d always pick a good guitar over a good amp
Ahhhh, the great guitar vs amp debate. Unless you’re totally new to the guitar gear community, you’ll be aware of the perennial debate over what’s better: a great guitar with a sub-par amp or a great amp with a cheap guitar.
Both sides have strong voices. Math rock legend and Covet guitarist Yvette Young went on record a year ago to extol the virtues of an expensive amp, saying going for a bad amp is like “ruining a really nice audio file with something that’s going to degrade it a lot”.
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Meanwhile, the opposing camp has adherents in Lita Ford and Whitesnake’s Doug Aldrich, who said last year: “You can get a great sound out of any amp that works.”
And it’s the second camp that former Black Crowes guitarist Marc Ford finds himself in, as he explains in the new issue of Guitarist.
“I’d buy the guitar. Shit, these days, half the time I’m playing through a rented amp,” he laughs. “But the guitar is so much more personal. You’re physically touching the thing and, in a perfect world, it becomes a part of you to where you don’t even think about it any more.
“It becomes just a way to get your insides out, since your fingerprints are literally on it. There’s direct contact and that’s gonna exchange your subtleties way more than an amplifier will, I think.”
So there you have it, if you’ve got some budget and you’re deciding whether to spend more of it on your amp or guitar, you know which direction Marc Ford would steer you in…
And if you do opt to zero in on the ideal guitar, Ford has a few buying tips to orient you in the right direction.
“The ultimate guitar tip for guitars – and really, any guitar, though it’s more obvious on acoustic and maybe less so with electric – is that it’s got to sound good when it’s not plugged in,” he says. “There has to be a tone that catches your ear. And it probably needs to be unique compared with other guitars.
“Obviously, feel is important. It’s gotta feel good to you. But if it doesn’t sound good when it’s not plugged in, there’s no way that you’re ever gonna get it to sound good through the electronics.”
The post “The guitar is so much more personal”: Former Black Crowes guitarist Marc Ford on why he’d always pick a good guitar over a good amp appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
