“A sh**ty amp is useless”: Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy on why he’d always pick a good amp over a good guitar
If you’re building a rig on a budget, which deserves the bigger investment: the guitar in your hands, or the amp before you? To say that guitarists are split on the subject would be putting it mildly.
Covet guitarist Yvette Young has argued that pairing a great guitar with a bad amp is like “ruining a really nice audio file”, while The Cult’s Billy Duffy believes that “you’re always going to sound shitty” with a bad amp. On the other side of the fence are players like Bon Jovi’s Phil X and Doug Aldrich of Whitesnake, who posit that almost any working amp can sound good with the right guitar.
READ MORE: “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
Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy has now added his name to team amp, telling Guitarist he’d happily compromise on the guitar before the amplifier.
“A shitty amp is useless,” he says. “I could probably get sounds that I enjoy out of a cheap guitar and a good amp.”
That said, Tweedy doesn’t see the debate as entirely black and white.
“I think it could go both ways… it depends on the cheap amp,” he explains. “Some cheap amps, to me, sound better than the most expensive amps. So it’s all relative.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Tweedy reveals he’s also been favouring Japanese-made guitars from the late ‘70s and early ‘80s of late, even swapping them into his live rig in place of his Gibsons.
The musician, who admits to spending “an insane amount of time” browsing guitars online, says Greco models from the era have become a particular favourite – not least because he feels more comfortable taking them on the road than increasingly valuable vintage Gibsons.
“I’ve been swapping them out for the Gibsons I play live because they’re getting ridiculously expensive,” says Tweedy. “I don’t mind taking [the Japanese guitars] out on the road because they’re supposed to be used, and they’re tools – but I feel a bit self-conscious when I get handed a guitar that I can see somebody in the front row going. ‘Oh, my God, that’s an expensive instrument.’”
“I don’t like that feeling,” the guitarist laughs. “So the Grecos from that era are what I’ve been playing a lot. If you see me playing an SG, it’s usually a Greco.”
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
