“Get a good amp or you’re always going to sound s**tty!”: Billy Duffy on why it’s more important to have a good amp than a good guitar
‘My budget is limited – do I spend more on my guitar or on my amp?’ It’s a question which plagues new guitarists and even seasoned ones alike, with veteran players everywhere having vastly differing views.
Bon Jovi guitarist Phil X, for example, is firmly in the ‘guitar’ camp, saying last year that “what’s in your hands is most important” when it comes to your tone. Whitesnake’s Doug Aldrich agrees, saying in April last year that “you can get a great sound out of any amp that works”.
There are, however, plenty of guitar players on the other side of the debate, saying the amp should be where prospective rig builders should be focusing their attention. Math rock legend Yvette Young, for example, said she’d rather have an expensive amp than an expensive guitar.
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And it turns out The Cult’s Billy Duffy is also team amp…
In a new interview with Guitarist magazine, Duffy makes his opinion clear that you can work with a bad guitar, but a bad amp will always ruin your sound.
“It’s interesting because a good amp is a very useful thing to have because there are a lot of bad amps out there… If you buy a good guitar and a bad amp, you’re gonna have to get a good amp or else you’re always going to sound shitty,” he says.
“If you do it the other way around, you might actually sound better with a bad guitar because if the guitar is badly put together, you could change the pickups. It’s much easier to throw a good pickup in the shitty guitar and transform it, right?
“Unless it’s a bad acoustic… You’ll have to find somebody to take it off your hands because there’s no fixing a bad acoustic.”
So there you have it. In a debate which shows no signs of slowing down, you can count Billy Duffy on ‘team amp’.
Elsewhere in the conversation, Duffy is asked which he’d choose if he could only use humbuckers or single-coil pickups for the rest of his career. His answer is simple:
“With humbuckers, I just love the thickness of the sound. Personally, I have never really gotten over walking on stage with a really good Les Paul and a really good Marshall amp, and just letting rip with the visceral nature of what that can do, you know?
“I’ve used single coils on albums for bits and pieces here and there, and for layering guitars. But, for me, they’re a bit too… they’re just kind of delicate, I guess. I’m a bit of an old-school player who likes to feel the air move and the raw power of the thing. And that’s a humbucker for me.”
The post “Get a good amp or you’re always going to sound s**tty!”: Billy Duffy on why it’s more important to have a good amp than a good guitar appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
