Five Tips to Get a Better Tone out of Your Electric Guitar

Photo by Parker Coffman on Unsplash

Guitarists are tone chasers.

I suppose we can’t help it. After all, it’s very likely that for most of us, the sound of the instrument was a significant part of what drew us to the instrument in the first place. Whether it was the raunchy tones of Stevie Ray Vaughan or the infamous Eddie Van Halen “brown sound,” something we heard clicked with us and is at the heart of driving us forward.

And so for many of us, that means dialing in a sound we are happy with. But it’s not an easy task.

Finding the perfect tone is a never-ending journey

It is exceptionally difficult to find the perfect tone, and I dare say it’s impossible. That’s especially true for those of us who are primarily bedroom players. It’s undoubtedly much easier to dial in a kick-ass tone when you’ve got a producer or a professional sound guy to help and the best in gear at your fingertips. That’s not to say a guy like The Edge doesn’t still work hard on his guitar sound (he probably does), but he has more tools at his disposal than a no-name hobbyist like me.

Not that the impossibility of the quest stops us — far from it! And I personally am still a long way from finding my own ideal tone. But in the spirit of improvement, I want to give you a few…