Tonal Eclipse Of The Heart: “The Quest For Tone (On A Budget)” — Electric Guitar Noodling With A Purpose
Over the past few years I accumulated a range of inexpensive but beautiful-sounding equipment: a '94 Standard Stratocaster, both Xtomp and Ampero modeling effects pedals from Hotone, and a Fender Champion 20 modeling amp, the latter three of which, as digital modeling hardware containing hundreds of software models emulating vintage analog signal processors, amps, and speaker cabinets, enable the budget guitarist to achieve a range of guitar sounds and timbres previously requiring equipment costing thousands of dollars.
Over time, and in an effort to revive my once-popular GuitaristInProgress Youtube channel, I began occasionally posting videos of my various efforts to wring maximum guitar tone from a setup that cost me, including everything, in total about $800. While I'm pretty far behind in posting, I still update it occasionally.
Here, for you tone aficionados, are what I've posted to date.
Pink Floyd's album "Animals", for me, might stand alone as the most singular achievement of the rock 'n' roll era. I've always argued that Pink Floyd were not a rock band, but the first act of what several decades later eventually came to be called "post-rock"—musicians grounded in the language and conventions of rock but doing their own thing with it—and never did they push the boundaries of rock music further from its beginnings, while still staying true to its basic visceral nature (this is, after all, a genre of music named after a slang term for fucking) than on "Animals".
