Best Gear for Good Guitar Tone

The best guitar is the one you feel the most comfortable playing. You can improve electronics if they're lacking. Being comfortable though? Irreplaceable. Your most effortless performance will have effortless tone... everything electronic is just a potential bottleneck to be overcome. In my experience less is more. The shortest path from strings to speaker is best unless your sound us more about special fx than playing and that's a thing too, but otherwise? Be comfortable and if you like your pickups etc don't bog your signal down. More of your personality will reach the speaker.

In amps I think simple is best. The more features you want the more you need to spend in order to get quality implementation. A simple circuit that's well voiced using high quality components always kicks butt, which is why the vintage amp market is so inflated. Modeling stuff improves every year though and I no longer sneer at it. Don't discount a direct solution these days.

EDIT: personally I usually play an SG standard into something with dirt, either fuzz or OD or whatnot (usually turned off) into an ep3 that drives my cranked 62 ac30 or this amp I built on the bones of a 60s traynor PA I named the "jimwatt"and I use my volume control a lot these days... I add other stuff as necessary when recording, but keep it relatively simple. My other rig lately is a tele into an early 60s Ampeg Mercury 1x12 combo, straight in. It's filled the role of the tweeds and supros I've had and I think I prefer it. I've been through a lot of small combos, mostly winners for 1 or 2 styles but this one is the most versatile if you don't want spring reverb... It can really do whatever, from tweed deluxe to zep1 and even into cranked low wattage marshall tones. Just don't try metal. The tweed super/pro are also great amps... same amp with different transformers and speakers. If you play gibsons try a super, if you play telecaster try and pro.... for a strat check out the tweed 5e3 bandmaster or just go blonde or blackface :-)

sleeper vintage gems I recommend:

Ampeg: jet, reverb-o-rocket, mercury, early gemini1s, b25/b25b (difference is grounding, b25b is saferwith modern outlets). Drawback to the b25 is the rare 7199 pentode/triode driver/phase inverter tube but it can be converted to a 6 an8 with a simple pin-out swap if I recall.

leatherette, 2 tone and tweed gibson amps: GA20, GA30, GA77, GA14 titan, GA6 lancer, GA?? ranger (some mods to the pentode channel will up the ante)

Airline amps: 9023A (supro 1624T), 9320A (supro thunderbolt)

Danelectro amps: Dan-O DM25, Silvertone 1483 (not just for bass, kills the 1484 jack white digs)

Garnet amps, all of em

Laney: AOR heads are all pretty cool, GH50L, GH100L (jcm800s on crack, new models arent built as well, go 80s or 90s)

Musicman, anything 70s... most are solid state preamps with tube power amps. Leo Fender's ultimate clean designs. Indestructible. Good enough for Joan Jet.

Naylor: dual 60, not exactly vintage but pretty cool and not well known. Joe Naylor went on to found reverend giitars.

Oahu: if it's got a palm tree on the grill cloth it secretly wants to rock. Turn to 10 for best results.

Peavey: VTM120 (a jcm800 clone)

Selmer: treble n bass heads, mk3 is the best deal, mk1 and 2 have better tone for most folks, all are fine and 3s can be modded into 2s if you care

Plush: anything, they're all fender and marshall clones in Kustom clothing

Sunn: 200S, Sorado, Sonara, Sorado, Scepter... basically the same heads with small voicing tweaks or different on-board fx, they're built on a 60s dynaco hifi kit with a fender inspired preamp instead of consumer line in. The transformers are TOP NOTCH. Same drawback as b25 on most models.

Traynor: YGM4 studiomate (like a marshall 20w Treble N Bass head but in 4x8 combo), YRM1 reverbmaster (good stock, moddable to a fender twin in a head), YVM1 voicemaster PA head (ok stock, dark and growly, easily modded to rip)... the old hammond transformers on these kill it

Univox: all their tube heads are pretty tasty. Inferior components to a lot of their competition but still good. Excellent build quality, easy to service and modify.

Vox: V15, V125 (the Heart sound... loud loud LOUD)

Yamaha T100, T50C soldano designed tube amps... G100, G50 are solid state clean machines great for pedal guys and fans of 80s new wave and post punk tones, cleaner than a jazz chorus and cheaper too

There's no such thing as "Good guitar tone" in my eyes. And that's not me being condescending. It's just the truth. You can get a good guitar tone out of anything, really. Hell, even cheap and shitty guitar equipment can sound great at times.

But, if I would be able to choose the gear that I wanted, I'd surely choose a Fender Twin Reverb. That amp rules.

There's no such thing as "Good guitar tone" in my eyes.

What about to your ears?

How long have you been playing Emma; what's your playing environment, ambition and budget?

I'll share my personal approach but don't take this as advice as it doesn't come from broad or professional experience

After quitting long ago in the 90s I returned late to guitar (from harmonica) with few aspirations beyond playing with my buddies, folk clubs and open mic's.

I've taken a minimalist approach, starting out with a tidy little solid state Vox Pathfinder amp that doesn't take up too much space in my living room, doesn't annoy neighbours but which, at 15watts, is plenty loud enough for a pub or small stage. It's just a simple solid state amp but with well regarded clean tones, analog tremolo and spring reverb, it's a great platform to put my preferred effect pedals in front of.

For effects I started with a handful of pedals that I considered foundational - "Iconic" effects that have stood the test of time, often appearing on tracks that influenced me growing up... I've been happy with the results ever since and so there I stopped!

First I chose cheap 2nd hand Blues Driver and Rat clones for overdrive and distortion. Both have Looong pedigrees - they are familiar (we've heard them everywhere), some might even say "boring" but theres good reason they're so ubiquitous: It's hard to go wrong with them. Why I love this pair so much and why I've stuck with them is that they clean up so well. Even the Rat, wound back delivers a pleasing clean/edge of breakup tone and, like the Blues Driver, breaks up nicely depending on how hard we hit the strings. Both pedals offer a range that goes from clean to fuzz-like - such that I managed happily without a dedicated fuzz pedal for years.

When I did finally succumb to fuzz I indulged in the Boss FZ-1w. I consider this to be a modern day classic. It's "boring" inasmuch as it is so agreeable; it gets along with single coils and humbuckers and doesn't care where it sits in the chain. It gives me all the fuzz tones I need, from Muff-like Pumpkins or "Zombie" to vintage Spaghetti Western and Spy movie sonic landscapes. Best of all, it cleans up nicely with the guitar volume and responds dynamically just like the Rat and Blues driver. These days, playing at home I tend just to go through the Boss fuzz at edge of breakup and direct to the amp - There's not a bad sound in it! I like my clean tones too so having an overdrive, distortion and fuzz that each cover pretty much the whole dirt spectrum has given me more than enough options!

For a cheap alternative the orange Behringer Super Fuzz is the budget bestseller and a classic in its class. Every guitarist I know owns one! I imagine it rivals even the infamous DS-1 for ubiquity 🟧 Orange is the new orange!

So that's my dirt pretty much sorted. All that's missing is a dedicated graphic equaliser and compressor; I have a humble little Zoom MS-50g I drop in for these roles which gets me in the ballpark of any tones I've tried to emulate. It's decade old tech that's saved me from coveting dozens of modulation pedals I'd otherwise try once and forget. I'm sure there are plenty of more up-to-date multi-effect solutions available but I've yet to find one so cheaply (coat)-pocketable.

Life's too short for perfectionism - My late and much missed guitar buddy who played all his life, was REALLY happy with his Boss Katana 50 as an all-in-one solution for his flat, saying it made all the pedals he'd gathered over the years redundant - looking at the specs now, I see it has the capabilities of most pedals I've mentioned above built in!

So I think if I were starting out again I'd skip all the guitar and pedal buying and settle for just a Katana (mini or 50) and my Casino Coupé guitar* Why the Coupé - because, being hollow bodied it's the guitar I most often snatch up and strum on a whim acoustically, without the "inertia" of having to plug in and switch on. It was that inertia, combined with a nasty dry (effectless) Peavey amp that put me off from sticking at it in my youth 🙄 much to my regret.

*Incidentally, The Beatles chose Casino's for this very reason; perfect volume for quiet practice and songwriting in hotel rooms.