great articles here: is tone in the hands or the gear? When is enough distortion too much?

http://www.premierguitar.com/articles/23482-tone-tips-hands-vs-gear

discuss?

When I saw the title, I thought "Here we go again." However, I was pleasantly surprised. I generally agree with the author. I think too often people confuse tone with skill, and I don't think this guy made that mistake. His examples are also on point.

I think it can seem like there's a lot of tone in the hands when you put 2 guitarists with a gulf in fine hand technique on the same guitar/amp. I like to look at it as 'tone' and use it to spur people to practice how they approach the notes with both hands, but lets face, no matter what your technique level you are going to sound different through a Hiwatt half stack and a Twin Reverb. Both loud, high headroom amps with a similar design intent.... but they are never gonna sound THE SAME.

Too much awareness of the massive tone contribution of your gear keeps you from progessing as an electric guitarist. There are a lot more guys out there with shit technique than good technique (and I don't mean blistering speed or general precision). Looking abck I am glad I started ona great vintage fender amp and got a tubescreamer early on, I didn't get really into experimenting until I ahd been playing for more than 5 years. I was really happy with how my shit sounded out the gate so I focused on me sounding as good as possible (because I seriously needed to shed). Then I started chasing OTHER good tones apart from the one I started with. but I coudla gone the other way if I had started on a 90s crate.