Why care about tone?

[blademaster2]

A young guitarist asked me once to say which guitarists had the best tone in my opinion.

It sounded like an easy question until I tried to answer it. My problem was that the guitar music I liked the most, and the solos I liked the most, were not examples of amazing guitar sounds but more that the composition or musicianship was what spoke to me.


Here are some examples of music I like very much with not-so-impressive guitar tone (IMHP):
- Black Dog by Led Zeppelin (always sounded like a cheap fuzz pedal, but who cares since the song is legendary!)
- We Will Rock You by Queen (I know, I know, but I always liked May's playing more than his tone, which I found to be limiting and nasal at times)
- All of Boston's first album (guitar tone, to me, was too soft and fuzzy but I love the music)
- Won't Get Fooled Again by The Who (sounds 'crashy' and poorly-defined)
- Hocus Pocus by Focus (low sustain, not a rich distortion but what is there loses the notes in the chords)

On the other hand, there are players known for their tone, like Eric Johnson, where their best playing does not (IMHP) show off their tone very well. Perhaps the difference is too subtle in these cases. I saw Eric live and never was struck by a particularly noteworthy tone, although he played well.

So maybe, as I have said in the past, guitar tone is more for the inspiration and appreciation of the guitarist themselves playing it than it is for the audience. As a listener, even as a guitarist-listener, it is either not very noticeable compared to the composition and playing, or it is inaudible. I have made recordings in the distant past where I cannot tell from listening which of my guitars was used (and I have long forgotten from the session itself), and yet they do indeed sound different when I play them.

[Just to add a final comment for the record, I have always loved the tone that Van Halen had for the first album (not so much the subsequent ones), and that Ritchie Blackmore achieved in Deep Purple, and that Hendrix achieved.]

[reTrEaD]

I always enjoy the opinion/think threads because there's never any one singular correct answer. But they inspire many thoughts that each have their own merit.

May 13, 2019 11:22:31 GMT -5 blademaster2 said:

A young guitarist asked me once to say which guitarists had the best tone in my opinion.

It sounded like an easy question until I tried to answer it. My problem was that the guitar music I liked the most, and the solos I liked the most, were not examples of amazing guitar sounds but more that the composition or musicianship was what spoke to me.

In my opinion the best guitar 'tone' is the one that best serves what the guitarist is playing and ultimately what best serves the song.

I'm most drawn to clean natural sounds like this:



But those two guitars are filling all the space. There are no other instruments or voices involved. In most songs, there are a variety of instruments and/or voices. Each needs to fill their own space without stepping on spaces that are occupied by others. That's where musicianship (and choice of tone) comes into play.

I love talkboxes (Peter Frampton, Richie Sambora, Joe Walsh) but find wah pedals (and autowah) mostly annoying. Yet that sound is used in my favorite Joe Satriani song and it fits perfectly.



You mentioned Eric Johnson. In this performance, I think the tone could be better but it fits what he's doing well enough. The beautiful intro devolves into two minutes of incessant fret wanking which serves little more than to show of his impressive mechanical skills and that annoys me so much that I cued the video up to the part of that. When the rest of the band joins it, the guitar tone in contrast with the bass and drums works for me.




There are no vocals, piano, organ, synths, or other instruments occupying center stage in those videos. Adding those into the mix would mean a very different target, both for the musicianship and choice of tone.

One of the things I liked about the Eagles and the Doobie Brothers was they used a variety of guitar tones, often overlaid in the same song.

[newey]

From RT=

In my opinion the best guitar 'tone' is the one that best serves what the guitarist is playing and ultimately what best serves the song

Well said. I have to disagree with Blademaster to a certain extent, only in that there are too many occasions where I find myself asking "how did so-and-so get that sound?" for me to say that it's mostly inaudible or irrelevant. I'll grant that technique may be a primary focus for the average listener, but that doesn't mean tone has no input into the resultant product.

To my mind, cover songs (provided the cover versions are fairly faithful to the originals) are a good illustration- often, you will listen to two different versions of the same song, where the rhythm, lead, drums etc. are mostly tracking the original version, but the cover nevertheless sounds very distinctive, due only to the tonal differences.

So, I'm not willing to discount it entirely.

Here are some examples of music I like very much with not-so-impressive guitar tone (IMHP):
- Black Dog by Led Zeppelin (always sounded like a cheap fuzz pedal, but who cares since the song is legendary!)

When the notes are comin' at ya that thick and fast, who the hell is paying attention to the tone? Page does a better job than anyone of making his guitar sound like an M-60 machine gun (and God love him for it. . .).

- We Will Rock You by Queen (I know, I know, but I always liked May's playing more than his tone, which I found to be limiting and nasal at times)
- All of Boston's first album (guitar tone, to me, was too soft and fuzzy but I love the music)

By the time of "We Will Rock You", we're into the heights of Corporate Rock (with a capital "R") with over-the-top Arena-Rock production. Tone was buried in the mix. For a truer perspective, listen to "She Makes Me (Stormtrooper in Stillettos)" and then tell me that May's guitar tone doesn't make that song what it is,

I pretty much agree with you on Boston, but bear in mind that the first album was all Tom Scholtz, in his Rochester basement studio he bought with his Polaroid money. After that first LP hit big, he had to assemble a band to tour behind the album. A pro producer might well have twisted the knobs quite differently.

- Won't Get Fooled Again by The Who (sounds 'crashy' and poorly-defined)

I'm so totally focused on Moon's drumming I'm not paying attention to Townsend's tone. . .

- Hocus Pocus by Focus (low sustain, not a rich distortion but what is there loses the notes in the chords)

Can't disagree with that. But the yodeling is classic . . .

[sumgai]

For certain, there's a lot of room to define both the meaning of, and the word itself, "Tone".

The previous postings all assume "electric guitar", and I find that to be an immediate limiter. Yes, all of the above mentions are tres cool, but let's down to the nitty gritty, shall we?  Most fortuitiously, we can stay within one genre to get to the apex of Tone, electric or otherwise.

For my runner-up, I'm going with Bugs Henderson, specifically the album "Four Tens Strike Again". Sadly the man died a few years ago, but not until leaving us with a legacy of masterful licks, and more than one song devoted to Tone itself. "Don't you get it kid? I'm the tone. Four Tens strike again!"  He was referring to an old Fender Concert that had four 10" speakers.

Very sadly,  there are hardly any videos of his studio recordings - most of them are live, probably taken from 1st generation cell phones, which  means vastly reduced audio quality... some to the point of why did they even bother.  But here's a neat one called Anthem For The Blues:

So you're all waiting with 'bated breath as to what I consider the best of all Tone-ful players, yes? Well, wait no more, Bunky, 'cause it's none other Rory Gallagher!!!

If I had to spend the rest of my life on a desert island, with only three albums, they'd have to be Calling Card, Against The Grain, and Edged In Blue.  But seriously, Rory played with his tone all over the place, never sticking to one thing for very long. And he used both the acoustic guitar and other acoustic stringed instruments as well, giving a rich backdrop for so many songs he performed.

Runner-up favorite:

And the epitome of all songs, for all time:

There you have it, the concise definition of Tone, all rolled up into one performance.  As Porky Pig would say, th..th... tha... that's all, folks!

Good night, Irene. 

sumgai

[reTrEaD]

May 14, 2019 14:21:22 GMT -5 sumgai said:

The previous postings all assume "electric guitar"

All? What was mine, chopped liver?

[gumbo]

..you'll have to give him time to re-adjust...he probably still thinks he is walking somewhere...

[blademaster2]

Interesting discussions and opinions. I am always eager to hear people's opinion of great guitar tone, and examples of it.

I want to remind everyone that my initial comment was essentially that there is (electric) guitar music for which the tone was not really good or noteworthy, in the listener's opinion, where it did not matter because it is still appreciated for the composition and musicianship. That was why the thread was entitled "Why care about tone?"

My secondary point was that there are subtleties where IMHP the guitar tone is evident only to the player himself/herself - which in my case is inspiring as I play my own music - but is unimportant or even inaudible to the listeners. Not to say that we cannot appreciate it, but the finer points might escape our ears if we are not the player.

[reTrEaD]

May 16, 2019 8:49:13 GMT -5 blademaster2 said:

I want to remind everyone that my initial comment was essentially that there is (electric) guitar music for which the tone was not really good or noteworthy, in the listener's opinion, where it did not matter because it is still appreciated for the composition and musicianship. That was why the thread was entitled "Why care about tone?"

I don't disagree with that but here's another facet of the interplay of musicianship and tone. In this case, we'll examine a truly (imho) awesome guitar tone and playing style in a song with the same song but produced very differently.


Everyone's Gone To The Movies (Demo Version) - Steely Dan



I had first heard this song on the Katy Lied album but when I got the Citizen Steely Dan set and heard the demo version, I nearly fell out of my chair. Wow! This beyond awesome. Multiple guitars intertwined using an ultra-funk tone and chopped up rhythm. What could possibly be better? Why on earth did they mess with this? Why didn't they just release this version?

But after hearing it a few time, my enthusiasm faded. As cool as those riffs were, their effectiveness tended to wear thin because of the repetition. So I went back and listened to the Katy Lied version.

---

Everyone's Gone To The Movies (Katy Lied Version) - Steely Dan



They smoothed it all out by using a vibraphone and the underlying funk is in the interplay between the drums, bass, and Fender Rhodes. Is there even a guitar in there anywhere? I don't think so. And as a whole, it works better. Maybe the role of the guitar in this case was to set the initial mood for the writers but the song wasn't actually a guitar song?  idk

[sumgai]

Actually, tone is in the ear of the beholder, I think we can all agree on that. But there are certain, shall we say, universal concepts that attract much more than a small fraction of the listening audience..

One of the major differences we already see in this very thread, is the difference between Tone and Sound. Jimi Hendrix made it to the big time by not relying on Tone, but on Sound. (As did Robin Trower, later on.)  And here, I get to quote a friend of mine, a former teacher in Nashville (where you had to be a cut above the rest in order to make it at all).  He said "That man's not playing the guitar, he's playing the amp!"

Whether it's amps or pedals, if you going beyond the guitar's natural output in order to obtain a sound (and I'm excluding sustain here, except where sustain is a byproduct of distortion), then you're in Sound territory, and no longer in Tone territory.

As noted, many players tend to develop a synergy between their perceived tone, and what/how they play. I myself tend to think like a sax player when I solo, because I like to use a sax sound from my synth machine(s). I can't think in terms of double-stops unless I'm using a piano or organ tonality/sound.  But wouldn't you know it, I almost refuse to play the bridge of Amazing Grace if I don't get to use the Bagpipes tonality/sound. Sends shivers up and down my spine... and I'm not even a Scotsman!   But I can bring tears to the eyes of more than one person in the house, it just sounds right, for that particular tune.

So.  Why care about tone? Some don't need to, some don't want to, and some think that's the sum-total of the endgame. It's all over the map, just like ToneWood (and it's offshoots) - it's a crap-shoot as to what the next listener might want to hear, so one might as well forget about what other people want to hear, and make themselves happy.

HTH

sumgai

[reTrEaD]

[blademaster2]

May 16, 2019 21:02:03 GMT -5 sumgai said:

Actually, tone is in the ear of the beholder, I think we can all agree on that. But there are certain, shall we say, universal concepts that attract much more than a small fraction of the listening audience..

One of the major differences we already see in this very thread, is the difference between Tone and Sound. Jimi Hendrix made it to the big time by not relying on Tone, but on Sound. (As did Robin Trower, later on.)  And here, I get to quote a friend of mine, a former teacher in Nashville (where you had to be a cut above the rest in order to make it at all).  He said "That man's not playing the guitar, he's playing the amp!"

Whether it's amps or pedals, if you going beyond the guitar's natural output in order to obtain a sound (and I'm excluding sustain here, except where sustain is a byproduct of distortion), then you're in Sound territory, and no longer in Tone territory.

As noted, many players tend to develop a synergy between their perceived tone, and what/how they play. I myself tend to think like a sax player when I solo, because I like to use a sax sound from my synth machine(s). I can't think in terms of double-stops unless I'm using a piano or organ tonality/sound.  But wouldn't you know it, I almost refuse to play the bridge of Amazing Grace if I don't get to use the Bagpipes tonality/sound. Sends shivers up and down my spine... and I'm not even a Scotsman!   But I can bring tears to the eyes of more than one person in the house, it just sounds right, for that particular tune.

So.  Why care about tone? Some don't need to, some don't want to, and some think that's the sum-total of the endgame. It's all over the map, just like ToneWood (and it's offshoots) - it's a crap-shoot as to what the next listener might want to hear, so one might as well forget about what other people want to hear, and make themselves happy.

HTH

sumgai

Actually I disagree with Sumgai on one subtlety here: An electric guitar as an instrument *includes* the amplifier. Focusing on, or exploiting, the amplifier's tonal characteristics is all part of playing electric guitar. Given the complexities and interactions of this end-to-end tone-generating system, and the never-ending debate on the influence (or not) of the wood of a solid-body guitar on the tone, a player is playing the pickups/amplifier as much as he is ever playing the guitar (and then it all feeds back into the body more and more as volume goes up).

I do not expect we can ever separate all of that into its parts.

[sumgai]

May 17, 2019 9:57:38 GMT -5 blademaster2 said:

Actually I disagree with Sumgai on one subtlety here: An electric guitar as an instrument *includes* the amplifier. Focusing on, or exploiting, the amplifier's tonal characteristics is all part of playing electric guitar. Given the complexities and interactions of this end-to-end tone-generating system, and the never-ending debate on the influence (or not) of the wood of a solid-body guitar on the tone, a player is playing the pickups/amplifier as much as he is ever playing the guitar (and then it all feeds back into the body more and more as volume goes up).

I do not expect we can ever separate all of that into its parts.

Since we're in the mode of disagreeing.....

I can separate the parts of the discussion, quite easily in fact.

I'll agree that an amplifier is part and parcel of the tone of an electric guitar, but the very term "amplifier" is the key here - an amplifier is meant to to exactly that - amplify what was put in to it, nothing more. When you have an amp that adds to that with various effects (Gain being my personal bugaboo), you are no longer just amplifying, you are modifying the tone along its way to the speaker. And here I speak even to the added reverb, but not to commonly found tremolo.  The former does affect the tonality (usually reducing some of the treble), but tremolo merely adjusts the volume level in a repetitive pattern.  (At least, that all it's supposed to do.)

How many amplifiers today, even those of 30 and 40 years ago(!) add a lot of baloney effects to produce a "different, unique" tone?  How many of them add modeling?  (Answer: a lot.)

I understand that in today's world/market, makers/sellers need to stand out from the crowd.  But it's one thing to embellish tone to accomplish a given ideal (pure, clean, etc. or perhaps simply loud, quality of tone be damned), and another thing entirely to substitute a completely different sound, and call that "the best sounding amp you'll ever buy".  They're correct - it has a sound, but does it have The Tone?   I think not.

And no, for those who are just tuning in, I'm a Fender owner/former player, but I don't think that Fender has always had the best tone.  I like them, that's true, but in fact I'd opt for an old Gibson RVT79, or even an GT17 (or 19), given my druthers.  Neither of those are particularly loud, but they are are so well suited to many genres that don't require stadium-sized volume levels.  And if you wanna talk bass, then you can safely stop with Ampeg's B-15, the very definition of how to do it correctly the first time out the door.

Tonewood?  See many discussions on this Forum. 

The tone is really in one's fingers?  I think reTrEaD said it best - "I shook my fingers all night, and not one Tone dropped of them - ever!!"

Need I go on?   (Probably not, eh? )

And lest we forget, we should let ashcatlt chime in with his version of what constitutes tone.  Versus sound....

HTH

sumgai

[reTrEaD]

May 18, 2019 12:42:39 GMT -5 sumgai said:

The tone is really in one's fingers?  I think reTrEaD said it best - "I shook my fingers all night, and not one Tone dropped of them - ever!!"

That's a surprisingly accurate quote, although it's not word-for-word.

"I've heard the tone is all in your fingers. Definitely a myth. I shook those things all over the place and not a single tone came out."

But context is everything. I was in a particularly sardonic mood. guitarnuts2.proboards.com/post/59812/thread

The reality is, there's a great deal of tone related to the fingers. The most obvious of which is plucking with the pads of the fingers compared with the nails.

[Deleted]

We should care about tone because tone will either enhance or ruin the mood that the song is striving to convey. That is why flamenco guitars are made differently from classical, and steel-stringed acoustics and solid-bodied electrics. 

[sumgai]

May 20, 2019 12:45:28 GMT -5 @radrook said:

We should care about tone because tone will either enhance or ruin the mood that the song is striving to convey.

Well, that just goes back to what reTrEaD said (and demo'd) about "Everyone's Gone To The Movies", by Steely Dan.

But in point of fact, there are two (at least two!) facets in play at all times here:

1) At one extreme, we see that Tone can be the end of the journey all by itself.  At the other end, no one gives a flying hoot, it's all just noise anyways.  You can take it to the bank that there are quite a few very popular players coming from both camps, but for my money, most credible players are somewhere closer to the middle between those extremes.

2) Whose mood are you referring to - the Listener or the Player?  We've discussed the player a fair amount up above, but what about the listener?  Again, the above quoted example is a good indicator.  Did Steely Dan (specifically, Fagen and Becker as the players/producers) feel that they were changing their minds for their own good, or for their listeners?  Hard to say.*

So.  OTOneH, we have a player being self-inspired by Tone, and OTOtherH, we have listeners who spend money to support said players.  It's a sure bet that not all listeners have a "golden ear", but at the same time, not all of them will turn a deaf ear to pure noise, either.  Sounds like the old routine about artistic values versus having to put food on the table.  Sometimes compromise is the least distasteful medicine.  Or to put it in persective vis-a-vis a musician's viewpoint - Perfect Is The Mortal Enemy Of Good Enough.

HTH

sumgai

* As it happens, this gets done a lot more than you might think. Dick Dale did it over his lifetime to at least a dozen tunes I can name.  The Ventures are still doing it, after 60 years!!  But the all-time winner of re-releasing a new version (and on practially every album she ever put out) is Nina Simone. HOTRS (House Of The Rising Sun) is pretty much her signature song, and she (and perhaps her producers) can't leave it alone. I mean, I have something like 14 versions of her doing it, on my drive.**

** I collect "swarms" of certain songs/tunes.  Something like 1100+ copies of HOTRS, by more than 900 artists.  But for all that, the Ventures version (on Walk Don't Run Volume 2) is still my favorite.  Pantses Hilton Valentine all the way down to his ankles!

[newey]

In Dave Marsh's thoroughgoing exposition of a single rock song, namely "Louie, Louie", he posits (without further proof, but I don't doubt it) that "Louie Louie" is the most covered song in Rock history. In his telling, at one point a radio DJ does a marathon set of over 24 hours worth of Louie covers, without repetition. Towards the end of the marathon, local bands were recording it on the fly and sending him demos, which went straight to air, just to keep the thing going.

I'd venture to say that "tone", strictly defined, had virtually nothing to do with any of those cover versions. It's volume, it's dynamics, it's rhythm, certainly- but tone? The song was a hit despite the tone,not because of it. Again, that isn't to say tone doesn't ever matter, it does in certain songs/styles. But when the band is rockin' out and the distortion is cranked . . .not so much.

(BTW, I've said it before, but if you're looking for something to read whilst lying on a beach somewhere this summer, Dave Marsh's "Louie, Louie" is, for my money, required reading, and a helluva ride.)

When folks say that "tone is in the fingers", it always seems to me that they are confusing tone with the player's feel for his instrument. The two are closely interrelated, but distinct nonetheless. I can play along with BB King- the riffs aren't particularly tough, and not particularly fast. I could even emulate his tone, to a certain degree. But I could practice 18 hours a day for years and never sound like he did, because it's his feel I can't possibly replicate- sometimes a bit behind the beat, sometimes out in front, wringing out this note, downplaying the next. Yes, he created his own "tone" while doing so, but the differentiator is the touch, the feel.

[blademaster2]

May 18, 2019 12:42:39 GMT -5 sumgai said:

May 17, 2019 9:57:38 GMT -5 blademaster2 said:

Actually I disagree with Sumgai on one subtlety here: An electric guitar as an instrument *includes* the amplifier. Focusing on, or exploiting, the amplifier's tonal characteristics is all part of playing electric guitar. Given the complexities and interactions of this end-to-end tone-generating system, and the never-ending debate on the influence (or not) of the wood of a solid-body guitar on the tone, a player is playing the pickups/amplifier as much as he is ever playing the guitar (and then it all feeds back into the body more and more as volume goes up).

I do not expect we can ever separate all of that into its parts.

Since we're in the mode of disagreeing.....

I can separate the parts of the discussion, quite easily in fact.

I'll agree that an amplifier is part and parcel of the tone of an electric guitar, but the very term "amplifier" is the key here - an amplifier is meant to to exactly that - amplify what was put in to it, nothing more. When you have an amp that adds to that with various effects (Gain being my personal bugaboo), you are no longer just amplifying, you are modifying the tone along its way to the speaker. And here I speak even to the added reverb, but not to commonly found tremolo.  The former does affect the tonality (usually reducing some of the treble), but tremolo merely adjusts the volume level in a repetitive pattern.  (At least, that all it's supposed to do.)

How many amplifiers today, even those of 30 and 40 years ago(!) add a lot of baloney effects to produce a "different, unique" tone?  How many of them add modeling?  (Answer: a lot.)

I understand that in today's world/market, makers/sellers need to stand out from the crowd.  But it's one thing to embellish tone to accomplish a given ideal (pure, clean, etc. or perhaps simply loud, quality of tone be damned), and another thing entirely to substitute a completely different sound, and call that "the best sounding amp you'll ever buy".  They're correct - it has a sound, but does it have The Tone?   I think not.

And no, for those who are just tuning in, I'm a Fender owner/former player, but I don't think that Fender has always had the best tone.  I like them, that's true, but in fact I'd opt for an old Gibson RVT79, or even an GT17 (or 19), given my druthers.  Neither of those are particularly loud, but they are are so well suited to many genres that don't require stadium-sized volume levels.  And if you wanna talk bass, then you can safely stop with Ampeg's B-15, the very definition of how to do it correctly the first time out the door.

Tonewood?  See many discussions on this Forum. 

The tone is really in one's fingers?  I think reTrEaD said it best - "I shook my fingers all night, and not one Tone dropped of them - ever!!"

Need I go on?   (Probably not, eh? )

And lest we forget, we should let ashcatlt chime in with his version of what constitutes tone.  Versus sound....

HTH

sumgai

I guess we will need to disagree on those, rather subtle, points about tone. To me, "tone" is simply the individual's perception of the quality of the sound coming from the end-to-end instrument. The player's fingers, the guitar itself, and the amplifier/volume all are involved. Separating "Tone" from "Sound" is opinion-based. And simple amplification without any distortion/nonlinearity (however small) is only theoretical, since all amplifiers will colour the sound coming from the guitar signal to some extent even if their are no deliberate effects in the chain.

The same guitar will sound slightly different when plugged into my AMPEG compared to my VOX amplifier. Both are clean (relatively), no effects added, and both have great "Tone" - just different despite having the same guitar plugged in and the same player playing it. 


To me the guitar and amplifier always remain inseparable as the "instrument".

[reTrEaD]

May 21, 2019 11:42:51 GMT -5 blademaster2 said:

I guess we will need to disagree on those, rather subtle, points about tone.

Of course. When you have six people discussing something as multi-faceted as tone, you're sure to get at least a dozen opinions about it's relative importance.

This might be a good point in time to go off on a slight tangent and ask what the word 'tone' even means.

One way to look at it would be to compare the things we generally apply to music notation for a note, to what generally isn't specified.

The note is usually defined by frequency, duration, and amplitude. But what makes the same note sound different on various instruments? I think we might break that down into the following aspects:

Harmonic Content

(Waveshape)

Amplitude Envelope

(ADSR - Attack, Decay, Sustain, Release)

Modulation

Vibrato - varying the frequency within the duration of the note
Tremolo - varying the amplitude within the duration of the note
Harmonic articulation - varying the relative amplitude of harmonics within the duration of the note

The last item on that list leads me to another thought. When we add electronics to the signal path (an electric guitar in contrast to an acoustic) we open the door to all sorts of nuances. As long as we remain within the linear range, things are rather predictable. But any non-linear device (overdriven amplifier or overdrive pedal) can introduce some dramatic changes in a multitude of ways.

The first would be Harmonic Content (waveshape). But we also can have some compression which affects the Envelope, including the attack. We also see a change in the harmonic content as the amplitude decays.

Most notably, we can also cause a phenomenon that isn't common in acoustically produced notes. Intermodulation. Two frequencies (notes) played simultaneously can result in four notes (frequencies) at the output. The two original frequencies, plus the sum and the difference. Things get even more cluttered with three or four frequencies present at the input.

---

How much is the tone seen at the output of a guitar itself a factor in the resultant tone when we operate in this region? I venture to say, rather little. Yes, it will still matter but what we're doing later in the signal chain has a more profound effect.

Anyway, enough rambling for now ...