Thick and thin guitar sounds

[Andy123]

Here's one for the Pit bull brains trust:
What makes a guitar tone sound thin and washed out? How do you avoid it?
Conversely, what makes a guitar tone sound fat/thick/full?

[fender3x]

That's an interesting question, particularly the way you put it. Thin is not necessarily bad. Robert Cray has a thinner tone than Ry Colder, but both have great tone.

A good thin tone will have crisp, full, maybe even chimey or jangly highs. Thin pickups are "bad" when the highs are harsh or unnatural sounding. They also don't tend to have the booty of a fat pickup.

Single coils tend toward the thin side, with P90s and Tele bridge pups more or less defining the fat end. Strats tend to sound thin to me. Not bad, but thin.

Fat pickups emphasize the lows--the booty. The highs are not always emphasized. Fat pickups tend to sound better overdriven. Humbuckers are often fat, but the highs can suffer or get filtered out somewhat. Bad ones, to me, sound washed out or a but dull.

The best pickups produce a full range of tones from high to low...so neither would sound washed out. But it is very hard to get a chimey sound out of fat LP humbucker or a fat booty out of a strat single coil.

Totally IMHO!

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[Andy123]

That's an interesting question, particularly the way you put it. Thin is not necessarily bad. Robert Cray has a thinner tone than Ry Colder, but both have great tone.

A good thin tone will have crisp, full, maybe even chimey or jangly highs. Thin pickups are "bad" when the highs are harsh or unnatural sounding. They also don't tend to have the booty of a fat pickup.

Single coils tend toward the thin side, with P90s and Tele bridge pups more or less defining the fat end. Strats tend to sound thin to me. Not bad, but thin.

Fat pickups emphasize the lows--the booty. The highs are not always emphasized. Fat pickups tend to sound better overdriven. Humbuckers are often fat, but the highs can suffer or get filtered out somewhat. Bad ones, to me, sound washed out or a but dull.

The best pickups produce a full range of tones from high to low...so neither would sound washed out. But it is very hard to get a chimey sound out of fat LP humbucker or a fat booty out of a strat single coil.

Totally IMHO!

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That's an interesting point. I don't mind the odd bit of funk, and a treble rich strat in that context sounds good-thin.

What inspired the post was seeing a local band playing a pub gig. There was a young guitarist clearly playing through his first guitar rig, as it was all entry level stuff. The sound seemed to lack "body" for want of a better word. It was loud enough, but seemed empty/hollow/lacked substance. I'm not sure it was the bottom end that was missing.

At the time I just figured "oh he's got cheapo crap pick ups plugged into a solid state amp". I didn't stop to think how/why those things would result in that sound.

At the other end of the spectrum I've been watching "That Pedal Show" on Youtube. They frequently plug a strat or tele into a valve amp (typically a Fender or Vox) and get a noticeably "fat" sound. Again I'm not entirely sure additional bottom end is purely the answer.

[wazkelly]

Cheap gear invariably sounds a bit dull and weakest link IMO is the amp. Very hard to get a good sound out of a crap one but a crap guitar through a higher end amp generally sounds much better.

When I think thin & washed out sounds Red Hot Chilli Peppers come to mind which is predominately achieved from using single coils....played out of phase also washes them out a fair bit too.

On the other hand fatter sounds can also be achieved with single coils (helped along through pedals & a decent valve amp), better with P90's, and subject to personal taste - fattest sound usually ends up on a Humbucker in the neck position. The more I play P90's the more I prefer their unique voice compared to HB's as they still have a bit of single coil clarity but a fuller bodied sound that is closer to a Humbucker. Plenty of comparison Videos on YouTube to give you an idea on how they sound.

[corsair]

It's an interesting and thought provoking topic, isn't it?!

The old "Fender = thin and Gibson = thick" adage of my youth still holds pretty true, although, as always, you do tend to get what you pay for.... up to a point! I have P90s, h/bs and s/cs at hand in the guitars I have out, all of which are running into the board and through to the computer with no amps in the signal chain at all and I have discovered that I have good sounding, "thick" singles and h/bs which don't really sound... well, like humbuckers!! I wonder if position of the pickup in the guitar makes a difference, and if the wood that they're mounted in has an affect?? I have a 1985 Matsumoku built Electra Phoenix X195 which is a s/h/s setup and it sounds mega with its' chimey singles and DiMarzio Super Distortion clone MMK45 humbucker which is splittable. The guitar body is of a maple butcher block construction with a bolt on neck.... superbly capable and versatile guitar.
I will allow that my old, valve Holden combo makes everything sound epic, and that the modern Behringer and Legacy I have sound quite different to it... the old Crate sounds different again, and much, much louder so take what you will from that!
My strat with the Toneriders is getting a bit of play at the moment, and for searing lead work, an old Aria Pro II LC440 with slightly underwound h/bs does it for me. At the moment.

[G-Axe]

To confound things a bit - you can plug a Gold Top into a Marshall and still get the worst guitar tone of all time:



Maybe the lesson is - don't let a pianist dial in your amp settings.

[wazkelly]

My old Marshall 50w 2x12 combo was fairly asthmatic with a hb equipped guitar but came to life when a Strat was plugged in. Being open backed may have been the culprit as my 100w Marshall through 4x12 slant front cab was the opposite.....feedback & tone heaven for any hb equipped guitar.

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[Marcel]

There's so much wrong with that Billy Joel clip, but there's also so much right with it...

Personally I'm no 'tone perfectionist'. Close enough is good enough. So long as the feel and the groove are there and those listening can "feel it" then being ultra true to tone is wasted effort. Mixed a few bands over the years and perfect true to song tone was never a luxury to be had, and nor did most punters care. One of those back yard bands played a seriously mean 'China Grove' where the whole room week in week out got up and danced. Despite the undersized PA and DI of the bass, keyboards and the rhythm guitar people just loved it and wanted to dance to it... go figure

If it's Blues music in a bar and it helps people swallow their drink of choice, or it's a dance song and people get up off their chairs and shuffle their feet, or it's a Jazz tune and the Chardonnay tastes so much better... then it's all good.

The HB for fat and SC for thin as a very loose rule does work if you want to copy someone else, however the amp/cab you're playing through can also have a massive impact.

It was only this morning while my wife was out for a few hours that I let my JVM210 combo stretch its 100W legs with some Strat stimulation. OMG did the SRV fill the room, grabbing hold of my shoulders and giving me a full body southern USA shake.... I know it wasn't SRV, not even close, but it was inspirational and I loved every second that I played, wall to wall Strat tone for days and then some.... I think I even wrote me a new tune/riff.... I know the neighbor grinding steel in his shed went silent.!

That's my Dime in the pond...

[Andy123]

My first time in a proper recording studio, the engineer demonstrated the difference between a valve amp and a solid state one. It was an attempt to get me to shut down my cheap shitty amp and use a proper one for the recording - which obviously worked.

From that point I assumed SS amps sounded thin and crap, and valve amps sounded awesome. That is until I discovered Dimebag Darrel played through SS amps, as do the guys in Red Fang.

On top of that, I've now just heard a Gold Top through a Marshall sounding like a Magnum through a dimed hifi stereo. The world no longer makes sense. Up is down, down is up, I think I'll go have some toothpaste on toast and brush my teeth with vegemite.

[DrNomis_44]

A lot of it has to do with the way the tone is EQ-ed, if you EQ your tone so that there's quite a bit of lows and mids in it, but just enough highs in it so that it's clear enough without sounding ice-picky, that will sound pretty fat, if you EQ it so that there's lots of highs and less lows and mids, it'll sound a bit thin, I can make my Peavey Renown solid state amp sound fat or thin just by tweaking the tone control settings.

Some humbucking and single coil pickups can inherently sound a bit thin if they are wound to produce a low output, and some really hot wound humbucking pickups, like some of the Ibanez Infinity pickups I've had, can sound a bit cold and thin too, the Tonerider Hot Classics I've got in my Custom Tele definitely sound fat to my ears, when I first bought my Mexican Tele, I thought the pickups in it were going to sound a bit thin, and was pleasantly surprised when I played it through one of my amps after putting a fresh set of strings on it and gave it a good setup.

Whether a pickup is fat or thin sounding, is something that is highly subjective, what sounds fat or thin to one person might not sound fat or thin to another.

I seem to remember reading somewhere that Dimebag Darell used to use Bill Lawrence humbucking pickups on his guitars to get his sound with the Randall solid state amps he used.