there are lots of great guitarists. but fewer who's licks are instantly recognizable. why is it that some guitar players have a distinctive sound and others don't? there are some whom i can recognize, even if i've never heard the particular track before. what makes them that way?

some that come to mind:

J. Mascis (perhaps the most distinctive guitar player?)
Trey Anastasio (whether you hate or love phish, he has a distinctive sound)
S. Malkmus (also very distinctive)
Carlos Santana (i hate his music, but i recognize the riffs right away)

who else?

I've always thought that Isaac Brock has a pretty individual style

Matthew Friedberger from the Fiery Furnaces also has an interesting style that is easily recognizable

Bill Frisell.
Django Reinhardt.
Wes Montgomery.
Barney Kessel.
Pete Townshend.
Andres Segovia.
Bruce Gilbert.
David Gilmour.
Maximillian Eider.

David Gilmour. His tone, languid playing, and sense of melody are all very distinctive. I was listening to a Paul McCartney CD of my gf's on a road trip that I'd never heard before.....up comes a song (can't remember which), and as soon as the guitar solo starts, I go "that's gotta be Gilmour". Checked the credits on allmusic the following day. I was right.

brock is a great suggestion

anastasio's a killer player but i do feel like a lot of his tone is taken from santana.

as a guitarist and one who particularly loves tone, i'll add a lot more to this thread later, but the two big ones in this department for me personally are garcia and corgan. both are instantly recognizable, unique, and brilliant.

Tom Scholz - Boston


Mark Knopfler

Frank Zappa

i feel like knopfler's tone has changed way too much to be distinctive. still a great player though.

Steve Albini motherfuckers. The best guitar sound ever.

8 replies and no mention of Van Halen's "brown sound"?!?

Marc Ribot
George Harrison
Mick Jones
Roger McGuinn
Tom Verlaine

Billy Corgan has the coolest, most distinct, original sound of any guitar I have ever heard.

Good call on Verlaine.

Mick Ronson
Robert Fripp
Bob Mould
Phil Manzanera
Johnny Marr

Love em or hate em, The Edge's guitar sound is not only instantly recognizable, but I dont think anyone has managed to rip it off yet.

Plus, at one time Id say Peter Buck.

Dave Pajo
Duane Denison

Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine)
Link Wray

I've said this before, but that sound was pioneered by John Martyn, who is criminally underrated. If anything, the Edge stole Martyn's sound.

Oh wow. The More You Know, I guess.
Thanks for that, I shall look him up.

You wouldnt happen to have a representative mp3 you could up would you? He seems pretty obscure.

I used to be the guy who got slapped with that comment.

Most distinctive--Chuck Berry, Jerry Garcia, Eddie Van Halen, Carlos, Hendrix, and yes--Jimmy Page--maybe ya'll don't recognize Jimmy's style, but listen to "Sunchine Superman" again, and let me know.

And BB has a very distinctive tone as well.

I was just looking for some of his stuff-- it's at home. If you run across a copy of an album called Sweet Little Mysteries, grab it. It's a compilation of his stuff on Island Records and it is superb.

In other guitarists, I'd also pick Danny Gatton for his tone and his blend of country, jazz, and blues. Sometimes in the same phrase. 88 Elmira St. is a great record.

Whassis... the guy who played for McCartney, post Wings and in the Pretenders... Robbie McIntosh. He's got that ability to ape any guitarist he wants, but his own stuff is so distinctive, particularly in his picking.

The John Martyn you need is Solid Air and One World.

"Solid Air" (track) is the best place to dive in. It's about Nick Drake.

I just watched this, and I really liked it

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Robin Guthrie of Cocteau Twins.

I actually came back in here to post that

Pretty good.

The Edge is the first guitar player to come to mind for me. U2 guitar is instantly recognizable.

Mark Knopfler
Robert Smith
Johnny Marr
Doug Marsch

though i'd have to say mascis might have the most distinctive, though i'm not always a fan of it

he plays on the excellent 'run devil run' album, but i wouldn't say it sounds like him. then again, i don't know shit about the guitar

Wait a minute here. This is guitar SOUNDS, correct?

Because I think you all got that confused with "Guitarist I like and think plays well", which is totally different.

Sounds is stuff like:

Corgan - unique
Iommi - innovative
Cobain - original and new
Van Halen - stylings and sound

Etc.

This is guys who had distinctive guitar sounds.

i think the mascis and martsch aesthetics are pretty fucking similar (both great). doug frequently cites j. as a big part of his sound.

marsch is less muddy he goes to 8, mascis goes to 11

Yeah, half the guitarists you clowns referenced have nothing to do with the thread. A distinctive sound is 90% tone in this reporter's opinion, and I don't care how fast or slow you can play.
Ya know how you can hear a couple of notes and know that that is Miles Davis and no one else? That's what (unless I am mistaken) we be talking about.
First guitarist that springs to mind is BB King. You can hear one note and know that it's BB; there's just nobody that sounds like him. Carlos Santana, previously mentioned, has the same quality, except that all his solos sound the same. Elmore James plays slide like nobody else. Early Jeff Beck is unmistakeable. Ditto Roger McGuinn. Eddie Van Heflin has a sound all his own, too, but that hot-dogging bedroom guitarist style never did much for Mister Coolrock.
Surprised nobody mentioned Hendrix, who had a vibrato that was completely unique.

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Steve Motherfucking Albini, motherfuckers. His guitar tone is one of a kind awesome. Without it, so much of Shellac and Big Black's catalog would be worthless. Easily my favorite guitar tone ever.

pretty great video. Albini is a scary dude.

The winner!

From a bass playing perspective, Peter Hook would win hands down (well, maybe tied with Les Claypool).

yeah Peter Hook is the best.

Jimi Hendrix and Johnny Marr are the most instantly-recognizeable for me.

Big Country had a unique guitar sound.

STOP LAUGHING. D:

I read that Knopfler recently has been playing a Les Paul, while for most of his career he played a Fender, hence the change in tone -- but on either guitar he's very distinctive -- I'd also list Jeff Beck, Albert Lee, Roy Buchanan, David Gilmour, Pete Townshend, and George Harrison.

i think the differences between his playing and tone on his groups 3 biggest hits (sultans of swing, romeo and juliet, money for nothing) is evidence enough.

fucking ridiculously awesome player nonetheless. the versatility of his tone is one of his crowning features.

Stevie Ray Vaughan

Luther Perkins
Willie Nelson
Clarence White

Martin was great. But don't forget Gilmour's guitar work on the track "Echoes" that really sparked that entire sound in a rock format (eh,I'm not sure what the hell Echoes is).


Gilmour pretty much developed that sound, got bored with it, then came back to it on Run Like Hell 9 years later. He had much more to offer than just that.

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As for my list:

That's a pretty good list (especially if you lose David Gilmour). Glad that George Harrison got referenced; his Gretsch Country Gentleman/Vox sound is one of the classic guitar sounds of rock, George taking his love of Carl Perkins one step further and playing brilliant, melodic leads (e.g., "I Feel Fine", " And Your Bird Can Sing"). Later, I think he lost a lot his unique tone. Once you strap on a fuzz-tone, you sound like everybody else who plays through a fuzz-tone, which leads me to this hypothesis:

More devices= Less distinction.
Or, that thirty square feet of of pedals next to your shoe makes you sound more like the pedals and less like you. Many of the great tonal guitarists keep it real simple; a guitar and an amp, and that's their sound. Even Jeff Beck claims he only uses a Strat and a Marshall, and he gets some crazy-ass sounds. Other than the wah-wah, Hendrix also used a lot of restraint, although one has to wonder if the availability of product had something to do with that. He did, after all, use one of those noisy Uni-Vibes later on.

Also want to reference Chicawgee's own Michael Bloomfield; if you look up "under-rated guitarist" in the dictionary, there is a little photo of Mike, holding a "Bloomfield" coffee pot (his folks own the company that makes those; you see them at greasy spoons everywhere) . Not only a great honky blues guitarist, but his guitar work was an integral part of Dylan's rock conversion.

This thread has become a disabled love fest of who people like on guitar.

Yeah, man, he's great! (half the guitar players on these lists have nothing distinctive about their sound whatsoever).

As usual, Coolrock has the best posts in the thread.

This guy.

Robert Fripp, also.

NEIL YOUNG.

yeah, lots of great guitarists who don't have a distinctive sound, in my opinion.

but the Edge and David Gilmour are definitely distinctive.

a J. Mascis riff is just different. i don't what it is really. when the new Lemonheads album came out this year (which is underrated, i think), I thought to myself, damn that riff/solo really sounds like a dinosaur jr. riff. sure enough it was! i love it when that happens.

Corin Tucker from Sleater-Kinney has a really distinctive sound because her guitar sounds deeper and more like a bass than any other guitar player I've heard.