Five tone myths I used to believe.
I was wrong about most of these for at least a decade. Some of you still are.
I am not going to pretend I have always been right. I have an embarrassing history of confident wrong opinions about tone, gear, and signal chain that I have only slowly walked back. Here are five of them. If you currently believe any of these, I am not judging you. I was you. Possibly worse than you.
Myth one: tubes sound 'warmer' than solid state in any meaningful, blind-test-survivable way. They don't. A well-designed solid-state amp into a good speaker through good mics will fool you and fool me. What tubes do is compress and saturate in a way that feels good under your hands and that the player notices more than the audience. That is real. That is worth something. But the audience cannot hear it. The audience can hear your speakers, your room, your hands, your song. The audience cannot hear your 6L6s. I spent four years thinking otherwise. I was wrong.
Myth two: cables matter at audible levels for short runs. They don't. Buy decent cables and stop reading the threads. The difference between a $30 Mogami and a $200 Vovox over a six-foot run is not audible in a mix and is barely measurable in an anechoic chamber. Long runs (over 25 feet) and balanced lines for synths and active electronics — different conversation. Your guitar to your pedal? It does not matter. Spend the money on a better preamp.
Myth three: relicing changes tone. It does not. It changes how the guitar feels under your forearm and how it photographs. That is fine. Be honest about why you are paying for it. Myth four: NOS tubes are reliably better than current production. They are reliably more expensive. The ratio of 'genuinely better' to 'placebo plus survivor bias' is closer to 30/70 than 70/30. Myth five — and this is the one I lost the most money on — vintage pickups are reliably better than good modern ones. They are not. They are reliably more inconsistent. Sometimes that inconsistency is magic. Most of the time it is just inconsistency.
Noor (noor.haddad) made a comment once about her oud through a Twin that has stuck with me: 'I stopped trying to chase a tone and started trying to make a sound.' That is the whole thing. The myths are about chasing. Sounds are about making.
'The audience cannot hear your 6L6s. The audience can hear your hands.'
— Johnny
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