An interesting exercise. Tone competition.

Rog · Post by **Rog** » Thu Jul 29, 2004 8:09 am

There are many guitarists out there who are passionate about tone (bassists to a lesser extent). There are also many arguments about tone - which guitar gives which tone etc. (note: not evaluating 'best' just 'voice')

A few years back we did an exercise with this. We set up two valve amps - a 100W Marshall half stack and a Fender Twin Reverb (no fx) on a stage in a country hall. We set the amps to mid-tone positions (since no-one could agree on amp settings) and ran their two input leads to an A/B box.

About 6-7 guitarists set their guitars to their fav settings and left them on stands on stage. In all, there were 20 guitars on stage - representing several makers.

Then the curtains were closed, so no-one could see what was happening on stage.

All of us - about a couple of dozen musos, sat out at the far end of the hall and the guitarists took it in turns to go up on stage and play a few bars of the same song on every guitar (it didn't matter that each guitarist played a different song - they just had to play the same song, the same way, on every guitar and through both amps at random).

In the audience, we had a sheet with the guitars listed down one side and the two amps across the top. As each riff was played, we had to guess which guitar and which amp etc. There was one other person on stage - noting which guitar/amp combination etc.

The results showed that most of us could tell the difference (most of the time) between the amps, but no-one got every guitar correct and (although I hate stats) only nine of the assembled musos (representing a wide age range) got more than half right. That is far worse than guessing.

I suggest to you that this is a fun thing to do and quite revealing, since it clearly showed us that, although we swore such and such a pickup or guitar made a huge difference, we really couldn't tell that difference with any certainty - even when we were listening critically.

Funnily enough, the younger musos (who we'd expect had better ears) were the most upset at this, since they were the ones who predicted getting close to 100% right! The best result was actually from a keyboard player (not me) who got a score of 62%. The worst was 25% (rounded off with Swedish rounding of course).

If you can put together a bunch of musos and guitars - even better with several amps - why not try this out? Make it a competition, maybe.

Its a fun way to pass a Sunday afternoon and then everyone can get throughly pissed/stoned and brag about how good they were.

If you do it - please post the results - I'd be interested to see them.

Rog · Post by **Rog** » Mon May 01, 2006 1:52 pm

So no-one tried this, eh?

ash · Post by **ash** » Mon May 01, 2006 2:21 pm

That would be a fun game. Blind beer guessing is similarly inaccurate according to super scientific studied in pubs. We are all full of it!

sopachrga · Post by **sopachrga** » Mon May 01, 2006 2:25 pm

That actually sounds like a good way to help you pick a guitar, without have the issues of name/brand bias involved.

sgt mukuzi · Post by **sgt mukuzi** » Thu May 11, 2006 12:43 pm

great idea
why dont we do blind listening tests at the next get together
if i`m invited

jimi · Post by **jimi** » Thu May 11, 2006 3:42 pm

sounds like alot of bother to set it all up really. You can have just as much fun at the pub with a whole lot of glasses, a few bottles of heineken, steinlager, mac's gold, export gold, becks, grolsch, etc etc... and see how many beer snobs can actually taste the difference between the beers they pay a premium for and the beers they turn their nose up at.