No one cares what guitar you play

[fazool]

Between stage experiences and audience experiences, I've had the awakening that the audience doesn't even notice what guitar you are playing.

Only other guitar geeks care. And they aren't your audience.

[oldgeezer]

Yep. This times 1000.

[The Growler]

Absolutely. There are a few exceptions that aren't guitar geeks, but most don't care.

[gibpicker]

Absotutely.

[Bear Davis]

Originally Posted by fazool

Between stage experiences and audience experiences, I've had the awakening that the audience doesn't even notice what guitar you are playing.

Only other guitar geeks care. And they aren't your audience.

Absolutely correct!

I would also add that they triple don't care what pickup, strings, amp or picks you use either

I have a very close friend that plays 7-8 gigs a month that obsesses over his live tone and he constantly plays around with all of the above. From time to time I remind him that no matter what he does the crowd hears "a guitar...."

[ITViking]

In my limited experience, a good musician can make a cheap instrument sound good to some degree. Sure, spending more money on an instrument generally gets you better quality, with an ever increasing measure of diminishing returns for the money spent. In the end, more expensive instruments are often just much easier to play and make sound good. A good musician can make up for a lot of deficiency in a lesser instrument.

The point of where I'm going with this is that instrument itself only has a measure of impact on the final product of a good musician, and the average audience only cares about that final product - not all the ingredients or why you chose them.

Personally, I think that's a good thing. The musician gets the credit, not the guitar. If only it worked that way in photography. If you take fabulous photo everyone asks about your camera, when they should be asking how you got the shot.

[Ben M.]

Great! I guess I swapped out my bone nut for tusq for nothing!
Thanks a lot Internet "experts"

And don't even get me started on bridge pins!!!!!

[woodbox]

Reluctantly, I must agree.

This became graphically clear just recently,
and although I’d love to write out the details,
I’ll just say fazool is right .. again.

[Yrksman]

The more I like the sound of the guitar I’m playing the better I play and sing.

[Paraclete]

Hahaha! I didn’t invest in nice guitars for my audience.. they are there for the music I play, not the status of my instruments. It’s for my own enjoyment and personal motivation....hey, it’s not always all about the audience! That said, I think they do notice on some level, but not in a way that most can (or will) articulate.

[RalphH]

I found that learning to sing helped with guitar OCD as it gave me something more important to worry about.

All the audience really cares about is the singing and the difference between and Martin D-28 and a cheap banjo is marginal at best to most people

That said, people will hear differences they can't properly attribute or articulate. I have a deep voice and for me, singing over my strummed Taylor is a nightmare. It's just very bright and attention grabbing compared to my voice. If I try to sing over my GS mini I will be told i need to sing louder, which doesn't seem to happen with my much more mellow hummingbird, even though I'm fairly sure the mini is not actually louder than the full sized dread.

So as where a expericned guitarist would listen to an A/B and say "that Taylor is too bright for you", my wife would say "those guitars sound exactly the same, but you didn't sing as well when you were playing the small brown one."

[stephenT]

I play every week in a big city dive bar that gets a fair share of musicians/players etc. passing through and most nights someone will ask me about my (electric) guitar.

And often on acoustic gigs too, it doesn't go much further than brand and model. But with electrics every once in awhile someone will ask about what pickups.

But I'm a guitar player, that's all I do. So I'll get guys (usually) wanting to talk what guitar, etc.

But no one has asked "what nut material" that I recall.

[Wade Hampton]

I’ve always cared more about the tone that I get than my audiences have. I also care enough to keep my strings fresh and my tuning gears correctly adjusted.

Just because the members of an audience may not know exactly what’s wrong if I’m playing with my instruments out of tune or what’s causing that weird buzz that’s coming through the PA (it’s probably that neon beer sign plugged into the same circuit as the PA,) they can tell that the music doesn’t sound as good as it could.

Even if they don’t say anything specific about it.

So it’s perfectly obvious why non-musicians don’t know or even remotely care about some of the topics that generate endless, sometimes contentious threads on forums like this one (bridge pins, anyone?) They don’t know and - you’re right - they don’t care.

But some musicians have a more technical bent than others, and I’ve always been a gearhead who WANTS to know what makes these instruments work and sound the way they do.

It’s true that I occasionally roll my eyes at some of the minutia that gets argued over on this and other online guitar forums, but the solution to that is easy: just skip those threads on topics that bore you.

That’s what I do. Not all of these topics require urgent attention, or at least not urgent attention from me (and possibly you.) But they’re topics of importance for some folks, so why begrudge them their passion? It’s not as though anyone’s putting a gun to our heads and forcing us read any of this stuff...

Hope that makes sense.


Wade Hampton Miller

[JTFoote]

True enough. I've had people walk by and look at whatever guitar I'm playing, but no one has ever asked me about it. No one has ever commented on the sound, either. They might talk about what songs they liked, and they often say something if they like my voice. But as for the guitar, all they notice is that I was playing ... something guitar-shaped, that they "might" say is pretty because it is shiny. But even that only happens once in a blue moon.

You might think, that once in a great while, a fellow guitar geek might make a comment or two, like, "Wow, I like/hate/am ambivalent about the sound of your guitar! Is that a ......?"

But, no.

Although, in retrospect, a decade ago, I did mention that it was a Gallagher - once - to a crowd, and after the usual references to the comic, Gallagher (with his Sledge-O-Matic) I was asked, in a wry, sceptical tone, if it was one of those cheap Chinese guitars. I said, "No, it's a Tennessee flat top box." But as the song says, I might as well have been spitting into the wind, considering the reaction. Which was, well, exactly nothing.

Actually, if they are looking closely enough at my guitar, I might get the sneaking suspicion that they are giving some thought to getting up and playing around on it when I'm on a break. With or without permission. Which usually gets the guitar a case break while I'm taking mine.

If someone ever did say something genuinely intelligent and discerning about the guitar, then I'd be afraid of being mugged and robbed after the gig.

... JT

[fd943]

I have noticed that I seem to get along with some guitars better than others.
The good ones just understand what I’m trying to say with my music..they “get me” I know guitars are just wood and steel but I swear they all seem to have different personalities. The better we understand each other the better the music is. I’m not struggling to make it understand.
Another thing I’ve noticed...no matter what I play or how much it cost..they all sound like me!