How to Get the Best Electric Guitar Tone for Blues Music

As a musical art form, the blues provide a very personal, subjective way to express taste, preference, rhythm and feel when you play guitar. Everyone's experience is different, but each depends on the tone that you get, whether playing acoustically or with amps. Amps provide sound and tone and those are the essential elements in creating the blues experience for your listeners.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

1. Decide what kind of sound you're going for, or what sound most attracts you when you listen to your favorite blues artists. Each artist plays what he or she likes and often you can tell a musician's work by the tone his particular amps put forth. Volume, gain and other considerations come into play.

2. Test several amps before you buy them. Large music stores are very accommodating to musicians and you should be able to try a large variety of amps with varying guitars to find the tone and feel that are right for you.

3. Realize that the guitar/amp combination is important. The way a guitar sounds with one amp will be very different with another. An amp itself can feel different with different guitars.

4. Consider testing and buying a Fender Telecaster, models '52 or '72. They seem to get a lot of attention from those in the world of the blues. Again, playing the blues is a very subjective experience and your own personal factors must be taken into account. You may want deep and throaty heavy beats, or a faster, lighter sound.

5. Check out the Peavey series or the Pignose amps and go for a tube amp of low wattage for a satisfying tone. That, combined with a good Fender or Les Paul from the '70s or before, can work well together for you.

Tips & Warnings

• It's all about personal choice. Listen to what you like, mimic what you choose to, but always be aware and ready to let your own voice speak as you play with the amps controls and the variations on string technique that you can develop.

Resources

• A source for buying Pignose amps.