Jim Lill videos - everything you've ever read about tone is probably BS

Ah, so a Fender sounds just like a Marshal?

Does he have a video that demonstrates how all speakers sound alike? I’d be interested in watching.

Jim has a whole video on sustain - and before he even gets really started on where sustain comes from - he demonstrates that virtually every guitar has WAY more than enough sustain out of the box. In his test, the worst sustain of his test group was still 35 seconds. , and then he demonstrate how long a sustain you might realistically need (~4 seconds). So if even the worst option gives you way more than enough - why would you care about trying to increase that, right? Guitar (and bass) people can be seriously irrational about equipment, can’t we?

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I see it a lot in Rock songs, this is a snip from AC/DC “It’s a Long Way to the Top.” Six bars of sustain seem to last forever…

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He has a video where he delves into every major variable of an amp that effects tone - which is different from a speaker for sure, but that’s as close to a speaker comparison as I’ve seen from him. The big takeaway from amps are that distortion and EQ (and the order they are applied) matters way more than anything else like construction of cabinet or circuit types.

Seems like a long time. The math for Long Way to the Top says:

  • Beats-per-minute: 136 BPM
  • Beats-per-second: 2.2667 Hz
  • Length of 1 beat: 0.4412 second = 441 msec
  • Length of 1 bar (4 beats): 1.7647 second

So that 6 bar note clocks in at 10.59 seconds - long time for sure. Way less than your bass is capable of though.

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You’ll never get a clean tone from a Marshal like you will from a Fender. Now, if you want to sound like Jimmy Hendrix or Eddie Van Halen, that doesn’t matter.
There’s a gazillion videos that illustrate these differences.
In conclusion, you’ll never get a cleaner sound than a Strat through a Fender amp. What you do with it after that, well, that’s preference, but there’s a reason Strats are so popular, and clean tone is the reason.

Andertons does a really nice demo with two Vox amps, one with Celestion Greenbacks and one with Alnico Blues.

What an amazing discovery …

Tone shaping in term of frequencies (EQ), gain stages (distorsion), and the order of them : that’s technically the definition of a preamplifier, which is exactly made to shape a tone and make different amps sound different.

Also I really don’t like those demos where the guys consider that the only thing that matter is the final sound that you get. You can make a full solid-state Marshall 1959 (Super Lead Plexi) circuit sound very close to an actual Marshall 1959, but it wont’ feel the same at all when you’re playing it. Because tubes work at much higher voltages and are simply very quick in the transcients, which makes tube amps way more sensitive than solid state amps. It’s not something that you can demonstrate on a Youtube video, it needs to be experimented in person.

I won’t talk again about my position considering woods in a vibrating instrument made out of wood …

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That is why you should always keep a kazoo in your gig bag.

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Actually there aren’t. There are a gazillion videos out there that say they’re comparing them, but they don’t control for variables like EQ and distortion. Watch Jim’s video. He makes a Marshall sound exactly like a Fender sound exactly like a Vox just by controlling EQ and distortion. He’s kind of the first person to ever do videos that actually control for variables and give you samples to listen to - which is why Wired magazine and other national outlets are paying attention to him.

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The decay of my P VS my J is very noticeable over three seconds. Of course, if you’re feeding back, maybe it wouldn’t?

There’s a really good video of Marcus Miller talking about his sessions with Aretha Franklin.
I don’t think that sustain through feedback was an option in the studio. Again what tone ARE YOU looking for? I’m not looking for a consensus, I’m looking for what I like.

Sorry, I guess I was wrong.
Most big names in guitars must just be cork sniffers after all.

Do a search for ‘clean sound’ and then tell me how much distortion and fuzz Mississippi John Hurt used.
Again, go to JHS Pedals and listen to some videos of them comparing overdrive pedals and tell me they all sound the same.

This stuff doesn’t all sound the same to me, but I am sure that there are some people who do think it all sounds the same.

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I know you’re being sarcastic (which is cool - no worries at all). But yes. Exactly. That’s the point. As Jim recounts, “writing about music is like dancing about architecture”. If you control for variables, even these big name luthiers, artists and manufacturer’s can’t tell the difference. Exactly like the cork-sniffing sommeliers who can’t even tell the difference between red and white wine when they’re actually put to a test.

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I’m only talking about amps here, man. Not pedals. Not artists. Not overdrive.

All I’m saying is that you can make a Marshall sound exactly like a Fender sound exactly like a Vox by just controlling EQ and distortion. And that if you do that, Leo Fender and Jim Marshall and the pope and a computer analysis program won’t be able to tell them apart. (If you watch Jim’s video you can actually see him adjust EQ and distortion to flatten out the curve so that the computer audio analysis between all the amps matches. Once he does that, they sound identical.)

The takeway message isn’t that the amps are the same - they clearly aren’t. The takeaway message, for amps, is that eq and distortion matter way more than anything else. And Jim never says this, but after seeing how much those two variables matter a discriminating person might come to the conclusion that you could also make your $500 Fender Rumble sound like a $5000 Marshall by tweaking EQ and distortion. If you watched a computer audio analysis while you tweak it - you could get it dead on perfect. Just like the makers of modelling amps, pedals and plugins are doing.

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Ok, I don’t trust the pope, so that’s your deal.

Yes, I agree that if you overdrive a tube amp hard enough, you won’t be able to tell what speaker is in the cabinet.

So, because your protagonist can induce three amps to sound the same in an extreme overdriven condition, they’re all the same.
I’ll consider that next time I’'m playing ‘Looking This Way’ through my Fender Blues III amp with the V70 speaker. “THESE THING ALL SOUND THE SAME!”
Now I know it would sound the same through a Fender Twin with Greenbacks.

I’m not being sarcastic
If this guy knows so much more than EVERY PERFORMER out there on how to get sound, he must be right.
Pete should go back to Marshal, he’d still sound the same. Might as well ditch the Strat and go back to the SG as well.
Oh wait, pickups make a difference, but once the amp is overdriven, they don’t, got it!

Over and out! :smile:

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Hey @K_Miller, that’s not even remotely what he did. Not even close. Can’t believe it took me until now to realize that you didn’t actually watch any of the videos. (Seems obvious in retrospect). Bad on me for not realizing that sooner. It wasted both our time, sorry about that. So I’m just gonna check out. If you want to watch the videos and PM me, I’m happy to talk about them. Take care.

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for some reason, whenever we get on a Jim Lill thread, things devolve a bit. Something about tonewood makes people a bit touchy.

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Sorry about that @Wombat-metal - didn’t realize what was going on there for an embarrassingly long time. :man_facepalming: Not sure I’ve ever encountered trolling on BB before. :face_with_diagonal_mouth:

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just a casual 18 bars… :rofl:

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