A hollow body guitar! That and good technique... I'm in the 'tone is all in the fingers' camp I'm afraid. I don't really get on with pedal boards and try to keep it as minimal as possible. On the back of that though, I think a decent amp is an integral part of the perfect setup and a fairly large part of the overall tone.
So my secret to good tone is...
1. Player/Technique
2. Hollow body guitars (Although not if Ted Nugent is playing one)
Pick your top 2 ingredients for good tone. I'm sure there will be varying opinions depending on person/genre...
Comments
Human ability (musical sense, fingers, etc)
Analogue signal management (wood, strings, pickups, cables, analogue pedals, valves, speaker cones, magnets, etc)
Supportact said: [my style is] probably more an accumulation of limitations and bad habits than a 'style'.
One thing I found improved my tone - and this was after a good 20-odd years of playing - was a stronger left hand. Really working those vibratos and bends rather than just bending to pitch and wondering why it didn' sound the same as when, for example, SRV did it or BB King.
Theory/musical understanding. Some people have "the knack of the tunesmith" others like me have to work on the mechanics of it. Technique allows you to get from A to B faster and in a wider variety of ways, but as they say in the jazz world - if you don't have the vocabulary, nobody wants to hear you talk bollocks really nicely.
Listening to how it fits into the mix.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
I think great tone can be an accident. Gibson in the fifties may well have been a happy coming together of:
A nice wood stash.
Very competent builders who developed their skills making high quality jazz guitars.
Ted McCarty and Seth Lover.
I think you can go through 50 guitars, cheap guitars, Mexico Fenders, and find one which is outstanding because of an accident. Maybe a refret with tall wire "just works" with that guitar, and importantly....... in your hands. It is yet another reason why I regret the ongoing replacement (by ebay) of second hand guitar shops.
For me - tone that I feel happy with came from: experience, listening, ditching all effects except delay, and a couple of guitars that have something. To find these - all you have to do is pick up 500 guitars and put back the 498 that don't have something.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Some interesting points you've made there. I have to admit I haven't made a conceited effort to see how differently I have set my amp in a band setting compared to playing at home. However, thinking about it I always to turn the bass up on my amp...