Creative individuals tend to view the term “formula” as a dirty word, but most styles of music have specific parameters and characteristics that define them. For several of the most common styles of popular music, the style itself is defined predominantly by the guitar tone. For example, while punk and metal rely on heavily distorted guitar, most music fans can tell the difference between the two as much as by how the guitar sounds as by how it is played.
While it would be nice to be able to buy just one guitar rig that could be used for every style of music, the reality is that guitarists usually need to rely on separate sets of building blocks to play various styles. Below are a few basic guidelines to consider when putting together a rig, whether you want to play jazz, blues, classic rock or metal.
JAZZ
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The generally preferred tone for traditional jazz is not too far from the sound of an archtop hollowbody acoustic guitar, only amplified to louder volume output to be heard over other instruments like drums, horns and electric bass and keyboards. The tonal palette for jazz expanded during the early Seventies with the emergence of jazz-rock fusion with guitar tones that would not be out of place on hard rock records of the day, and during the late Seventies and Eighties many players took tonal cues from funk and pop productions. However, over the last few decades most jazz guitarists have returned to more traditional tones as a base.
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The ideal electric guitar for traditional jazz is an archtop hollowbody with a “floating” pickup attached the end of the fingerboard instead of the top, to allow the top to vibrate and resonate with its full acoustic potential. Flatwound