The Cult of Tone
When Premier Guitar’s Joe Coffey mentioned
the Cult of Tone concept, I was immediately
intrigued. As Joe put it, “A lot of people follow all the rituals involved with a certain tonal
belief system… They don’t question what the
deities apparently wrote in stone and they
don’t question what the preachers are preaching.” Whether or not we see it in ourselves,
we all know people who embrace their own
particular tone school of thought with the reverence and devotion of a religious zealot.
As a rule, I avoid discussions about religion
because it’s an incendiary topic that inevitably
angers somebody. Rest assured, we will not
drag God into this article. The goal here is
to explore why we embrace certain sounds
and examine the dogma of our secular beliefs
about what sounds good and bad. Whenever
the word “religion” appears anywhere, some
people immediately stop reading and start
threatening. To ensure nobody takes offense,
let’s define our terms using Dictionary.com:
re·li·gion – noun
1. a specific fundamental set of beliefs
and practices generally agreed upon by
a number of persons or sects
2. something one believes in and
follows devotedly
If you’ve ever struck up a conversation with the
patchouli-wearing cashier at Whole Foods, you
know that, for some, vegetarianism is in fact a
religion. My father, a devout Catholic, is privately an apostle of baseball. He and I have taken
several pilgrimages to the holy land—Yankee
Stadium—to partake in the communion of beer
and hot dogs. There are disciples of Star Trek,
upholders of the Jedi way, those committed
to Amway or Mary Kay, and then there’s us,
guitarists living the life of the faithful and steadfast, committed to our religion of tone. To any
other demographic, reading a three-part series
on the guitar tone would be about as exciting
as a ten-part BBC series on the history of laundry folding. Not us. We devour this stuff the
way others read Norman Vincent Peale study
guides. We devote a great deal of our time,
money, and both conscious and subconscious
thoughts to chasing a sound. We revere some
guitarists to the point of idolatry and unapologetic discipleship. In short, there is a religion of
tone. Can I get an “amen”?
The Six Sects of Six-String Orthodoxy
Our belief systems separate us into what could
be defined as denominations. Like any reli-
gion, there are sects that share the same basic
principles but differ widely on details—which
fractures them into separate factions or cults.
Though there are probably hundreds of small-
er splinter groups, the main denominations in
the religion of Tone are:
• Tele-evangelists
• Disciples of Paul (Les, that is)
• Southern Strat-tists
• Gretsch-itarians
• Church of the Pointy Headstocks
• The Hollowbody Rollers
Players tend to be loyal to their denomination;
they may visit others, but they tend to stick to
the church they came up in. And when one of
the faithful leaves our flock, we often experi-
ence a sense of betrayal. For instance, to this
day I can’t quite approve of Mark Knopfler
playing a Les Paul. I love his playing. I love Les
Pauls. I just don’t like them together. You’d
think 25 years would be long enough for me
to get comfortable with the switch, but it still
feels a bit like an infidelity. I felt the same
