I have been sitting back watching all of the conversation on tone and find most of it quite stimulating. Each one of us hears a tone in our head and that is the tone we strive for. For some it is in the guitar, or the pickups, or the amp, or even our hands, etc. There is no one definitive thing that is "The Tone" for all.
The best each of us can do is to share what we have done (or tried) to get our tone and hope that something we have done will help someone else find theirs.

We, as guitar players are individuals and there a countless options each of us can use and that is what makes playing a guitar so much fun!!! Being able to share these options with such a great Fender Community is just as fun!!!

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I didn't Lose my mind, I traded it for this guitar.

So tone is still about the player right?

Because the player has the intent?

I mean could there be intent with no player?

Or could there ever be a player with no intent?

I think its interesting take on how intent is the basis of tone, but without the player, there are no intentions. Intention may focus the tone, but a person has to come up with what their intentions are...so to me, tone is still primarily the player, though their intentions do influence them.

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RAMA LAMA FA FA FA

To be most precise about this, what lies beneath this idea of the player's intent" is a larger, much more unpopular idea:

Practice is more important than shopping. Hands and brains trump gear. Note choice is WAY more important than true bypass. Understanding the modes beats ash vs. alder, bone vs. Corian, whether you can hear enough difference between Kinman's and Fender SCN's to warrant spending money and ripping up your guitar AGAIN when you COULD have spent that time developing your intent as a player.

In "Zen GUitar," the author talks about mindfulness... not just grabbing your instrument and jumping in with the stuff you know, but picking up the guitar and mentally preparing yourself to make music: taking a moment to be mindful of your intent.

IMO, this will take you miles farther than figuring out what you think is the right answer to the endless "rosewood vs. maple" debate.

That should go without saying. You can't buy "intent" at GC.

I never reach My intent because I am always striving for something better.

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The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.

Thomas Jefferson

so true, all of this. it kinda reminds me of the hype with relic guitars and/or artist signature gear, and how so many people, like trained seals, went out and bought the SRV No. 1 clone, wear-and-tear and all, or the John Mayer strat, or drop a boatload of cash on a Dumble amp. its like everybody's trying to be exactly like Artist X, trying to achieve the same sound. i could look up random videos of people playing guitar on youtube and i'd probably find a handful of John Mayer, SRV, Hendrix wannabe's

i play through a solid state amp, and honestly, i've had people approach me and almost crap their pants when they see i dont have one tube in my signal path. im not trying to say i'm a Godly guitar player, but i do know how to use my gear to get good sounds.

Jeff Healey uses a squier, not very conventional is it? but he's amazing anyway. odd, isn't it?.......

how about Trey Anastasio. his rig is as personalized and unique as it gets. just pushes a bunch of rackmounts through 2 stereo cabinets, and he sounds awesome. great bass response nonetheless with those big speakers.

i think many players would sound better if they would just focus on being THEMSELVES, not trying to imitate. you might argue that their "intent" is to sound like someone else, but they still fail in the end to do so, because tone really is in the hands, and your hands will only sound like your hands, not SRV's, even if you play on a 62 fender strat through a tube screamer into a Twin Reverb. embrace it, and you will succeed

A player's intent is not a destination, and it's not static or absolute.

You keep using the word "better:" better guitars, better playing. This deeply-ingrained concept of continual upward progress toward an ideal is quite a Western idea. In some Eastern cultures, it would be considered a virtue for a musician to strive always to approach the instrument as a beginner, with what the Zen monks call "no gaining idea." Progress, if any, happens naturally through practice, but iimprovement is not the goal of practice. The practice and the goal are one thing.

So even progress can't be considered universally "better."

Still, this is pretty far afield.

Wayne Dyer fan?

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The more you drink, the better we sound

Lets not forget though that those Zen monks bought such great ideas as no-mind to the world. Whilst great for martial arts chi-sau in particular sounds too much like autopilot for guitar. I'd offer that samurai philosophy is more suited to tone. Live like your dead so you dont fear death could easily become play like you sound great, one day you will.

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Niki: Indeed. A great way to bravely face one's inadequacies as a player, too. As the master says, "When it is cold, let it be so cold that it kills you." I submit that Zen is widely misunderstood as a philosophy of coldhearted detachment... this is not so.

mjh, I never heard of Wayne Dyer. If this sounds like him, I suspect HE has certainly heard of Suzuki-roshi. I think the Westerner who has come closest to getting it right is psychologist David Brazier, who wrote "The Feeling Buddha."

Relevant quote i found whilst reading up on the master of tone Mr Keith Richards.



found here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Richards#cite_note-biggestbang-27

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No no and no