Dear Sirs:

Please stop using the following terms immediately. They are trite and meaningless, and should be retired.

buttery
fat
crunchy
snap
growl
snarl
"chime-y"
cover all the bases
arsenal (or the singular "weapon")
vintage-style
"vintage-meets-modern"
vintage vibe
vintage tone
tone machine
tone monster
tone

Finding new ways to express these ideas will expand your mind and be of great service to your readers, as they might stop repeating them on-line.

Sincerely,

A Fan

PS: Please don't ever again call guitars "she" or make coy references to them as if you had some kind of love relationship going with them. Confusing guitars and women makes it sound like you've never been with a woman.

I dunno mate. My woman likes to stroke my snarly, chimey, tone machine and even admits that shes a beaut.

How are fat and thin? Do they qualify as valid sound descriptions?

My opinion is that a description is always subject to the person forming an opinion. Some terms are overused a lot. Then again cliches are so popular because their the hammer and adjustable spanner in the toolbox of language.

What do you propose such terms be replaced with?

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No no and no

I wish the guitar magazines would tell people the real deal about the mid-scooped, or scooped sound. Because the real deal is, the scoop sounds cool when you are by yourself, but 99 times out of 100, with Dimebag possibly being the 1 out of 100, but 99 times out of 100 when you use the mid scoop in a band scenario, drums and bass take up the low end, cymbals take up the high end, and you you run no or low mids in your EQ, and your guitar cannot be heard...When you play riffs or chords, your speaker craps out cause too much bass is going to it...When you play solos your guitar sounds weak because there is nothing giving your treble cajones since there are no mids to back up your high notes...Seriously, I think some kids out there think that the bass EQ knob turned on 10 will have an effect on your high E string beyond the 12th fret... I'm not talking about an EQ where the mids are around 3-5, I'm talking about kids who put the bass and treble on 8-10, and then put the mids on 0-1, then keep thinking they need to get another 4x12 cabinent or a 250 watt head (instead of the 150 watt one) in order to get heard.

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RAMA LAMA FA FA FA

Well, I kind of meant this as a joke, but.... I propose the audio related terms be replaced with actual audio terms, like "distortion in the low mids" or "a rise at 2 to 4K." Then guitar players will learn something about what there instruments are actually doing, and will stop all this mystical yak about woods and

As for the rest, they're just cliché. Especially "tone."

Perhaps for the sake of clarity, especially for less jargon-hip viewers, both...?

Well, I think we can be fairly certain Nikininja has been with a woman, at any rate...:

That made me fall about laughing!

SlapChop, I seem to recall that Proust constantly advised other writers to avoid cliches... like the plague. Whenever a cliche rears its head (oops) search for a different way of expressing the idea. Newly minted (oops, again) phrases stimulate the reader's reactions.

So with that in mind here's my review of a MIA Strat of mine:

...Excellent! With this new approach everyone can be perfectly clear what we're trying to communicate...

- C

EDIT: I can write but I can't spell...

Well, thank Bog Proust never wrote for Guitar Player! Or soon every eBay ad for a Strat would contain the words "fruit compote."

A gentleman who could write 27 pages on what it's like failing to fall asleep at night would either give you the most detailed, fresh and informative guitar review in history - or make you switch immediately to another magazine. Cliches not withstanding...

Like most others, I've read the first couple of volumes of his book... and then given up.

- C

Full on belligerent sarcasm makes me think of my tele's bridge pickup. Thats a superb bit of descriptive writing. I'm adopting that style after i've read a bit more.

BTW clipping is a more correct term than distortion. (JK).

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No no and no

Maybe we should just say everything has a certain je ne sais quois and leave it at that... I do take exception to the remark about referring to guitars as "she" (guilty as charged, I'm afraid), but mostly that's because that's how we talk about everything in Australia. She'll be right, mate!

I vote for "plangent" as the new "chime-y".

"Woody" is another... hey, check out my stick! It's brown and stick-y!

I'm off to experience the thinly-veiled menace of position four on my strat, now...