Does Tone Affect the Quality of a Cover?

[Autumn]

CALLING ALL TONE POLICE!!
THIS IS YOUR MOMENT TO SHINE

To what extent does the tone of a cover affect its quality?
If someone rips a solo note for note but the tone is nothing like the original or it's recorded with a Nokia 3310, do you still consider it pleasing to listen to?
Why or why not?

 

[Dominik Gräber]

Well Bad Audio quality will make your Video Look unprofessional. Besides that, If it's Just your Tone from your amp you still can Go places. They say Tone is in the fingers and it's true. That's why Zack wylde can kill it on a Hello Kitty guitar and The Dooo slays it on a Squier.
It also works the other way around. Give a beginner who has been playing for a Couple of Month Studio quality Gear and an expensive Gibson, music man or whatever. If they try to Play a Syn solo without Vibrato the Gear won't make them Sound professional either.

 

[idssdi]

I do fundamentally believe tone is in the fingers so all you can really do is get ball park tone. Audio quality is just the difference between professional and unprofessional really.

For example, for avenged you need a high gain tone but doesn't nececarily have to be a copy of Syn's and this counts for everything else. Most of the time I just watch for gain levels and change nothing else about my settings when I record a cover, I mean it's me playing it isn't it?

 

[Alicia Willis]

I do fundamentally believe tone is in the fingers so all you can really do is get ball park tone. Audio quality is just the difference between professional and unprofessional really.

For example, for avenged you need a high gain tone but doesn't nececarily have to be a copy of Syn's and this counts for everything else. Most of the time I just watch for gain levels and change nothing else about my settings when I record a cover, I mean it's me playing it isn't it?

“It’s me playing it, isn’t it” — absolutely love this !

 

[Ed Seith]

As others have said, there's a big difference between tone and audio quality, so I won't get into that.

Sticking with tone, however, I can tell you that I have 4 basic tones: super clean, clean with a little breakup, heavy rhythm, and lead. Just about everything I do is with one of those four tones. I have continued to work on them, tweaking, etc, but I NEVER customize a tone for a cover.

And the funny thing is, the same tone that I used for a ripping lead I also used for the solo in "Mother" by Pink Floyd, and there were a couple comments on that post that I "nailed the tone."

It was my "standard lead tone," and had about as much in common with what David Gilmour used as a Hershey bar has in common with jelly beans.

Moral of the story - tone is there to inspire YOU, the player, to get into the moment and play your very best. Most people can't really tell the difference and besides, an awful lot of what people call "tone" really is in the fingers.