Unobtainable: Electric Guitar Gear & The Mythology of Tone

In recent years, tone has become arguably the most important keyword in the electric guitar lexicon, and the question of where an electric guitar’s tone is and ought to be produced is a hotly debated topic. Is a guitar’s tone a product of its wood? Its electronics? Or, as many have insisted, is tone really “in the fingers” of the performer? This dissertation offers a wide-ranging analysis of electric guitar gear via myths about how “good tone” ought to be produced. Employing both historical and ethnographic methodologies, I examine electric guitarists’ discourses about tone and follow the various instruments, technologies, and building materials they believe are most responsible for shaping a player’s unique sound. My research shows that often the source of an instrument’s “magic” is utterly mundane, like an inexpensive and mass-produced electronic component. By following the manufacture, circulation, and use of electric guitar gear (especially amplifiers, effect pedals, and electronic components), I reveal tone to be a complex system of values enmeshed not only in notions about sound and music making, but also ideologies of labor, race, gender, class, ecopolitics, and more. Chapter 1 follows vintage Fender amplifiers, which were hand-signed by the employees by whom they were assembled. Within niche collector communities, certain guitarists locate the unique tones of their vintage Fender amplifiers within the hands and fingers of the company’s earliest employees. Chapter 2 follows the Klon Centaur, a rare overdrive pedal known for its “transparent” sound. Using tonal transparency as a framework, I analyze tone as it exists beyond audibility, particularly in the haptic dimension, where guitarists describe how a sound “feels” beneath their fingers. Chapter 3 follows knob interfaces as tools through which guitarists notate and ultimately control tone. Chapter 4 follows the global infrastructure for vacuum tube manufacturing, which has dwindled to a handful of factories beset by geopolitical turmoil. Within this uncertain supply chain, I show that tone itself behaves like a kind of scarce resource.