70 Practical Ways to Improve Guitar Tone

Guitar tone can be a frustrating, ambiguous mystery.

You invest in decent gear, learn proper technique, plug in and the tone is just bad. There isn’t an obvious reason. You haven’t cut any corners or neglected to invest in your rig.

Still, it just doesn’t sound right. What do you do? What’s the way to troubleshoot your tone? The truth is that there’s a lot of variables in play that are generally related to one of two things: either the gear you’re using or the technique you’re employing. Together, these two areas give us plenty of things we can do right now to improve our tone.

If you have decent gear and you still can’t dial in a guitar tone that you’re happy with, this list will help get you over the hump.

Let’s begin our quest for a better tone:

1. Change worn out amp tubes

A lot of folks (including me at one point) don’t realize that tubes in a tube amplifier actually wear out and need to be replaced.

The shelf-life varies but, it’s worth getting in touch with the manufacturer to see if your poor tone might be the result of old tubes that need to be refreshed.

Most are less than $40 each.

2. Keep the guitar’s volume knob maxed

Volume changes should almost always be handled away from the guitar, at the amp or pedal level.

A good best practice to have is to keep your guitar’s volume knob always maxed at 10.

Cutting volume back on the guitar itself will thin out the gain and cause you to lose a lot of tonal character.

Don’t do it.

3. If possible, use an amp-based distortion

The distortion that comes directly from your amplifier is almost always preferable to an external pedal.

If you research pro guitar rigs, you’ll notice that nearly all of them make use of a dirty and clean amp channel, where the dirty channel is their main distortion source.

Take Tom Morello’s rig from from Audioslave in 2004:

Some pedals, to be sure, but no distortion stompbox.

The culprit is the Marshall JCM800 that runs Morello’s clean and dirty channels.

In this case, the amp is more than capable of handling distortion duties.

No pedal needed.

Obviously, this only holds true if your amp meets reasonable quality standards.

4. Use modulation to boost your clean signal

The common refrain is that pedals mask or “muddy” your tone.

However, in the right context, modulation effects can brighten your tone and should be used as a means of thickening your sound.

Chorus, flangers, and phasers are the most typical modulation effects options.

Use them when your clean tone sounds too thin or too subtle for certain melodies or fills.

5. Run a compressor and noise reducer at the beginning of your pedal chain

Compressors and noise reducers are frequently prescribed antidotes for guitar tone problems.

Something like the Boss NS-2 and the MXR Dyan Comp (both cost less than $100) will do the job.

I often run the Boss NS-2 at the beginning of my effects chain and leave it on most of the time.

I’ve seen some that keep the noise gate higher in the chain, but I can only speak from experience.

Having it towards the end has gotten me the best results.

6. Use a thicker pick

Electric guitars are usually more responsive to heavier picks, rather than the lighter variety.

Lighter picks, like your guitars volume knob, tend to weaken your guitar’s gain and output.

When tone is an issue, it’s best to get the root of your signal (your guitar) to be as full and loud as possible.

Thicken up with something like the Dunlop Tortex purples.

7. Use a coated string

Coated strings, like the ones from Elixir, are marketed primarily for their longer shelf-life.

However, they also have a brighter and more resonant tone that is usually a noticeable upgrade over the non-coated versions.

Give them a try for an instant guitar tone upgrade.

8. Add reverb to a treble-friendly EQ

Start with the following three-band EQ on your amplifier:

TREBLE: 8 / MID: 7 / BASS: 4

Once you’ve got that dialed in, add a little bit of reverb (around 10 - 15%) for some extra flavor.

This will give you a nice chime and gleam to your tone, ideal for Strats and Telecasters.

9. Adjust the pickup height

Pickup height, regardless of pickup type, does matter.

Adjusting them can improve tone, depending on your string gauge and playing style.

Generally, the closer you can get the pickups to the strings, the better your tone will be.

However, getting too close can also cause problems.

The ideal spot varies between guitars and pickup varieties but, it’s something worth experimenting with and looking into.

Most pickup heights can be changed by the small screws near the middle of the pickup on opposite sides, one for the top and one for the bottom.

If you adjust them, make sure you match the height of each side.

10. Use both pickups

A lot of players tend to default to the bridge position.

However, the “default” tone should be to use both pickups.

Using one or the other exclusively are two opposite extremes.

Get used to leaving the pickup selector in the middle position as your go-to setting.

11. Shop third party (namebrand) for your pickups

Having a pickup-specific brand humbuckers or single coil rails in your guitar is one of the single best ways to improve your tone.

Seymour Duncan is my preferred brand.

Their Invader pickups are $79 a piece or around $150 for a set.

Other brands I’d target would be Dimarzio and  EMG.

All three brands make excellent pickups and are ideal places to invest in your guitar tone.

12. Run only “true bypass” pedals

The true bypass tag is a feature that’s often found in boutique guitar pedals and basically means that your guitar’s signal, when the pedal is turned off, is routed directly to the amplifier without any interference from the pedal itself.

Here’s a more full explanation via Guitar World.

Depending on how your pedalboard is setup and what effects you’re using, stompboxes without this technology might be causing you noise and/or tone problems.

The more pedals you have with true bypass, the better off you’ll be. However, it’s not a deal breaker and most people run a mix of both true bypass and non-true bypass pedals.

13. If you use delay, drop the repeats

It’s not always “right” to lower your delay repeats.

But in most cases, a lot of repeats means you’re introducing a good deal of chaos into your signal.

If that’s not the intention, too many repeats or too long of a delay can really make your end product sound muddy and over-saturated.

Here’s how I dial in a low-repeat delay on the DE-1 Dan Echo:

A good starting point is to keep your delay repeats down to around three echoes.

If you need more, you can dial it in manually (or use a tap tempo) but, a brief three repeats can really clean things up and make the effect count.

14. Contextualize your distortion

In other words, understand the style of music you’re playing and adjust distortion accordingly. For example, don’t use the Boss DS-1 distortion if you’re trying to play something metal or heavy. On the other hand, don’t use the Boss Power Stack for blues licks that are meant to be less-saturated.

Take time to get your distortion pedal settings right.

If they sound off, you might be using the wrong pedal for what you’re trying to do.

15. Research style and genre-specific tone conventions

Number 14 dictates that you must know a lot about the type of music you’re trying to play. While there are plenty of broad best practices, the real tone-shaping occurs when you know what (or who) you want to sound like. Let’s say, for example, you’re trying to nail-down a Stevie Ray Vaughan tone and it just doesn’t sound like him.

What can you do? Well, here are a few obvious, but perhaps easily overlooked, suggestions:

1. Listen to and study his music, looking for consistent themes and characteristics of his tone.
2. Research the type of gear he used.
3. Since he was a blues guy, get familiar with conventional blues amp settings.

Doing this kind of book work will be the control in your experiment. Once you get familiar with what you want to emulate, it’ll make your job a lot more intuitive and straightforward.

16. Try the low gain approach

Sometimes a little bit of distortion can really make an otherwise clean tone “pop” and fill a room. Start with a solid clean EQ as your base. Something like this will work:

From there, add a small amount of gain, enough to slightly distort and thicken the signal but, not enough to significantly boost the volume.

If your gain knob is touchy, drop the master volume a bit to even things out.

Combine the end result with a jolt of modulation or delay and you’ll have a punchier signal that has retained its clean appeal.

17. Lower your note count (avoid overplaying)

Every note you play should have a purpose.

If you’re in the habit of a playing a lot, either as a rhythm or lead guitarist, you might consider cutting down the amount of fills or layers that you’re adding to a piece of music.

Less is more on the electric guitar and if you want your tone to be the focus, play less so your tone doesn’t get drowned out by constant strumming or picking, where only a subtle additive is necessary.

18. Focus on short melodies

You’ve got to crawl before you can walk.

Short melodies are where you should practice showcasing your tone before you graduate to faster playing.

Focus on short, melodic runs, even with just three or four notes and work on letting the natural tone of your guitar and amp do the work.

For example, instead of this thick, eighth note pattern:

Go with a slower quarter-note arrangement, stretching things out over two bars:

Keep in mind, tone comes from your own technique, just as much as your gear.

To develop that technique, start simple with a short note count that focuses on melody.

19. Nail down alternate picking

Alternate picking is a quick road to better tone, simply because it makes your right hand more efficient.

Moreover, it’s easy to learn.

If you don’t know, alternate picking is just the act of picking a string both on the way down and on the way back up.

The alternative is to pick on the way down, bring your hand back above the strings and pick again on the way down the second time.

Think Green Day for that sort of thing.

Sometimes it seems like this guy doesn’t know anything but down-strokes.

In most cases, that’s simply not as efficient as grabbing notes going both directions, especially for lead patterns and solos.

20. Use low-capacitance cables

Guitar pickups are more prone to naturally aggravate and increase the impact of cable capacitance on your overall tone. Basically, capacitance cuts the higher frequency of your signal down, meaning your have to push the treble on your EQ unnaturally high. This can result in more bite, hiss, and is an often unknown culprit of bad guitar tone.

Part of the solution is to go with a low-capacitance cable, particularly the one that’s connecting your guitar to the beginning of your pedal chain:

1. Gotham GAC Premium Low Capacitance Cable (25 ft.): $30
2. Lava Premium Cables Extreme Low Capacitance (10 ft.): $40
3. Gotham Patch Cables Low Capacitance (pack of 5): $31

If you can, make sure that the longest cables in your rig (amp to pedals - pedals to guitar) are a low-capacitance cable. Adding the LC patch cables between each pedal would be a bonus.

It works particularly well with Fender amps, since they tend to be a bit more smooth and heavy to begin with.

However, if you’re finding that your tone is too muddy or thick with any amp, cutting the bass in the EQ should be your first step.

23. Practice clean

Clean practicing can be challenging and isn’t often preferred.

Yet it’s an exercise in tone every time you do it.

Practicing without modulation or distortion exposes only your ability to play with great tone and gives you an opportunity to see where your technique is costing you.

Play clean and look for mistakes that effects might have been covering up.

A few common ones:

• Incomplete chords
• Buzzing or half-muted notes
• Messy chord transitions
• Messy soloing sequences

Once you start to see them, work on cleaning them up and polishing the problem areas.

24. Change strings more often

Even if a guitar lays around the house without being played, strings will age. Consistent playing (and especially sweat) will cause them to age that much quicker. An easy solution for immediate tone improvement is to simply get into the habit of changing them. For Elixirs or a coated string, it’s roughly every six months, depending on how often you play.

For regular non-coated strings, you’re looking at every two to three months.

In any situation where you’re playing a chord, see if the less-is-more approach might be a better fit than the full chord.

It can make your tone fit a lot better in more subtle, musical situations.

26. Play in your niche or comfort zone

Everyone has their musical niche.

What is yours?

Are you constantly trying to play outside of it?

There’s a point where nothing is familiar to you and all your guitar playing involves is learning new things.

However, once you get past the beginner stage, you’ll start to develop areas and tendencies that feel comfortable to you. If you play in those areas, your tone will sound better than if you’re trying to function in unfamiliar territory.

In other words, there’s nothing wrong with developing a comfort zone and staying in it.

You’ll find that it’s one of the single best ways you can consistently have a good guitar tone.

27. Calibrate your amp’s EQ

Here’s what I mean by “calibrate:”

Everyone’s amp is different, thus the settings that might work are a bit unpredictable.

You need to sort of feel out your own amplifier.

Start from square one and then test both extremes.

First, point everything to 12 o’clock:

BASS: 5 / MIDS: 5 / TREBLE: 5 / PRESENCE: 5

Then, record the result:

How would you describe the sound of your amp’s tone?

GREAT / GOOD / NEUTRAL / BAD / AWFUL

Second, test both extremes:

BASS: 0 / MIDS: 0 / TREBLE: 0 / PRESENCE: 0

BASS: 10 / MIDS: 10 / TREBLE: 10/ PRESENCES: 10

Record the result for both.

GREAT / GOOD / NEUTRAL / BAD / AWFUL

Third, test your EQ at 33%:

BASS: 3.5 / MIDS: 3.5 / TREBLE: 3.5 / PRESENCE: 3.5

Once again, record the result:

GREAT / GOOD / NEUTRAL / BAD / AWFUL

Finally, test your EQ at 66%:

BASS: 6.5 / MIDS: 6.5 / TREBLE: 6.5 / PRESENCE: 6.5

And one more time, record the result:

GREAT / GOOD / NEUTRAL / BAD / AWFUL

Whichever spot sounded the closest to GREAT is where you want to do your tweaking and finishing touches.

Set your dials there and then make minor adjustments, to taste.

If it’s a little shrill, cut back treble.

If there’s too much thud, cut back bass.

Not full enough? Push bass up.

You get the idea.

28. Make sure you’re hitting the middle of each fret

Getting in the habit of hitting the middle of the fret (right between the separators) is an easy and instant tone upgrade.

Take one note at a time, perhaps from a pentatonic scale guitar pattern, and just run through it.

Make sure each note you press lands right in the center of the fret.

29. Practice on an acoustic guitar

Acoustic guitar practices improves your electric abilities in terms of strength and durability, simply because it’s hard to play lead on acoustic strings.

If you force yourself through a lot of lead work on an acoustic guitar, the strength and dexterity improvements will help your tone when you switch back to a solid body guitar.

30. If you have a Stratocaster, consider adding the Seymour Duncan Antiquity or Hot Rails pickups

The Antiquity and Hot Rails pickups from Seymour Duncan are quite possibly the nicest pickup upgrades available for the Fender Stratocaster.

And in most situations, they’re fairly affordable.

You can even get pick-guards that come preloaded with these pickups in various configurations.

And knock it down to this simple dyad:

Personally, I’d recommend putting this at the end of your chain, behind your compressor but, in front of your noise suppressor.

The GE-7 gives you a seven-band EQ plus a level knob.

Tom Morello has an old DOD EQ in his rig and (allegedly) only uses it as a booster for solos.

It’s worth noting that Morello keeps the EQ before his modulation (flanger) pedal, which is what the Roland diagram also recommends.

Worth a try?

I’d say yes.

32. Turn down your chorus pedal depth

It’s a contextual solution, but if you like to go heavy on the chorus pedal, try turning down the depth.

I use the Boss CE-5 Ensemble and find the following settings to work well, producing a nice, subtle chorus tone:

It’s a bit difficult to see since this CE-5 is fairly old and dusty (also, please ignore the 12pm sticker on the front).

But, here are the numbers:

It creates a lush, yet subtle chorus effect that I like to use for thickening up clean melodies and slow chord progressions.

33. Use GHS Fast-Fret string lubricant

Personally, I’ve never used GHS Fast-Fret because it almost seems like cheating.

But, I know plenty who do and swear by it.

On the other hand, anything that you can do to make your guitar easier to play will improve your tone.

And at only $10 it lasts a long time.

34. Try a moderately-priced set of headphones

Some rooms can just be bad for guitar tone.

In that case, it’s helpful to have a nice set of headphone to turn to, which will allow you to hear to hear the unaffected tone of your amp without any external influences.

Room acoustics and humidity levels will have no say.

At home, I use a Skull Candy over-ear set with an adapter.

Both are fairly cheap from Amazon:

And the adapter:

In an ideal world, guitar tone would sound great in any room.

However, it’s worth a modest investment to give yourself the ability to bypass your environment whenever necessary.

It’s also worth noting that even in an average pair of headphones (such as these) most guitar rigs will sound quite good.

35. Go more analog

In the guitar gear world, the more analog you can include in your rig, the better off you’ll be.

This is obviously most directly related to your pedalboard, though amps are also a consideration.

If possible, add a couple analog pedals and look into a tube amplifier.

36. Play fewer notes

Particularly when it comes to electric guitar, I’ve found that every note should serve a purpose.

This means that there should be no wasted noise.

For example, if you have a melody that you want to play and you decide to use a kind of staggered arpeggio, don’t pick through each note more often than you have to.

Play slow enough that you hit the root note, a couple intervals and then just let them ring.

Let the guitar do the work.

If your tone is bad, it could be that you’re just not letting your notes breathe and you’re picking far too many of them.

37. Adjust volume so you can attack the strings confidently

If your volume is so high that you’re nervous about being too loud, don’t just play softer. Turn it down.

Yes, you need to play with touch but, in general, your volume shouldn’t be so loud that you can’t attack the strings confidently with your picking hand.

Turn down just enough (whether it’s directly from your amp or in your mix) so that you’re not nervously strumming or picking.

This will help your tone in that you’ll be able to pick intentionally without hesitating and thus softening each note’s resonance.

38. Lower your guitar’s action

The way you lower a guitar’s action will vary between brand and model.

An easy method is to take it to a local guitar shop and pay someone to do this for you, which is an almost essential move if you bought your guitar brand new.

Lower action will be easier to play and will sound better, provided you don’t go too low and incur buzzing.

A lot of folks like to have about a quarter’s width from the 12th fret to the bottom of the sixth string.

49. If you use distortion, make sure it’s about five percent louder than your clean signal

Anytime you move from a clean to distorted tone, especially within the same piece of music, your distorted tone should have about a five percent volume boost.

If you have an amp with two channels, this can be easily done by setting the volume on both channels accordingly.

For a distortion pedal, you’ve got to a little bit of trial and error.

Also keep in mind what we covered about the differences between gain and volume. That info will come in handy when trying to nail down something like this.

50. Use lighter picks for acoustic guitar work

It’s not always required but, particularly for strumming, lighter picks tend to work and sound better with acoustic guitars.

Personally, I like the orange Dunlop picks for light acoustic picking.

51. Use the L.R. Baggs Para Acoustic DI for acoustic guitar rigs

The Para Acoustic DI box from L.R. Baggs provides a five-band EQ, gain control, feedback control, and is one of the most popular acoustic tone-shaping options.

It comes with both XLR and 1/4″ outputs, so you can go into an acoustic amp or straight into your mixing board.

While tone shaping doesn’t always mean tone improving, giving yourself more control over your signal is a good place to start.

52. Keep sweat off your strings

Sweat is not an issue for everybody.

Maybe you play sitting down or you just don’t sweat much.

Otherwise, getting too much sweat on your strings can really age them quickly, causing both short and long-term tonal concerns.

Sweat bands on your strumming wrist is a quick, cheap, and easy fix.

53. If possible, listen to the house mix

When you’re playing live, into a PA system, try to listen to both your own mix (whatever is in your headphones or monitor) and the house mix with the rest of the band as well.

Hearing both will help you make meaningful volume and EQ adjustments.

It’s a simple, yet often overlooked tone-improving step.

54. Use a rackmount noise reduction unit

Once again, it’s preferable to get functionality off the floor and onto a rack space.

The Rocktron Hush Super C is a great option and can be had for around $160.

55. Give your notes more sustain

Sustain simply refers to the length of time that a note will hold or “ring.”

In the world of solid body electrics, longer sustain is a good thing and is widely considered an important attribute of good guitar tone.

The amount of sustain you have depends on two variables.

1. Gear
2. Technique

To this point, we’ve covered a lot of both.

However, I would like to highlight a few bullets, relating to both gear and technique that can help increase sustain.

Here’s what I would focus on:

1. Upgrading pickups or humbuckers
2. Practice improving vibrato
3. Use open notes more often
4. Use higher gain levels

There are plenty of other factors that come into play, but these are the four places you’ll want to start exploring the issue.

56. Place fills in songs where vocals drop out

Plan your fills strategically for each piece of music.

Good practice is to save melodic fills for when you hear a break in the lead vocals.

These are spots in a song that might feel a little thin or empty without some melodic addition.

By the same token, avoid excessive filler when vocals are front and center.

57. Target and practice one technique at a time (bends, vibrato, etc.)

Good technique can make up for a lot of poor gear.

To improve technique, take one topic at a time and work on them for as long as you can stand it.

For example, you might notice that your vibrato technique is really poor and just doesn’t sound or feel right.

Devote the next few days (weeks?) of practice to just improving vibrato.

Once you’ve gotten the hang of it, move onto another technique.

Let’s say you keep this up for eight months or so.

By then, you’ll have a lot of good technique under your belt and a real shot at decent guitar tone, in spite of whatever gear you’re using.

58. Work the mundane speed drills

Any kind of guitar finger exercises will be worth the time and effort, both from a strength and tone perspective.

Expect a distinct improvement in both areas if you can devote 20% of your practice time for a few weeks to just exercises.

From there, take a couple months off, then go back to 20% for another few weeks.

59. Arpeggiate chords and pick through each note to identify trouble areas

Start with a few easy open chords from the CAGED system.

Something like an open C chord will do nicely.

Arpeggiate the chord out one note at a time, like this:

Pick through each note individually and listen for problem areas.

They’ll be indicated by the following:

• Fretboard buzzing
• Wrong notes
• Unintentional mutes
• Half muted notes

When you notice this happening consistently in a particular note or chord, work on cleaning that part up until each note comes out clean.

You should be able to pick through all your basic guitar chords with a clean, ringing tone.

60. Play along with music you like listening to

I’ve found that one of the best ways to improve tone is to just play along with tracks of my favorite songs.

Playing along with the original guitar track helps me improve in several tone-related areas:

• Rhythmic consistency
• Dynamics (verse and chorus discrepancy)
• Volume and settings
• Chord changes
• Melody development and improvisation

All these areas (and more) improve when you play along with music you like.

Without even realizing it, you’ll begin to take on some of the habits and tonal characteristics of the guitarists that you’re listening and playing along to.

61. If you have a Fender amp, try the Magic Six settings

The Magic Six is a term coined for what many consider to be the ideal blues settings for Fender amps.

Fender amps (especially the tube variety) have a distinct warmth and thickness to them.

The following settings are thought to be the most accommodating EQ:

From a guitar tone perspective, starting with a perfectly-tuned instrument is a good policy.

How does it work?

Just set the tuning you want (via your phone or the Roadie itself) place it over the tuning peg and watch it do the dirty work.

While it’s an indirect guitar tone issue, it still matters.

Because getting the tuning right and being able to quickly move to other tunings helps improve your tone from the ground up.

This is especially true for those of you who aren’t comfortable tuning by ear.

64. Use a glass or metal slide

While it sounds like a bit of a cheap fix, the tone you get from glass bottle and metal slides is truly incredible.

It’s also affordable.

I prefer the Jim Dunlop Moonshine slide, which is actually made of a ceramic material.

Here’s a look:

If you’ve never used one it might take some getting used to and some mechanical adjustment.

Also note that there’s no “default” finger to wear it on.

Most opt for the ring finger, but it’s totally a preference issue and not a matter of “best practices.”

65. If you’re into the heavy stuff, use baritone guitar strings

A set of baritone guitar strings is basically a seven-string set without the higher E, designed for the low strings to be tuned to B and A.

The thicker strings are perfect for the heavier side of rock and lower tunings.

Ernie Ball makes a six-string baritone set that goes from .072 to .013.

I used these strings on an old PRS Santana SE with Seymour Duncan pickups for heavier guitar covers.

They did great for running through the rhythm track of “Thoughtless” by Korn:

I didn’t miss the high E string one bit.

And further, you don’t need a baritone guitar to use baritone strings.

Baritone guitars are designed for lower tunings and have larger (longer) frets to accommodate.

However, the strings work fine on most any electric.

This highlights the need to contextualize our tone goals.

Because I wanted to play something metal and heavy, the baritone strings were a perfect solution.

Without them, covering Korn songs wouldn’t sound right.

66. Use a switchless wah

Most wahs have a switch, like any other pedal.

To engage it, you’ve got to click the button on and then use the back and forth motion of pedal to cut the wah in and out.

Morley makes a switchless wah, the Steve Vai signature model, which engages easily by simply titling the pedal forward.

Further, it kicks back on it’s own, which means when you push it forward, it’ll come back to its original position more easily.

This makes the wah effect a lot easier to use.

Some players prefer the switch. However, if you have a hard time getting a good tone out of your wah, the Morley options might be worth a shot.

67. Combine light chorus, short delay and reverb

These three effects variations tend to work really well together.

Here’s the procedure:

1. Delay (I’m using the Danelectro Dan Echo) first in the chain, then your chorus pedal and reverb from your amp.
2. Put the chorus depth to about 30% and rate at 50%.
3. Set the delay repeats to two
4. Set reverb to 30%

The sound this produces is ethereal, but not terribly over-saturating.

It’s a go-to “effected” signal that can fit in to a lot of different areas that call for something more than a clean signal.

Here’s what it looks like on my CE-5:

And the Dan Echo:

Once again, we add the short delay:

You can get in touch via the comments section below.