Just for fun and interest - favourite acoustic tones

Who has the best tones on their instrument? Who do you wish, or think, or would like to sound like more? Any acoustic instrument.

I’ll start.

Banjo - tony Trishka, Scott vestal

Mandolin - Chris Thile, Sam bush, jethro burns, dawg

Guitar - tony rice, Tommy Emmanuel

Mandola - Sierra hull.

Bass - Lee rocker (stray cats), Edgar Meyer

Fiddle - Alison Kraus, ,mark oconnor.

Just a start, off the top of my head. Your turn. (The only restriction is no electric instruments. Acoustic instruments with pickups are ok).

Mandolin - John Reischman

Cittern - Robin Bullock

Guitar - Bryan Sutton, Norman Blake, Robbie Basho (unless restricted to only living musicians)

I don’t play all those instruments; if I could play like Doc Watson on guitar, Bran Oberlin on mandolin, Leon Russell on piano and Vic Wooten on bass I’d be happy.

acoustic guitar- martin tallstrom
electric guitar-brian ewald/ lari basilio
mandolin-kym warner/mike Compton
weissenborn- ed Gerhard
mountain dulcimer-Jessica comeau
clawhammer banjo-tom Collins
clawhammer guitar-alec stone sweet
NAF-carlos Nakai

Back when I had better hearing i was convinced of the following: Gris, John.

It's so seldom Lee Rocker and Edgar Meyer show up in the same sentence.

Guitar - Scott Nygaard (I like the tone he gets out of his guitar from watching his Peghead Nation videos).
Mandolin - David Grisman
Fiddle - Stuart Duncan

I happened upon this video of Ritchie Blackmore with the most beautiful sounding octave mandola (octave mandolin). I don't know what make it is, but I love the sound, although I didn't like his vibrato!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwLQSU0zy68&t=1455s

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Tom Hart

It's so seldom Lee Rocker and Edgar Meyer show up in the same sentence.

---

I probably wouldn’t hire them for the same gig. But I love both their tones.

Guitar:Django,Tony Rice,Molly Tuttle,Billy Strings,Tommy Emmanuel off the top. Love the tone those gypsy jazz players get.

Mandolin: The Dawg,Sam,Reischman,so many newer(to me) great players.

Fiddle:Darol Anger,Shad Cobb,Jay Unger.

It's a great time for acoustic string music.

Some still with us, some, sadly, are not:

Fiddle: Vassar Clements
Resonator: Tut Taylor
Banjo: John Hartford
Guitar: Norman Blake, Del McCoury
Mandolin: David Grisman
Bass: Barry Bales, Edgar Meyer

I know I'm not a fiery technical player so I'm mostly interested in emulating tone. Here goes:

Mandolin: I love John Reischman's tone. Or Mike Marshall's. Those guys sound so liquid and seem to have such a smooth approach to music in general. (Chris Thile has incredible tone too of course but he's so far out of reach I can't hardly relate to the depth of musical understanding he seems to have in pretty well any genre. He seems superhuman to me and he's not even 40 years old. It's amazing to think where he'll be in another 20 or 30 years!)

Octave mandolin: Sarah Jarosz. I really like her easy way with that big Clark octave.

Mandocello: Mike Marshall

Guitar: Bryan Sutton, Darrell Scott, Tim O'Brien (Tony Rice and Tommy Emmanuel of course, but like Chris Thile those two seems superhuman to me. Particularly Tommy - so much experience and so much musicality!)

Vocals and songwriting: Tim O'Brien for sure

I guess if I could be closest to any one acoustic musician it would have to be Tim O'Brien. So much music under his fingers and he portrays all of it so authentically no matter what instrument he picks up or what song he plays or sings. Tim's a real treasure I think.

Enjoy!