Riddle me This Batman...

[Tonray's Ghost]

Same Guitar, Same Settings, Same guitar player

yesterday afternoon...couldn't turn out a tone that I liked to save my life...everything sounded like utter crap..

This morning....same everything...guitar singing like an angel, growling when it needs to and summoning divine intervention for those stinging highs. Tone to die for...

Anyone experience this phenomenon ?

[bleys21]

Yep. I call it "I'm not Narsh" You may have a different name for it

Seriously though, I would assume its the reason why I'm not a very good musician, and why you can hand a guitar to someone like Neal Schon or Eddie Van Halen, and they'll write you a song in under 2 minutes without really trying.

I do love it when everything comes together, and it sounds like I can actually play...

[ID10t]

It's you man, where in your head you are at is projecting to your hands. Or that has been my experience. Me playing guitar is like picking up dog crap, squeezing harder isn't going to make it better, it will make it worse.
On a side note we are messing with our house and it's that time of the year here where we run A/C during the day and open windows at night. Soon it will be A/C during the day and heat at night. So I got a clock with temp and relative humidity. We'll see if those numbers tell me anything.

Glad your tone was there for you today!

[Gear_Junky]

What about the room? And where the speaker(s) are standing? EQ is a room thing.

[Tonray's Ghost]

It's you man, where in your head you are at is projecting to your hands. Or that has been my experience. Me playing guitar is like picking up dog crap, squeezing harder isn't going to make it better, it will make it worse.
On a side note we are messing with our house and it's that time of the year here where we run A/C during the day and open windows at night. Soon it will be A/C during the day and heat at night. So I got a clock with temp and relative humidity. We'll see if those numbers tell me anything.

Glad your tone was there for you today!

Hey you may be on to something.. Humidity varies widely in my house..morning..no AC yet..afternoon always. Hmmm. Or it could be that I'm juiced on caffeine in the morning and flagging like a Republican Senate candidate late in the game...ha ha ha

[Tonray's Ghost]

What about the room? And where the speaker(s) are standing? EQ is a room thing.

It might be the changing humidity levels between morning and afternoon. Or it could just be that I suck in the afternoon... Ha ha ha

[mickey]

Some days you are a windshield.
Other days you are a bug.

[BrianSkeezer]

Is it possible that you had been doing something where there was a lot of background noise prior to playing in the afternoon? I've noticed this myself. come home from work, nothing sounds good. After a good night's sleep with little noise, everything's back to normal. May be something with your ears getting exhausted?

[Tonray's Ghost]

Is it possible that you had been doing something where there was a lot of background noise prior to playing in the afternoon? I've noticed this myself. come home from work, nothing sounds good. After a good night's sleep with little noise, everything's back to normal. May be something with your ears getting exhausted?

Yeah the AC is running in the afternoon and not in the morning. Not terribly loud but definitely a background white noise. It may be altering my perception of what I'm hearing.

[zisme]

happens to me every now and then. some days my ears just don't like anything they're hearing. really sucks when it lands on a band practice day, but fortunately that's rare. best solution i've found is to put it down and try again the next day.

[nomadh]

Yes that's the art of it. And there is no perception organ more wacky than the ears. I'm just glad that sometimes my ears trick me into thinking sometimes I sound good

[LancerTheGreat]

I usually just turn the volume up a little whenever I feel like my tone's lacking and most of the time it fixes the problem.
I'm not sure if this works for the "clean" side of things, as I've usually got my gain around 1 o'clock and a tubescreamer in front.



Now I have noticed, I kinda dislike the tone from my v with the EMGs compared to the JB/Jazz set in my newest V. Definitely gonna have to swap em for either a JB&Jazz or a JB&Bill Lawrence L500 variant.

[Mossman]

Same Guitar, Same Settings, Same guitar player

yesterday afternoon...couldn't turn out a tone that I liked to save my life...everything sounded like utter crap..

This morning....same everything...guitar singing like an angel, growling when it needs to and summoning divine intervention for those stinging highs. Tone to die for...

Anyone experience this phenomenon ?

It's a common phenomenon... It's because your auditory perception changes due to subtle environmental and biological variables. Blood pressure, congestion, humidity, barometric pressure, hell, even your mood can affect the way you hear things. If my favorite guitar sounds naff one day (even though I hadn't changed any settings from the day before), I just put it down and play something else. The next day, it'll sound awesome again.

[solteroblues]

i sound bad no matter what I try. But I don't think my ears have anything to do with it.

[RockYoWorld]

I do notice this. I'll play the same guitar on the same Axe FX patch, same speakers at same volume, but sometimes it sounds dead and sometimes it sounds like a sonic beast.

While humoring myself with ideas of humidity and temperature playing into effect, I think that largest factor is myself in both playing and receiving what I'm hearing. Ear fatigue is a real thing as well as being "in the zone."

[Partscaster]

Was your GF walking around naked when it sounded good?

[Perfect Stranger]

Magic!