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David Gilmour, Adrian Belew, Steve Vai, and the Power of Tone

David Gilmour, Adrian Belew, Steve Vai, and the Power of Tone

David Gilmour, making sounds barely contained by the walls of Madison Square Garden.

Photo by Emma Wannie/MSGE

The voice of the guitar can make the unfamiliar familiar, expand the mind, and fill the heart with inspiration. Don’t be afraid to reach for sounds that elevate. A host of great players, and listening experiences, are available to inspire you.

In late fall, I had the good fortune of hearing David Gilmour and Adrian Belew live, within the same week. Although it’s been nearly two months now, I’m still buzzing. Why? Because I’m hooked on tone, and Gilmour and Belew craft some of the finest, most exciting guitar tones I’ve ever heard.


They’re wildly different players. Gilmour, essentially, takes blues-based guitar “outside”; Belew takes “outside” playing inside pop- and rock-song structures. Both are brilliant at mating the familiar and unfamiliar, which also makes the unfamiliar more acceptable to mainstream ears—thereby expanding what might be considered the “acceptable” vocabulary of guitar.

Belew was performing as part of the BEAT Tour, conjuring up the music of the highly influential King Crimson albums of the ’80s, and was playing with another powerful tone creator, Steve Vai, who had the unenviable role of tackling the parts of Crimson founder Robert Fripp, who is a truly inimitable guitarist. But Vai did a wonderful job, and his tones were, of course, superb.

To me, great tone is alive, breathing, and so huge and powerful it becomes an inspiring language. Its scope can barely be contained by a venue or an analog or digital medium. At Madison Square Garden, as Gilmour sustained some of his most majestic tones—those where his guitar sound is clean, growling, foreign, and comforting all at once—it felt as if what was emanating from his instrument and amps was permeating every centimeter of the building, like an incredibly powerful and gargantuan, but gentle, beast.

“The guitar becomes a kind of tuning fork that resonates with the sound of being alive.”

It certainly filled me in a way that was akin to a spiritual experience. I felt elevated, joyful, relieved of burdens—then, and now, as I recall the effect of those sounds. That is the magic of great tone: It transports us, soothes us, and maybe even enlightens us to new possibilities. And that effect doesn’t just happen live. Listen to Sonny Sharrock’s recording of “Promises Kept,” or Anthony Pirog soloing on the Messthetics’ Anthropocosmic Nest, or Jimi Hendrix’s “Freedom.” (Or, for that matter, any of the Hendrix studio recordings remixed and remastered under the sensibilities of John McDermott.) Then, there’s Jeff Beck’s Blow by Blow, and so many other recordings where the guitar becomes a kind of tuning fork that resonates with the sound of being alive. The psychoacoustic effects of great tones are undeniable and strong, and if we really love music, and remain open to all of its possibilities, we can feel them as tangibly as we feel the earth or the rays of the sun.

Sure, that might all sound very new age, but great tones are built from wood and wires and science and all the stuff that goes into a guitar. And into a signal chain. As you’ve noticed, this is our annual “Pro Pedalboards” issue, and I urge you to consider—or better yet, listen to—all the sounds the 21 guitarists in our keystone story create as you examine the pedals they use to help make them. Pathways to your own new sounds may present themselves, or at least a better understanding of how a carefully curated pedalboard can help create great tones, make the unfamiliar familiar, and maybe even be mind-expanding.

After all these years, some players still complain that pedals have no role other than to ruin a guitar’s natural tone. They are wrong. The tones of guitarists like Gilmour, Belew, Vai, Hendrix, Pirog, and many more prove that. The real truth about great tones, and pedals and other gear used with forethought and virtuosity, is that they are not really about guitar at all. They are about accessing and freeing imagination, about crafting sounds not previously or rarely heard in service of making the world a bigger, better, more joyful place. As Timothy Leary never said, when it comes to pedalboards and other tools of musical creativity, it’s time to turn on, tune up, and stretch out!

Godin Guitars Multiac Nylon Opalburst & Oceanburst Demos | NAMM 2025
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Godin unlocked a lot doors for players when they first introduced their popular Multiac. They continue striving to improve their design with slight tweaks and this year was no different as they brought a pair dazzlers that have new, comfier neck shapes (designed to lure the electric player to the nylon-based instrument) and dreamy finishes like the Opalburst (with a maple fretboard) & Oceanburst (with a richlite fretboard). They also are packed with updated custom-voiced LR Baggs electronics. Both models have hollowed silver leaf maple bodies & necks, a solid cedar top with figured flame leap top (that's sunken into the body).

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Fishman introduced a new set of Greg Koch signatures, the Gristle-Tone ST Strat-style trio, at NAMM 2025, as part of its Fluence series. They are remarkably hi-fi sounding, with exceptional definition, clarity, and punch. And while they come stock in Koch’s latest Reverend Signature model, the Gristle ST, you can get ’em from Fishman for your S-style axe at $269 (street) per set. PS: You gotta watch the demo video!

Radial Engineering Highline & Highline Stereo | NAMM 2025
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Naw, this ain’t a DI. It’s Radial’s NAMM-fresh Highline passive line isolator, which comes in mono ($179 street) and stereo ($249), and uses premium Jensen transformers to preserve your signal’s pure sound. The Highline takes 1/4" cable (with XLR outs) for connecting amp simulators or pedals to your amps or a DAW. It’s compact and pedalboard friendly, and the Mono version sums stereo sources down to mono. The Stereo can take four 1/4 ” inputs and deliver a stereo signal, but it can also sum stereo sources down to mono. And it fits snugly under a pedalboard.

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Ren Ferguson is a master luthier and has worked with several companies throughout his impressive career, but his current venture is building custom instruments under his own name (with some help from family). He's putting all the knowledge and expertise he's absorbed over the decades he's worked constructing workhorse guitars that not only sound stellar, but look the part, too. He showed us his slope-shouldered dread that was a clydesdale of an acoustic that looked regal and sounded powerful.