[DavidS]

I always read about how difficult it is to get piano sounding right through an audio system.  I came of age in the mid/late 70's getting to experience great guitar bands like the Clash, the Ramones, Television (oh man Tom Verlaine) the Buzzcocks, even early U2 live and in small venues.  Always dreamed of experiencing Keith Richards and Ron Wood jamming in a small room live.  I caught Howe Gelb of Giant Sand fame live a couple of years ago in small venue small crowd and was struck by how I had never heard electric guitar sound alive on hifi - something electric (dought!) about it, even much slower and liquid and physical.  Now I can get good acoustic guitar, great drums, raw sounding sax but would love to hear Jack White's guitar sound alive, peel a little paint off the walls without need for the earplugs.

Is this a hardware issue, is it the volume I play most of my music at (my early bands were loud - wow the Ramones - and I don't play very loud these days), is it the software (I am 100% digital with cds and squeezebox).  Most of my stuff just sounds hifi which is still pretty good but looking for some  of the real thing without drinking beer at the club til midnight when the first band comes on.  I keep buying the cds - Bill Frisell, Paul Westerberg, Jimmy Thackery, JJ Grey and Mofro but no in the room experiences yet.

[*Scotty*]

I would blame your hardware and loudspeakers. Preserving the life of the performance that might have been captured in the recording is a very difficult goal to achieve. You could have lost some of it in every component in your system. You have a memory of what a real live electric guitar sounds like for a yardstick to measure your systems performance by and it is kind of hard to get a home system to give you the same unrestrained dynamics and power of the real thing. If you listed all of your components the AC membership might recognize a suspicious character that could be responsible for some of the problem.
Scotty
 

[nodiak]

In my experience a hard paper cone driver like the Hemp 8" is great at portraying electric guitar (among other instruments, and vocals). The stiff cones have the bite and soul effect down more so than softer paper or poly cones imo. Tube amp completes the deal for me. A true wonder for Allman Bros. to Zep, as well as woody, resonant acoustic instruments - Flamenco dynamics have been thrilling. Have heard the same opinion from other users - either Omega speaker owners (which I can't afford) or diy Hemp buyers. I'm sure there are other similar drivers out there to do the job. Of course the source matters too, but these drivers (and tube amps?) seem too matter.
Don

[DavidS]

have the tube amp - Response Audio 3205, but not paper cones - use Ellis 1801s (Seas and Hiquephon drivers) which are well regarded for vocals, small classical and acoustic music.  Rest of gear is pretty decent Audio Note M2 preamp, Audio Note Dac 2.1, Modwright Sony 999 player with tube power supply and squeezebox.  Particulary fine with acoustic guitar (Neil Young, David Russell) but none of the raw blood that I experience with live electric guitar.  I have long eyed the Omegas but also love my Ellis'.

[jqp]

I'm tempted to say just get the acoustic guitar right and then the electric should be fine...but of course it is not that simple. One issue is that "the electric guitar sound" is pretty nebulous. A live electric guitar sound is very dependent on many factors and is ever-changing, I would argue, more than for most instruments. The sound travels down a cable, then is output by....speakers we call amps (a little confusing when you try to talk about it). Then it is recorded and output by your speakers. Unless they bypass the guitar amps in the recording process, then you have to use different criteria for what is the "correct" sound for an electric guitar. Then there is all the deliberate distortion/feedback that is part of electric guitar music. The performers are constantly tweaking their sound during the performance, much less during a studio recording. In the end, getting a piano or violin to sound right is probably a good start, assuming you have the things that make a system sound "right" - headroom, sensitivity, matched components, etc.

[miklorsmith]

Want guitars?  You must hear the 8" Omega hemp drivers, they do acoustic and electric extremely well.

[nodiak]

DavidS, you have great gear from all I've read, having not heard those pieces. I just want to say I feel a little stuck here, because the last thing I want to do is say Hemps (or similar) are the only way to get good guitar replay. Since I started using them it has just been an obvious virtue of theirs vs. other drivers I've tried, and that's my only point, ymmv. Hey, some could say it's a distortion not a virtue, right?! And I suspect in part it's because they have a tilted upper midrange through treble (I deal with that with xo and/or adding a tweeter).
Funny tho because I've been reading Dave Ellis' site lately and appreciate his, and Dennis Murphy's, approach. These are sensible people, and I bet the 1801's are great. I'm not just being diplomatic because I realize my approach is more on the subjective side in gear choices - paper cones and tubes for instance. I WANT a little of those "distortions" of a touch of sweetness and emotion in the playback. Dave and Dennis represent a more rational approach to me. Tho it's notable that Dave has gone far in testing subjective sound of caps for his 1801's, so maybe we're not at all on opposite sides, I don't think we are. I would like to hear the 1801's, and also build Dennis' plop in the box to hear them (GR Research M130 midwoofers, BG NEO3 PDR tweeters).
BTW, tried other power tubes? 6550's, KT88's, KT77's besides EL34? I'm sure you have. I'm building an el34 amp soon and will be trying different tubes to learn.
Don