Tone

This page focuses on core tone, particularly distortion tone. Effects placement and impact are discussed individually on their own page, for each kind of effect. While effects are referenced below, they are only considered for how they affect core tone when they are set to be as transparent as possible.

The complete signal chain for a typical rig is

 Live/Recording
 Hands > Guitar > Pickups > Stomps > Pre-Amp > Effects > Power Amp > Cabinet/Speakers > Microphones > Microphone Pre-Amps > PA/DAW

 Jamming/Practice
 Hands > Guitar > Pickups > Stomps > Pre-Amp > Effects > Power Amp > Cabinet/Speakers

Every stage has a significant impact on the tone, and each stage is joined by cables which can also influence the tone.

Hands

This relates to your technique - the quality of your fretting, your picking, and/or other techniques (such as legato or slapping). Garbage in = garbage out. No matter how much top-of-the-line gear you buy, you can't buy good technique. Even the best players can sound good through mediocre gear, but a poor player will not sound good through anything. Practice, practice, practice!

Guitar

This refers to both the quality of the instrument and its setup. Good technique means nothing if your guitar is fretting out. On the other hand if your guitar is set with very high action, it will be impossible to play with speed and good technique. And even with good setup and technique, if the guitar is simply a poor build, with resonating parts and bad joints, it will appear in your tone.

Pickups

Pickups are often an instrumental part of the tone, so be sure to choose good ones for your guitar. There's no universal answer for what to get - the ideal choice depends on your guitar's tone (generally indicated from the mass and type of wood its made from), your desired tone, and your playing style. Guitar manufacturers often outfit low to midrange guitars with crummy, in-house pickups. But even a somewhat high-end guitar might have poor stock pickups. Aside from being deficient in certain frequencies, poor pickups generally have a very poor signal-to-noise ratio. Its usually the first thing I look to replace in a guitar, as it has a very large impact on tone.

Stomps

Stomps is a bit misleading - I'm talking about anything that can be placed between the guitar and the pre-amp. Usually these are stomp boxes, but can also be wah or volume pedals, floorboard processors, rackmount devices, etc.

True vs. Buffered Bypass

There's a lot of debate as to which is better - true or buffered bypass. True bypass means the signal coming from the guitar is passed directly into the output of the stomp device when the device is set to bypass mode (essentially means it is off). Buffered bypass means the signal is received by the device and run through a transformer or low power amplifier in the device, even when it is in bypass mode. True bypass should basically be invisible, as though it was physically removed from the signal chain, while buffered bypass will have some impact on the signal.

Now, which is better? Well, that depends. Passive pickups output a high impedance signal, at least on peaks. Trying to send that load through a lengthy instrument cable will lead to attenuation of high frequency components. In other words, it will dull the tone of your guitar signal compared to a shorter cable. This can be avoided by using a most buffered bypass pedals, which will output a low impedance signal which will retain its frequency response through a longer stretch of cable.

Not all buffered bypass pedals are the same, however. A poorly designed bypass (or a pedal with a weak battery) may sound like its doing awful things to the signal, adding noise or altering the frequency response. When buying pedals, you should not only check whether the device is true or buffered bypass, but also read reviews on its transparency if it is a buffered bypass. Also, some devices are designed to receive the guitar's high impedance signal as part of how they work. Some wah pedals and many fuzzboxes are intentionally low impedance, creating an odd kind of distortion when fed a high impedance signal. Placing a buffered bypass pedal in front of such devices will prevent them from doing so. This may simply be a matter of arranging your devices in a certain order vs. using alternate devices.

Amplifiers are typically high impedance devices, capable of accepting both high and low impedance signals without any change in tone - they don't care if you are using buffered or true bypass. If you notice a difference in tone when running through your pedal in bypass mode vs. plugging directly into the amp, the change is likely due to your cables or the design of the bypass circuit (or a weak battery in a buffered bypass pedal).