You may not know it, but your tone goes a very, very long way. Any great tone will earn you a monument of respect, even if your technique isn’t the greatest in the world.

Every guitarist is always looking for their defining tone — that perfect tone that speaks to them.

You may not know this, but even your favorite legends like Eric Clapton are constantly changing their guitars and hardware (amps, pedals, etc.), all to fine-tune their tone and improve it just a little more and make themselves happy.

With the right rig, a single note with that perfect, sublime tone has the power to outdo and overshadow as many notes as a guitarist can play with any rig with a less-than-perfect tone.

This post was made to give you a few winning tips to achieve the perfect tone, even on a limited budget.

Number One: Wood

One of the most important factors in a guitar’s tone is the wood used for the body and for the fretboard. Unless you intend on going high-shelf with ebony, you are most likely to find fretboards made out of maple (lighter, “blonder”, lumber-esque color wood) or rosewood (darker, muddier, browner-colored wood).

Now, naturally, maple woods have a brighter appearance. But just as the wood is brighter, maple produces a brighter tone. A maple tone has a very clear, clean tone that can cut through almost any mix with an almost chipper sort of sound.

Maple woods are highly versatile; you can find them on many guitars, and they’re suitable for many different sounds.

Country guitarists can get the signature twang from a maple wood, for instance. Or if you’re a reggae player, maple woods will help you achieve a poppy, crisp tone. And don’t forget the good ol’ Fender Stratocaster: a Strat with a maple neck hooked up to a Fender Deluxe Reverb amp will produce a gorgeous, heavenly tone that makes for one of the best rhythm tones a guitarist can ask for.

But just as the bright maple fret board produces a brighter sound, rosewood fretboards create an earthier tone. You can expect more raw, fatter, grittier, and richer tones from a rosewood fretboard — my personal favorite sort of tones.

Imagine Stevie Ray Vaughn playing Lenny, or Number One, as he wailed on “Texas Flood”. Those Strats had a growl that could give you goosebumps. Rosewoods, in general, give you that very fat tone. Rosewood fretboards became very common in 60′s eras Strats and Gibson-model guitars.

If you’re looking for that SRV growl or bite, you’ll want to go with a Rosewood neck. But just as with any guitar, you have to be ready to shell out the good bucks for the good stuff.

Typically, maple necks are finished, which will allow your hands to move across the neck/frets smoothly and easily.

Rosewood fretboards are unfinished; and if you buy a cheap guitar with a rosewood neck, expect the neck to be very dry. No guitarist wants to go through the frustration of moving their hands through irritating friction.

But on a high-end guitar, a rosewood fretboard will provide a smooth playing experience and a tone worth dying for.

Number Two: Pick-Ups

Pick-up variations are limited: at least 70% of manufactured guitars come with passive pick-ups standard — and to that end, you only have two choices. You can go with a single coil pick-up, or a double coil — also known as a “hum bucker”. Single coil pick-ups are versatile; they give you a very blues-oriented clarity to your playing, but hum buckers provide a fatter, richer, fuller tone.

Essentially, the hum bucker is two single coil pick-ups stacked side-by-side. The signal going to your amp is doubled, to provide a fuller and fatter tone — as well as offering the benefit of negating possible feedback or unwanted hums.

Hum buckers are only second to active pick-ups (EMGs, mostly) in big, rich, full tones. Hum buckers are excellent from anything from jazz to heavy rock — any style that demands oomph from your guitar and tone.

Single coil pick-ups should not be underestimated for blues or rhythm tones — though they have trouble holding extreme high gain situations.

If you want single coil pick-ups to shine, hook your guitar up to a Class A amp like Vox or Marshall — or even through a Class A/B tube amp (like Fender amps).

Number Three: Amplifier

There’s only one way to go with an amp: tube. Don’t even consider other solid-state or modeling: go with tube. Any guitar with a tinnier, blues-oriented tone (such as the Strat) would work very well hooked into a Fender Series amp.

I’m not a big fan of hooking hum buckers or P-90s (Les Paul-style pick-up) into a Fender amp, because I find the sound very brittle. For guitars using anything more than a standard single coil pick-up (your Gibons, Ibanezes, ESPs, Paul Reed Smiths, etc.), go with a Vox or a Marshall (though be warned that the quality of Marhsall amps has declined significantly in recent years).

Don’t rely on effects to help your guitar tone. You’ll find many guitarists using effect pedals to get tones — but effects aren’t designed for chasing tone. Rather, effects are meant to enhance the tone you’re using. Find the perfect guitar for you first, then go shopping for amps.

Relying on effects to reach your tones is the same as buying a cheap steak and dumping salt on it to make it taste like a t-bone. Naturally, with a better cut of meat, you’ll probably end up getting a t-bone taste without the need for seasonings.