So what's a dry and saturated tone to you?

[GreatAnt]

I'm still testing myself to see if I can distinguish different guitar tones and was wondering if I could get a few of your ideas of what a dry, saturated etc tone sounds like?

To me a dry sounding tone is one that sounds really raw, snappy, articulate, not a lot of distortion.

Where as a saturated is something that is more smooth sounding.

For example (dirty tone only)

ISIS - Oceanic - The guitars on that album to me sound like they are dry?

Meshuggah - Bleed - The guitars sound really saturated?

Can you give me your definitions of a dry and saturated tone (and others?) and bands and songs that you can give as an example?

Cheers

[Chankgeez]

(As usual, not sure I understand the question.)

Too subjective to even attempt. What's dry to somebody is saturated to somebody else, and vice versa.

Plus, I'm not sure I wanna confine myself to semantics like that.

There're some things I don't mind nitpicking. This isn't one of 'em.

Why, exactly, GreatAnt, is this of importance for you to define?

[GardenoftheDead]

Given your examples and your definition, you have it backwards. Isis used fucking mountains of gain, Meshuggah use much less than you think. Isis also tends to have a looser low end so I wouldn't call it articulate. At least not on Oceanic.

To me, dry means "no reverb/delay/echo" and saturated means,"super fuzzy/distorted and trebly."

[D.o.S.]

Panopticon is a very dry sounding album.

Busse Woods is saturated beyond belief.

Excuse me while I douse my head in napalm for getting involved in this conversation.

[Chankgeez]

Is there a difference between the definitions of a dry/saturated guitar sound and a dry/saturated overall mix?

[D.o.S.]

Probably.

[Mudfuzz]

When I think of a "dry" sound my mind goes to old Blues/Rock'N'Roll/R&B/Soul recordings. This doesn't have to be clean though, take Link Ray, his sound is distorted as hell but it always has this dryness to it. John Lee Hooker as well.

Saturated to me has to be more then just reverb... more then fuzz... more then distortion... like Hendrix, like MBV, like Boris. I big sounding bigness

[theavondon]

To me (who the fuck am I though?), Houdini by The Melvins always sounded really dry to me. Part Chimp sounds super saturated.

[DarkAxel]

to react to the first post, i have it the other way around... Isis - always saturated, Meshuggah - DRY

[nieh]

Velvet Underground has the driest guitar tone ever.

[Derelict78]

^

[IEatCats]

To me, dry means "no reverb/delay/echo" and saturated means,"super fuzzy/distorted and trebly."

Dry/Wet refer to reverb/delay/echo/flange/chorus to me and Saturation refers to gain/distortion/fuzz.

[metalmariachi]

To me jazz sounds dry,
Old blues, cranked tweed, lots of sag and natural compression is saturated

MM

[kosta]

I'll go Wire for dry, and earlier Black Keys for saturated.