What's the tricks and tips for excellent guitar tone?

Thanks for the input everybody. I've been reading, but there's ALWAYS more to read. I didn't look through the stickies (there's way too many!) because nothing in the titles shouted "hey dummy, this is for guitar".
 
"the search function on this board is awful and brings back too many results to be useful."

"brings back too many results to be useful."

"too many results to be useful."

"too many results."

wait, what?

Isn't that what you WANT in a search result?
No, not when the results are unrelated garbage. Great attitude, btw.
 
It seems you need help at the beginning of the chain, am I right? If so, try importing a guitar sound from a favourite track. make sure its mono, as in not 2 guitars hard panned, a part where only one guitar is playing on it's own. try to analyse the tone with yours ears and try to get close to it with axefx. It will probably sound quite thin on it's own. Then double or quad track.

Live is easy to get away with having a lot of stuff in your tone that just doesn't come across well when recorded, particularly too much gain.

Also everyone who has said new strings is absolutely right.
 
No, not when the results are unrelated garbage. Great attitude, btw.

then you not only need help in achieving a good recorded tone and everything that goes into it, you're also clueless on how to use the most basic of search tools to find an immense amount of beneficial information directly related to your question

the attitude only gets worse, especially with lazy fucks like you

"the search function on this board is awful and brings back too many results to be useful."

"I didn't look through the stickies (there's way too many!)"

http://www.google.com/cse?cx=007593...y8lnza#gsc.tab=0&gsc.q=axe fx tone&gsc.page=1
 
then you not only need help in achieving a good recorded tone and everything that goes into it, you're also clueless on how to use the most basic of search tools to find an immense amount of beneficial information directly related to your question

the attitude only gets worse, especially with lazy fucks like you

"the search function on this board is awful and brings back too many results to be useful."

"I didn't look through the stickies (there's way too many!)"

http://www.google.com/cse?cx=007593...y8lnza#gsc.tab=0&gsc.q=axe fx tone&gsc.page=1
Yawn.
 
The stickies in this board are just pure gold. The fact that some actively decide not to read them, to lose time, and make it more complicated to them, is beyond me.

Not to mention the answers to this thread is the whole point of one of them.

If one does not like the search function, just google + "site:ultimatemetal.com" and be happy.
 
Not an awesome input here but a great guitar player, a guitar properly tuned, decent recording/mixing gears and some ears would be the essential.