I find that as a whole, we are an obsessed lot, myself included. And I don't just mean Project Guitarists, but all guitarists that I know. But here's something funny--
I'm still never 100% happy with my tone, and I partially blame my lacklustre amplification and my mid-priced guitars. Surprisingly, the GDI21 that I bought is giving me the most tone satisfaction I've had in a while.
But a while ago a thought occurred to me, and so I've been listening carefully. That thought was that there's no way all the guitar tones in the songs I listen to can be what I would consider 'good' for myself. That would imply that every classic track and every band I like has a well-recorded and great-sounding guitar tone. There's no way.
So far, I've proven to myself that I'm right. Even more than I thought. Even guitarists who supposedly have great tone, I listen to them and think, "yuck, that just stinks. Mine's better than that." It's even worse for classic rock songs. Many of us worship the tones and purity of a strat or LP through a Marshall, or a Rick through a Vox... in theory. But you listen to a lot of those songs, and the guitarist's tone is actually quite crap. So why are we so quick to jump on the tone captured on each others' recordings (I'm thinking more about people on another forum I visit. You lot here are quite good about it all!) when some of the 'classics' are actually quite shoddy?
Example of great 'classic' tone: Slash in "Sweet Child O' Mine"
Example of crap recorded tone: Slash in "You Could Be Mine" <laff>
Seriously, though-- I don't have all the examples at the top of my head, but just try it out. Listen to the radio or go through your CD collection and you'll discover some truly poor tone.
Greg