Marc Ducret | Rampe

From Tim Berne's Souls Saved Hear (2004). This is a Ducret original for the trio Big Satan with Tom Rainey on drums.

I love the raw Fender Strat tone that Marc uses on this. It seems as though most modern jazz guitarists today are unsatisfied by their natural guitar sound and like to muffle it either by using the neck pickup with the tone knob way down (Jim Hall, Pat Metheny), maxing it out with compression/distortion (Kurt Rosenwinkel, Allan Holdsworth, early Bill Frisell), or drenching it with muddy chorusing (John Scofield, early John Abercrombie). I understand this appeal: they try to get away from the twangy/folky sound associated with country and rock, and instead want to better resemble a horn. However, Ducret's sound is very exhilarating to me.

I can't imagine Ducret's tone working within a traditional hard-bop context, but I love what he does on this album. It sounds like he's using a Strat playing through an overdriven mid-sized amplifier, although I think I hear some light chorusing. I apologize for the sound quality of the clip below -- it's a copy of a copy of a copy, so the compression has rendered the drums to a blob.

"Rampe"