oh..

shittiest tone in the world (and no the band isn't better because of it): magik markers.

Loren Mazzacane Connors

Andy Gill-Gang of Four
Bernard Sumner-Joy Division
Smashing Pumpkins guitar tones (except for some on Machina)
J Mascis
King Buzzo
My Bloody Valentine's guitar tones
Joey Santiago of the Pixies

which is to say Steve Albini again

Steve Albini, ofcourse... the man's like a total genious

tom verlaine (yeah everything is awesome and that clean sound is perfect but listen to little johnny jewel where he doesnt plug in an amp and listen to the beautifull sound created with almost nothing.
will and jim reid- fuzz gods
ron asheton-think 1969, no fun and many many more...
hendrix-he's just a pure genious when it comes to tone.
stever turner & mark arm- some more fuzz gods.
lou reed. ofcourse.
adam and jimmy (swervedriver) - perfect tone
keith richards!
t-boy and lee-man

and ofcourse:

J MASCIS

R S Howard, as stated above

marc ribot!!!!!!
nels cline!
and a lot of others mentioned here....

oh, i just thought of my favorite

whoever the fuck was playing in captain beefheart's magic band (so, that's like 5 or 6 different guitar players.. and no i'm not counting the tragic band)

uh.

i can't really apply the good / bad tone - in guitar especially. there's tones - every tone can be useful to some purpose. some tones might not be fitting for a particular genre. in that case - i would classify that "wrong tone".


anyhow...
long list. i'll do it later.

Ten of my personal favorites....

John Lennon (for his White Album-era tone)
George Harrison (of course I love some of his Beatle-era tones to but I especially love his post-Beatles slide tone)
Eric Clapton (especially the vintage stuff, from his much imitated "beano" tone with John Mayall on through his infamous "woman tone" with Cream and his early Strat tones in the seventies)
Keith Richards
Mick Taylor
Lou Reed
Sterling Morrison
Evan Dando
Thurston Moore
Lee Ranaldo

^completely seconded

modest mouse live has really shitty guitar tone the treble is always was to high but they still have great live performances. Playing live seems to fuck up a lot of gutarist tone

Jack White's guitar tone is awesome...

Pavement's guitars on Slanted and Enchanted sound awful. Great album though.

I love the guitar tones on Slanted. Perfume-V sounds perfect. Jagged and distorted but strangely beautiful. Proof that Pavement could have easily been a great shoegaze band!

It's never cool to bump your own thread, but seeing as how the 'fave riff' thread is starting to bleed into matters of tone, and cos this thread is over a year old and people's minds change about this kind of stuff ....
BUMP!

ac/dc has a great tone

I just basically want the cleanest tone possible. I'm usually not a fan of distortion. The best clean tone I've heard in a while is probably Suishou No Fune's.

depends...
in utero: yes, great
nevermind: not really

Ben Chasny
John Fahey
Tom Carter
Some Robert Fripp is quite rad

These are the ones I'm digging at the moment.

On the subject of Fahey, anyone know what effect pedal he used on those last few albums? It's a weird echo. He used it on EVERY SONG. It sounds great.