well, tone has to do with everything you do...playing for a long time or however long you think long is you will develope what you want. I developed Kirk Hammett and his tones and sound etc... but now I want to explore Joe Satriani, Marty Friedman, and Yngwie Malmsteen. I have not been playing there music for long so I wouldn't expect there tone. I rememberd once I tuned my studio processor like megadeth, and when I got better at playing there music, my effect sounded totally dead. I couldn't figure out why it sucked the first time.

I use to play on a little peavey amp with a preavey guitar. You would be surprised what I got out of that thing. I now own a ESP M-2 with EMG-81, a epiphone flying-v rare white, & the peavey. all through a marshall stack. valvestate. With a digitech DSP 256XL rack. Sometime that thing sounds great others I wish I had better.

Yes the guitar has to do with the tone...everything is a factor. guitar as in they have different pickups. But they all sound the same if you pick the same. My EMG-81 can really rip out the notes, but if you don't pick them right and don't give them the first boost they sound like a normal pickup.

Try working on harmonic that has a lot to do with tone. as far as fretting, you can fret a note all the hard or soft you want... to soft it won't be a note and to hard will hurt you fingers... picking it soft with gain is usually the best. That is a hint of getting harmonics. Try differnet things...

Yeah I can make any guitar sound good. Even a kid guitar with plactic strings... you can to, to the people who aren't as good as you.

anyways... there you have it