“Your picking hand is where you control your tone. It’s surprising to me that so few people really talk about it”: Sue Foley explains why your picking hand is the key to great guitar tone

What is the key ingredient to achieving a great, instantly recognizable guitar tone? This ubiquitous question has enthralled the guitar community for decades, and now blues veteran Sue Foley is putting her two cents in.

“Of course, you need decent equipment to get a good sound – a good-quality guitar and amp, decent strings that aren’t too old. But the real secret about tone is that it comes from your picking hand,” she tells Guitar Player.

“Your fretting hand is doing one kind of work, but for the most part it’s flowing in the same kind of general moment. But your picking hand is where you control your tone. It’s surprising to me that so few people really talk about it.”

Foley goes on to say that, in her early days, she spent “a lot of time watching people's picking hands.” She points to Clarence ‘Gatemouth’ Brown's “amazing” right-hand technique and the fact that he didn't use a pick but instead opted for a fingerstyle approach as a key part of what made his tone truly distinct.

“It was like each finger was a paintbrush that he’d run across the strings,” she describes. “He could play fast and wild, but when I’d watch his right hand, it was like he put no effort into it.”

The ‘The Master of the Telecaster,’ Albert Collins, is another player who Foley says “had another great right hand,” so much so that “his tone could slice your head off.” Collins was another guitarist who ditched the flatpick – a characteristic Foley eventually adopted.

“I use a Golden Gate thumbpick, which I take on and off. Mostly I just play with my fingers so I can feel the flesh on the strings.”

She continues, “What I like about that is how intimate it feels – there’s nothing that separates me from each string. Playing this way, my tone comes straight from my picking hand, whether I’m going through an amp or not.”

Foley recently received her first Grammy nomination in the Best Traditional Blues Album category for her latest album, One Guitar Woman, which pays tribute to the pioneering women of guitar.