You need to observe the prog and blues scenes more carefully, theres a fair amount of guys who can ape SRV and Gilmour very convincingly.
In fact, listen to Steve Rothery of Marillion, he's basically David Gilmour No. 2.
If a guitar has a bad tone, no matter how I play it, its gonna have a bad tone, the tone is in the instrument, any music theorist will tell you thats common sense.
Yeah, those are the guys whose opinions really matter. The same guys who listed Smells Like Teen Spirit as the 26th best guitar solo of all time. Above Machine Gun, Sweet Child O'Mine, While My Guitar Gently Weeps and Since I've Been Loving You.
Not any tone they want, but they can indeed change tones with different picking and fretting techniques, the types of plectrums or tools like the E-Bow or the Jellyfish. But thats all about technique, nothing to do with emotion.
Ok, refute scientific fact. The standard guitar tone comes from the vibration of the strings and how it resonates depending on the type of body shape, neck, pickups and amplification, if me or you simply pluck a string on the same instrument with the same equipment, it will produce the same exact tone. We only trigger the execution of the tone, we don't produce it ourselfs. Thats what musical instruments are for in the first place.
You really are a pretentious one. You must write for Pitchfork.
Theres a good deal of modern blues players who base every aspect of their technique on SRVs, I shouldn't have to name drop for you to realise this.
I don't even have an effects pedal for my electric guitar, and I play my accoustic guitar more than my electric one anywho.