Mike Oldfield's Guitar Tone

Now I'm always a feel over technicality kinda guy, but he's just so uncreative.  Just like Pink Floyd in general, he found a sound he was comfortable with and never ventured out again.

And Mike Oldfield is a far superior musician.  Composing original sounding music like that is MUCH MUCH more difficult than being good at guitar and Oldfield's music kills Floyd/Gilmour in terms of originality/not being pop music.  As for his tone, I'm not particularly opposed to it.  It does sound really studioed pretty often, but with his kind of recordings it works.  I'm usually about warmer smoother tones (or any Zappa tone) but it works. 

Yeah I agree with you there (in personal taste that is, I can acknowledge that people can physically play), but to me Gilmour is bad for the same reasons.  His tone is certainly better, and he has more feel, but he falls to the same cliche's.  There's no way I'm bothering going into detail, but after playing guitar for so long there are certain licks people always play that make me want to strangle someone.  This is all part of my despising poppy music most likely though, so it's a matter of taste more than anything.    Personally I'd just rather have somebody like Zappa solo where the note choices are very unique and I feel like he actually has something to say, rather than "guitar solo here" then rip it up.  

I also just don't like Pink Floyd very much, the instrumentation always bored me.  Too chorus/verse/chorus for me and the bass blows, it's like the man has never heard jazz before.  I do however really like Nick Mason's style despite it's simplicity (or because of?) as well as Richard Wright's piano playing (Paintbox).   I was always much more of a Piper fan than later Floyd.  In my opinion the feel of Eclipse kind of just road through their entire damn career, too much of Darkside and other material sounds the exact same to me.  But i'll admit that there was a time in early high-school when I was into the Floyd,  so I can assure you these aren't baseless beliefs (I've heard their whole discography a lot bar a few post 80's recordings).

I've been on hold with damn people from the music building at school throughout this, so that might be full of mistakes and inconsistencies (in wording, not opinions).