Sochoman,
You forget that Ace’s guitar work comes from some of his influences (Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Jimmy Hendrix, etc…). Influences come out in everyone’s music, and nothing is completely original. Sometimes, watching Jimmy Page reminds me of Ace. This is not to take anything away from Ace, I am sure he would agree. While it is HIS guitar work, those influences produced it in him.
On another note, I like Ace’s work from 74-82 more than anything he has come up with (we will see when Space Invader comes out) so far. His style of playing in those days were inspiring and tight, and you can tell there was a discipline to his playing. In my opinion, that level of guitar playing was missing in his two last solo albums (Trouble Walkin and Anomaly).
By the way, I think I have a good handle on guitar players and singers when it comes to being unbiased. I am not trying to kid myself of anyone else–just giving my honest opinion. When I read a comment that seems way off or overblown–I feel compelled to challenge the merits of your argument. Everyone is biased–you can only do your best to avoid bias and give an objective assessment.

Man you are a nuisance trying to misapprehend everything others say as absolute statements – of course everyone is influenced, I was referring to Ace being the original and Tommy being the copyist, did you not get that? Ace was influenced by the heroes of the guitar before him, but then added something of his own and himself became one of these influential players. And hey, you must be a brave man to “challenge me/my arguments”, have you not better things to do than go on a forum like this one and “challenge” people to make yourself feel good? Is this a war of arguments or something? Come on. You are taking yourself and the discussing here much too seriously. Kiss is about rock’n roll which is about fun.

Sorry Mike, but calling Paul’s vocal performance on an average day (let alone on a bad day, cf. American Idol, even ouside the strenous tour schedule!) of today and maybe the last few years “good” is just denying a fact that everyone, musician or not, Kiss fan or not, can plainly see and hear. It is a shadow of what it used to be, and it used be great, which makes the decline even more sad to witness, and I know that BECAUSE I have done the research, because I know so many YT videos, and because I saw this happen bit by bit on every gig they had over here in Europe from the reunion on, and I went to every tour since then. I find it sad too but there is no use in denying it. Face it and then decide whether you wanna spend serious money on a ticket and play Russian roulette if Paul has one of his better days so that his probably subpar performance would not make you sad or cringe when you are supposed to be having fun attending the concert. Let us just accept that they are old now, which wouldn’t be a problem if Paul did not talk into every camera and claim and brag about how big they still are and how they are still giving the fans 100% – when it is just not true, not possible. (Gene btw still has the voice but only 20% of his stage moves left in him compared to a concert i went to four yeras ago …) People critizing Paul or Gene are easily called haters but they are mixing up criticism and insult. If you spend money on this, and emotions too, you are allowed to be critical. Without Eric on lots and lots of backvocals it would be even more obvious to the fan who has no insight because he is not a musician. (I am not a singer btw and did not say so). Watch the videos out there, Paul is not singing whole choruses anymore. Why? Because his voice is still good??!! Tommy in make-up btw is not upsetting me like many others, I just that I find it lame that T and E were not given the chance to create something of their own, like Bruce. It is lame to on the one hand constantly dimish Ace’s and Peter’s contributions, but then tell the employees to copy what these guys did note for note. It is called hypocrisy, or marketing, if you like that one better. I went to see Kiss with T and E several times, was OK. I would prefer Ace, but that would be unrealistic. So I go see him on his solo tours. So if the cotton is not in your ears, I’d say Paul sometimes sounds if he had a mouthful of cotton making him fail on all the high notes. The question I am asking myself is, why did he not stop touring at least for a year or so, why did he keep on playing 40 something gigs every year when he knew that his voice was fading? I can think of a couple of reasons, but that is another topic and has already been much debated in the wake of the RRHOF induction.