Stratocaster vs. Telecaster

because jimi

The best rhythm tone ever. Silver mercury bliss

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxATZPKbAqU

like someone mentioned above, you'll see a bunch of local blues guitarists play strats, apart from beginner guitarists

a few xposts

Oh yeah of course, the Smashing Fucken Pumpkins must be the decider here. Prince, Springsteen, Strummer.. I am comfortable in my position.

hey man, put Billy and the Pumpkins and everything else out of your mind....*bong rip*..........just listen to that tone

Not wack:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rf2e4QPPxJY

Oh, Doug Martsch is a Strat guy too. But I think he switched out the pickups and has the selector switch permanently jammed in one position or something.

seriously, when Dylan talked about the "thin wild mercury sound" of Blonde on Blonde..... Billy's clean rhythm tone circa '93-'94.... it's that fat wild mercury sound

Billy also uses Lace Sensors in his Strats fwiw

Have you kept it stock or modded it?
At one point I had the pickup switch and tone knob removed, so all it has is the volume control. I took the tone knob off because I always had it turned all the way up and never touched it—I dialed in the tone on my amp instead. As for the selector switch, I’m pretty sure that the middle position is the only setting I can use now. The in-between settings were completely useless to me.

I do all the sound-shaping stuff with pedals. I’m not a tone junkie. I don’t even know if a Strat is the best guitar for me. I just got it because someone at the guitar store where I bought it recommended it. To get the best sound, I always have to jack it up with a preamp. At first I didn’t understand that stuff, but once I started using a preamp, I got a much bigger and more satisfying sound.

Ok Doug Martsch is an acceptable counterpoint. Is "Billy" meant to refer to the Smashing Pumpkins again? cus eh... no.

Billy was the only one in SP that played Strats, James mostly used Les Pauls.

you don't even have to listen to him sing. just that tone in the Luna video.... fuck me running if that's not the best clean rhythm tone i've ever heard

for tele players i immediately think of robyn hitchcock for silvery shimmer and d boon for skrawk

Billy was the only one in SP that played Strats, James mostly used Les Pauls.
Oh Ok cool, I'll run straight awaya nd check them out.

strat = r thompson for christ's sake!!! and byrne

Yeah, Richard Thompson owns that shit

Also, Alex Chilton on the first 2 Big Star albums, total strat sound

I wish Richard Thompson was my dad. Or at least my cool uncle.

Let's not forget David Gilmour

(it is entirely possible that Richard Thompson is my uncle, ftr).

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51XtWa3SqVL.jpg

thread closed

maybe a controversial opinion here but my take on pros that use strat and do so successfully is that the amps and racks are doing a lot of work

gilmour's strat(s) were pretty heavily modded, it's really not fair to judge it as a "standard strat sound"

never liked hendrix

They're two of the most boring guitar choices I could possibly think of, but between the two it's the Tele.

I find Strats far easier to play, but they remind me too much of Eric Clapton - indeed he has a signature model - so it's always felt like it has a faint whiff of naff about it.

Give me an ES-335, an SG or even a Rick over either.
My

age 12-20 (Gilmour worshipper): Strat

age 21-30 (snobby twentysomething): Tele

age 31-36 (wizened thirtysomething dgaf): Strat

Both absolutely classic, but Strat for its shimming, glassy tones and the the sound of the neck pickup on lead.

*My favourite guitar is a toss-up between those three.

(xpost)

I think the important lesson to take away here is FUCK GIBSON.

Both absolutely classic, but Strat for its shimming, glassy tones and the the sound of the neck pickup on lead.

otm

Oh and FUCK "BILLY".

Les Pauls are even less versatile than the Tele but at least the one mode on them is RAWK

interesting how everybody's experience with strats is COMPLETELY the opposite of mine.. maybe it IS the amps (never played through anything but fenders)

same goes for the SG. i'd rather play an SG than a Tele

Strats don't need to be modded to win this. I prefer Vox amps (cranking the gain all the on an AC10 is my favorite distortion sound ever), but the sound of an out of the box American (or even Mexi!) Strat in a Twin Reverb or a Frontman... yeah, it's that shimmery, glassy sound of the gods.

the gods of surf

why would you judge a guitar on how versatile it is

it's like saying you prefer a dilettante to a specialist

(and yes, I know that Clapton had a psychedelic SG when in Cream, but that's back when he meant a shit)

For those of us who can't afford an arsenal of guitars, it's nice to have tone options

I think the important lesson to take away here is FUCK GIBSON.

No way man. My two earliest guitar heroes, Alvin Lee and Bill Nelson: 335, and 345 respectively.

I think the important lesson to take away here is FUCK GIBSON.
― Jonathan Hellion Mumble, Tuesday, November 1, 2016 1:40 PM (nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

why would you judge a guitar on how versatile it is

it's like saying you prefer a dilettante to a specialist

― F♯ A♯ (∞), Tuesday, November 1, 2016 2:45 PM (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not at all- the Strat is a specialist in every area
and yeah, options.

There's nothing a Tele can do that a Strat can't do better. Show me

tele def looks cooler/has some distinctive sounds in certain settings
i bought a strat though and if you only had to have one guitar it does the job great and is just flat out more comfortable to player IMO which is a bigger deal to me now i guess

feel like the indie backlash against the strat has been going on for so long it's kind of underrated now? like it's hilarious to me that a lot of ppl think the jag is an overall better guitar

i really wish i could get a G&L 80s version of either, those are great

Versatility only really means anything if you can only afford to have one or two guitars or you want to take less gear onstage with you.

There's a reason why professional musicians tend to own several different types of guitar - not just because they can afford it, but mostly it's for the unique sound of that guitar! Sometimes one guitar can't cover all the "colours" you need.

(xpost)

Or what Moodles said!

honestly i feel like in an age where every fucking guitarist is running his guitar through a pedalboard with about 17 handpainted boutique pedals and then an amp with its own colorations to the sound, the guitar has never mattered less outside of its playability and i'd love to do one of those 'gotcha' a/b blind tests with ppl who say they can identify guitars by tone on recordings

tele def looks cooler/has some distinctive sounds in certain settings

I FEEL LIKE I'M TAKING CRAZY PILLS

feel like the indie backlash against the strat has been going on for so long it's kind of underrated now? like it's hilarious to me that a lot of ppl think the jag is an overall better guitar

― blonde redheads have more fun (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, November 1, 2016 2:52 PM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

was just thinking about Malkmus though and he played a strat.

You mostly play a Strat when you record?

Yeah. I went off it for a few years, but it was my Pavement guitar and I came back to it. When I play with my fingers with that guitar, it has a certain roundness and with a pick it can sound a little brittle. I don’t know, once you know some instrument so well, you get really used to the subtleties of how they react — pickups and things like that. I pick up new guitars now and then, but almost because I have to or should more than because I want to.

yeah the Jazzmaster/Jag trend is so fucking beat, i hope we can all agree that Strat or Tele, they're both far preferable to the novelty bullshit of a Jazzmaster or a Jag.

Yeah, I was definitely going for that. I’ve heard some country guys do the almost-tele thing on a strat but it’s usually disappointing. Otherwise though I feel like the Strat has such a strong tonal personality that it’s very hard not to either sound like you’re doing faux-Gilmour or faux-srv or faux-knopfler or faux-Hendrix.

mattkkkk - thanks so much for finding that! it's definitely the same design. that's actually comforting I was thinking what if something goes bad with it and I need a replacement part

No worries! Looking at the action it seems like the B would be bent by tucking the elbow in to the body, but it might be possible to bend the G by pulling up on the neck (if the G arm is resting in the crook of your elbow)?

Starting to warm to the strat a little tbh, although it's really easy to devolve into very smooth, buttery blues solos with a crying-looking-out-the-window-of-my-private-plane vibe

maybe give Adam Granduciel a buzz?

you might be right about the g bender, it hadn't occurred to me to move the neck I was trying to "pull" it with my arm which is awkward

right now I'm just using the b bender which is already a lot to get my head around

can anyone who’s worked on guitar electronics help me diagnose something?

over the weekend i replaced the volume and tone pots in my 72 thinline with 1 meg pots. i put everything back together today and the results were odd. guitar works, pickup selector works, no weird noises, but....both knobs don’t do anything. i assume the sound i am getting is wide open, no pots active.

my soldering skills are not amazing but i can follow a wiring diagram and the fact that i am getting sound suggests that everything is connected. the way it is wired is that the selector switch and tone pot are soldered to one lug of the volume pot, the output jack is connected to the second lug, and the tone capacitor is connected to the third lug.

help! my powers of logic and reasoning are not telling me what the problem is.

Sounds like you might have wired the pickup switch output to the "top of the pot" and likewise the output jack, somehow. Any chance you bridged between two lugs with a little solder?
A photo would probably show the problem.

This is the wiring on my Greco Deluxe, should be the same as a Thinline setup.
https://i.imgur.com/VKpukh3.jpg

thanks matt, that's a good thought that would at least describe what i am experiencing. i don't *think* i did that but it's totally possible. i am probably going to wait a bit before cracking it open again--it's functional with nice new strings so i'll defer the frustration.

the thinline is only one tone and one volume, mercifully for my shaky soldering hands.

https://i.imgur.com/GmYRWfC.jpg
For each volume pot (bottom two in this pic): pickup wire (braided shield) comes to the pot; braid is grounded on case, hot wire goes to "top" of the pot (one end of the scale, the right hand lug here). "Bottom" of the pot (left hand lug here) is grounded to the case by bending the tag and soldering. For the wire to the selector, the hot goes to the pot wiper (picks somewhere between the top and bottom of the pot range, i.e. volume from full to nothing, and the shield goes to the case for grounding.
For the tone pots (top two here): the "top" of the volume pot (right hand lug) comes to the wiper of the tone pot through a capacitor (i.e. only high freqs come to the tone pot). The "top" of the tone pot is grounded to the case. So by turning the pot, the amount of high-freq going to ground is altered.
The output jack is wired to the switch which is taking its feeds from both volume pots.

oops I see, well the setup for the thinline will be pickups to switch first, then the output of the switch coming in like the braided wires to one volume pot, the output jack coming off the volume pot like the plastic wire above, and the tone pot wired more-or-less the same.
The uninsulated straight wires are just joining all the cases of the pots to ground by the way.

yup, exactly. this is what i followed: https://www.fmicassets.com/Damroot/Original/10002/013-7402B_SISD.pdf

baffled me at first but I think I get it: the pickup goes into the top of the volume pot *and* the top of the tone pot. The bottom of the volume pot is grounded to the case. The tone pot is a varying resistor between the bright signal and a bleed cap which takes treble frequencies away down to the ground at the bottom of the volume pot. So the tone pot is sucking away the treble from the top of the volume pot by some amount, and the output jack is coming from the volume wiper to select the level of this treble-sucked signal.
Excuse the lengthy screed I am just trying to work it out for myself!
In that case if the leg of the volume pot is not grounded to the case (right hand leg on the diagram, could be a dry joint or missed the connection on the diagram like I did at first) then it'd be full output and no tone control all the time, I think.

ahhhh interesting. did not think about it like that. i did note that connection but that one could very well be a bad joint.

or it could also be that the case of the vol pot is not grounded, but that seems unlikely given the number of ways it could be grounded.

yeah, the fact that there is no weird hum suggests to me that everything is grounded. i did a test plugin before screwing it down and putting strings on and there was some serious hum--sure enough one of my grounds to the volume pot had come undone. getting everything secure and *then* having to stuff it back into the available routing space is a pain in the ass.

Can anyone tell me more about the Fender "noiseless" pickups you see on a lot of higher end recent telecasters?

I tried a Mexican Nashville Custom yesterday - it played beautifully, but I felt like somethin was a little off about the pickups. Not sure if I was imagining it, but maybe a bit thin sounding? First I tried it through a Fender Deluxe Reverb. Can't say it sounded bad, it was just REALLY clean, and like I said, maybe a bit thin, lacking some body. Then I tried through one of those 68 Custom Deluxe Reverbs (because I have the 68 Custom Princeton at home). It sounded like ASSSSSSS. Then I tried it through a little Supro, and that was probably the best sound I got, especially with the amp cranked.

For comparison I tried a regular Player telecaster, and although I didn't like the way it played (possibly partly because it has been languishing in a Sam Ash for too long), I though the pickups sounded more like your classic fender tele pickups. But not sure if that's just because I'm used to standard issue fender single coil pickups. So many rave reviews about the noiseless pickups so maybe I have unconscious bias against the newness of them.

(tbc, the Mexican Nashville Custom had noiseless pickups).

My Stratocasters have had the SCN pickups and I like them. But then I like cleans.

Anyone have any experience with either the Fender 75th anniversary tele or the vintera road worn 50s tele? Both of these seem like they might be in my sweet spot of having the more classic “twang” tele sound, no noiseless pickups, and not insanely priced (and the “wear” on the roadworn I’m looking at is pretty minimal, which I prefer if there’s going to be any at all).

I think with most Fenders you will get something that will work, they might need to be setup, but in general they don't have too many total clunkers. Hard saying now, but I think with any name brand guitar you are better off if you got options with stores going and finding a used one in many ways unless there is one you just have to have.

Any tele marked 50s style usually will have a bigger U shaped neck, which to me is a good thing. I don't like yer skinny modern C neck myself, I want a ballbat neck myself.