Stratocaster vs. Telecaster

I grew up a Strat kid, they are still amazing and I wouldn't ever not own one.

But I got an American Tele a couple of years ago for an absolute steal and I generally prefer it over the Strat. I still like the comfort and look of the Strat, but I've been playing my Tele a lot more since I got it.

As a music fan. I actually *like* that the Telecaster's lack of versatility seems to have pushed to carve a role electric guitar in an ensemble, arrangement or mix that's specific to the instrument they're playing. It's not a saxophone, it's not an autoharp, it's the punctuation mark at the end of a sentence. I mean, sure, the twang- but the Trve Tele players know how to get a good "zap!" out of it as well. More of that, please, and if you wanna wail get yourself a damn sax #uncoolconservativebeliefs

* for the electric guitar
Heh

Every time I read an online discussion of necks and somebody talks about things getting in the way of their "bends", my eyes roll so hard they fret out on the narrow radius.
This is why I like the Telecaster: it's a block of wood with a robust bridge and a precisely fretted neck, two pickups at good locations on the strings, and nothing else. Suitable for chords, riffs, and pickin if you're so inclined.

Also tbf these days there are a reasonable variety of necks to choose from on a Tele so I don't know quite why people get hung up on that.

honestly the way people run their guitars through elaborate pedalboards now it's probably best to just buy on the basis of what's most comfortable

like you can really discern the difference between guitars after putting it through 10 boutique pedals and the amp

or ppl who insist they can tell the difference between this electric guitar "tonewoods" lol

lol I watched Joe Satriani's rig rundown video once, and if I recall correctly he had a pedal that could simulate different lengths of cord, as if anybody could possibly know the difference. Though I suppose if anybody could it would probably be somebody like him.

ok that's amazing

ums is otm about sound - you can do quite a lot to the sound with your feet, so people are sometimes overly precious about completely marginal aspects of their TOANZ.

To get a little philosophical on y'all, I sometimes get weary of having lots of tonal options. I pretty much know by now what I sound like.

We've all been marketed to death about equipment that heralds versatility as its selling point. Personally, of the approximately 372 sounds that could potentially emanate from my amplifier, I use like... five of them. Clean, dirty, weird, clean+weird, dirty+weird.

I sometimes wish more manufacturers would herald stuff that does one thing well. The Tele comes very close.

(Having said that, I love my Strat as well - it's a very elegant and beautiful object, feels very sensual and comfortrable, and it is as focused and precise as a laser beam. But I do sometimes have a sad about the five-position switch of which I only use one position, and about the tremelo that I rarely use. For a while I had it blocked, but then felt bad that I wasn't using a feature that is a main feature of the instrument, so I took the block out - and still rarely use it. It is a quandary.)

Make and model of guitar can definitely make a difference depending on the music you're making, though; you would likely not use, say, an SG for country licks. For that matter, I have an SG, and its output is so loud I barely pick it up, though at the same time Bill Frisell used an SG for his stuff for a while, so clearly in the right hands it is capable of a lot more sensitivity. Or think of the Rickenbacker. The Rick is immediately associated with jangle, a la Byrds, REM, Tom Petty, etc. But it was also often the guitar of choice for John Fogerty in CCR, for Guy in Fugazi, for Paul Weller in the Jam, and so on. And some of the best tones are all done in-amp anyway. Like Neil Young's overdriven tone, that's mostly just him cranking his amp to various degrees. Same with someone like Jimmy Page, who didn't even have many pedals at his disposal save a fuzz, wah and Echoplex, which is I assume all Hendrix really had, too.

Hendrix famously used the Octavia fuzz/octave pedal

Here's a clip of Wilco with really trad sounding country licks on an SG

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5QCeSS03RE'

Huh, that's not a bad country sound for an SG!

When did a lot of the most common effects pedals become available? Early to mid 70s? I know late '60s had the wah, fuzz, phaser/univibe ...

jimi had a univibe too on stuff like little wing

a lot of the certain guitars = certain styles stuff comes down to influence and visual aesthetics rather than sound

Sure, but to my mind the main question is whether it's humbuckers or, like, a P-90 in the SG. I can't tell from that Wilco clip.

Country lead parts require twang by tradition, but it's not just twang, is it? Generally there's already a lot of midrange in the mix of a country arrangement, so a single-coil sound is most appropriate because it will cut more surgically, and introduce less extra midrange / bass / overtones.

For a while I had an Epi LP and an Epi 339 with coil-splitting. Even with the split switch on, the tone still sounded way too thick to me, lacking in bite. So I gravitated back to Fenders and will never go back.

looks like an sg junior with one p-90 in the bridge

Or think of the Rickenbacker. The Rick is immediately associated with jangle, a la Byrds, REM, Tom Petty, etc.

I bought a Rickenbacker 330 for that reason, and discovered that jangle actually wasn't what I was looking for. A process of elimination eventually lead me to Gretsch semi-acoustics and the realisation that the sound I could hear in my head was chime, which a Country Gentleman or the like has in spades. (Maybe the Gibson 335 can do it too?)
But damn, that fireglo 330 sure looked good hanging on my wall.

Gretsch guitars rule on the whole

jut got an epiphone 335 after many years of only playing a tele. love the thicker sound and occasional feedback from the semi-hollow body but it feels heavier and more complicated for my simple mind

I want a hollow body because.

Can you get thicker sound from a Tele twiddling knobs on your amp or is the extra really from the hollow?

Humbucker pickups I would think the big difference.

I reckon a P90 or two would get a solidbody into semi-hollow territory - there's just something more vocal about them. Same with Jazzmaster pickups (which of course were intended to put a solidbody into semi-hollow territory).

"Thicker sound from a Tele" is a puzzling phrase to me, because for me the whole point of having a Tele is to be nonthick; when I want thickness I use a different guitar.

I would characterize my hollow Tele as airier, not really thicker.

But I think you could get thickness with chorus or reverb plus some tone-knob adjustment (like, treble on 3, mid 5, bass 7).

My first guitar is (was?) a black maple neck 1998 Mexican tele and I got a weird urge for a blonde one with a black pickguard a few years ago (too much Springsteen and Prince, even neither actually played an actual telecaster) while also getting obsessed with the Telecaster Deluxe.

I ended up getting an unfinished ash body from guitar fetish for like $70 and a batch of blonde wudtone finish and transplanting the rest of parts. Then I bought a tele deluxe neck, a hardtail strat bridge, matt pike humbuckers, and all the other knobs and pots and switches and routed the black telecaster body out and built it into a deluxe. Both turned out pretty well but the deluxe feels nothing like a regular tele due to a giant flat neck.

As a covid lockdown project I recently put a P90 in the tele neck with new pots and a five way superswitch for series/parallel/out-of-phase options and I can't think of anything I'd want to change about either of them now, other than the Deluxe weighing a ton despite routing a out a shitload of wood because the pickups are like bricks.

Prince played a Korean Tele, right? And Springsteen's was an Esquire body with a Strat neck, iirc. Which actually sounds kind of appealing, because I love my Strat's neck more than my Tele's, but like the bridge, knobs, etc. of the Tele.

Prince's was a Hohner Mad Cat

Interesting:

Hello I am a Moridaira collector. Moridaira is the original manufacturer of the Mad Cat Guitar. It was made with three different names.
1. H.S. Anderson 1974 to 1986 and in 2011 Reissue
2. Hohner 1978/ 1979 These are the rarest of the rare. I have searched for two years and so far NONE have been on the market. NONE. If it says Hohner then chances are you have a reproduction, or reissue, or just a fake. the real ones will have the Hohner logo in Rainbow writing, with block letters, it will also have the serial number stamped in the back of the peg head ending in 791. So far in my search the only owner of one of these is Prince. I do believe in 1985 Honer had a reissue made by moridaira, but only the one with the telecaster peg head, and a smooth plain chrome neck plate. If your neck plate is thick and says Hohner Professional it was made in Korea by the Samick factory. Almost all Prince, and Prinz guitars were made in Korea. The Six Killer Guitar is made in China. and sold by aliexpress.com The HS Benton is Chinese as well. If it has a 3/4″ mahogany strip it was made in China.
3. The Bill Lawrence 1980-1983 These are Made by Moridaira these are REAL Mad Cat Guitars. These are not Reissues, or copys. These were made from Mad Cat Bodys and necks. Using the original stock. These have the original celluloid. and are 100% The REAL THING. Using Bill Lawrence Pickups. In 1984 The Moridaira company Stopped using the “Bill Lawrence” Name and Changed it to Bill’s Brothers. These were made in Japan in 1984 and 1985. In 1986 Bill’s Brothers were made in Korea.

springstein's is a tele body with a squire neck

Actually, we need to split the difference. It's a Tele body and an Esquire neck:

On page 185 of his new memoir, Bruce Springsteen pays brief but heartfelt homage to his oldest musical collaborator: his old Fender electric guitar. “I strapped on my new guitar, a 1950s mutt with a Telecaster body and an Esquire neck, I’d purchased at Phil Petillo’s guitar shop for one hundred and eighty five dollars. With its wood body worn in like the piece of the cross that it was, it became the guitar that I’d play for the next 40 years. It was the best deal of my life.”

oh yeah I think I mean that although honestly I can't tell from necks on guitars if I'm honest

I really love that tele body on springsteen's guitar

Can you get thicker sound from a Tele twiddling knobs on your amp or is the extra really from the hollow?

― Ira Einhorn (dandydonweiner), Wednesday, July 15, 2020 7:19 PM (yesterday

Humbucker pickups I would think the big difference.

― earlnash, Wednesday, July 15, 2020 8:46 PM (yesterday)

Throughout the Spacemen 3 years, Jason Pierce was using an early-80s Telecaster w/standard single-coils and then a couple years into Spiritualized switched to '72-style Telecaster Thinlines with the WR humbuckers which he's been using ever since. Whether it's the solid-state H+H amp he had in SP3, an AC30, or a backline rental Marshall - to my ears, his guitar sound has mostly been the same for decades.

I guess my point is that so much of this comes down to the player. I understand Townshend's point about choosing the amps first and working backwards from there.

WRHBs were also deliberately voiced to sound like single coils - so the Tele Thinline WRHB sound is not at all the same as a 335 semi hollow with PAFs.

for Paul Weller in the Jam, and so on. And some of the best tones are all done in-amp anyway.

So he was Geddy Lee avant la lettre?

i've been playing my strat for the past couple days. stock "classic player" (american pickups, mexican assembly) from the mid-2000s. this is not news but strats are really beautifully designed guitars, like if the tele is the perfect utilitarian design the strat is the perfect elevated design. when i got it i was playing rhythm guitar in a cover band and needed something that would really cut and contrast with the other guitarist. i would always want to have a strat around.

my tele is one of those thinline reissues with the WRHBs. it's my first "good" electric from my teen years and i'd never get rid of it but it's also never exactly been what i wanted. sometimes i daydream about getting or making a very early-spec tele with a massive neck that's set up for insane twang.

There's a lot of arguing over whether the reissue WRHBs are "authentic" enough to the old sound but I suspect that it just needs the right amp to match up with.

My quarantine project is a parts-Jazzmaster - different thread, but I'm completely out of my mind in settling in on a spec.

https://www.tdpri.com/attachments/esquire3-wayarlo-jpg.430886/

This a neat trick on a Telecaster.

I got this option on a guitar with a push pull on the volume knob.

xposty Johnny Marr is another full-on guitar nerd who nonetheless used a solid state amp, for his formative Smiths stuff. I think the Roland Jazz Chorus-120? According to Wiki that was the guitar amp of choice for Metallica, too, for a while. Fwiw, ZZ Top is another band that famously used dummy amps while actually miking overdriven little vintage amps. I suspect a lot of bands did that, too.

I do love a JC-120. My college weird jazz band ran almost everything through a Jc-120 - bagpipes, harmonica, recorder, clarinet.

The guitar player in my current band has one he wants to sell. I would buy it except it is way too much amp for my needs. If it were a JC-90, I would be all over that shiznit.

Robert Smith in The Cure’s heyday, too. (Now some Line 6 bullshit to go with his Guitar Hero custom axe.)

oooh fuck me been on this thread a bunch then this has to pop up on Craigslist

https://minneapolis.craigslist.org/dak/msg/d/shakopee-zane-custom-build-usa-tele/7151108141.html

xposty Johnny Marr is another full-on guitar nerd who nonetheless used a solid state amp, for his formative Smiths stuff. I think the Roland Jazz Chorus-120? According to Wiki that was the guitar amp of choice for Metallica, too, for a while. Fwiw, ZZ Top is another band that famously used dummy amps while actually miking overdriven little vintage amps. I suspect a lot of bands did that, too.

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, July 16, 2020 9:14 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I think the empty cabs thing was very common in the 80s metal era

oooh fuck me been on this thread a bunch then this has to pop up on Craigslist

https://minneapolis.craigslist.org/dak/msg/d/shakopee-zane-custom-build-usa-tele/7151108141.html🕸

I know! I have no business buying it but....the question is...can I afford NOT to???

plus if you look at the body it's got Strat style contours on the back which is best of both worlds

nice-looking guitar. not that it matters much buying used, but sounds like this company went down in flames with a bunch of fraud accusations? https://www.thegearpage.net/board/index.php?posts/26938777/

hmmm yeah that sounds shady, lots of that in the boutique guitar/pedal world unfortunately

i guess used i feel like this guy's be playing it on the regular and most of anything that could be wonky could be fixed by a good setup at a luthier

why am i talking myself into this???? i have three guitars i'm not doing anything with

lol same and i do this all the time