Stratocaster vs. Telecaster

comedy gold

In my head I can see the """luthier""" going to town with a chisel and hammer while the Meat Loaf song about killing a boy with a Stratocaster plays.

that guitar looks like it has some kind of tree disease

Reliced guitars are the stupidest trend ever.

I don't really get the appeal of the Esquire, I don't understand why you'd want one over a Telecaster, you're just giving yourself less options and not gaining anything (and I mean it's not like the Telecaster is some overly complex guitar to begin with)

https://guitar.com/news/gear-news/squier-esquire/?amp

I'd be kind of shocked if those weren't routed for a neck pickup anyway rather than setting up some sort of new cnc machine to NOT cut them

the Brad Paisley Equire even goes so far to hide his special "Secret Agent" neck pickup underneath the pickguard! like what are we doing this for?

https://shop.fender.com/en-US/electric-guitars/telecaster/brad-paisley-esquire/0140322398.html

wow that one is extremely silly.

and yeah, as for the esquire in general it's funny to treat it as some sort of classic model and not what it was which was a budget option based on 1950s cost factors where the extra $20 or whatever for a second pickup actually mattered.

i'm sure it's cool if you find an actually old one

being the guy who relics guitars seems like a fun job, just flinging acid and whipping belt buckles at ugly guitars all day

Technically an Esquire should have wiring that you can't replicate with a Telecaster but I don't know how modern ones are wired.

I use the bridge pickup 99% of the time, I would like an Esquire.

The secret pickup on the Paisley doesn't seem any sillier than any of the million other aesthetic concerns that govern guitar purchases - "looking cool" (whether that means pointy metal guitars or looking like a 1952 Bakersfield guitar to you) is why Fender is worth half a billion dollars.

Reliced guitars are the stupidest trend ever.

― Three Rings for the Elven Bishop (Dan Peterson), Thursday, April 29, 2021 6:32 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

natural wear with strange mods will never not be cool tho

Been enjoying this thread. I like Telecaster and Strat equally now but didn’t like like Strats for a long time as they seemed like guitars for high schoolers.

Question for all you guitar nerds regarding reliced guitars: you see like Bruce Springsteen or whoever playing this super beat up looking guitar that looks cool from all the use and abuse over the years. Man! He’s really been playing the shit outta that guitar!! So cool that people want to buy new guitars that look distressed.

I have a guitar, an American Tele, that my band bought new about 20 years ago. That band was drunk and irreverent and very hard on our equipment, and toured quite a bit with that guitar. The band broke up and I ended up with the guitar and formed another band that toured hard for years with that guitar. That was the only guitar I played for twenty years and hundreds upon hundreds of shows. Dropping it. Throwing it in air to band members on stage. Throwing into the crowd. Seeing luggage handlers throwing it (in its case and breaking multiple cases) across the tarmac from the plane.
This guitar does not look distressed or worn out AT ALL. It has nicks all over it but that’s about it.

I also have a 70’s Musicmaster bass that someone found in a barn behind an abandoned house and that one has been on several tours and it doesn’t look beat up either.

I am inclined to think all beat up guitars are frauds and these people are taking sand paper to try to make them look road worn.

Thoughts?

poly finishes don't wear like nitro

It's a Telecaster, their durability is both myth and some time joke meme in some musician circles.

The same as the idea you can break a Gibson head stock by looking at it too hard.

I don't know, from belt buckle rash to worn necks, I can't imagine playing any guitar so much that I literally leave my mark on it. Someone like Springsteen ... maybe. For sure his famous (more or less) Esquire, which he bought used and used a lot, saw its share of abuse, and had its share of repairs; I saw a show once where a sliver of the body literally flew off mid-song, much to Bruce's amusement. Anyway, they were constantly gluing it, fixing it, doing stuff to it, but I know he also not too long ago finally had to retire it, because it was falling apart. On the other hand, there are so many famous, iconic guitars, and very few of them afaict look totally beat to shit. Like, Joe Strummer's did, Stevie Ray Vaughan's did. But Neil Young's, Paul McCartney's, tons of guitars played by Mike Campbell, all sorts of old guitars played by folks might be beat up but not on the verge of death. Some folks probably play relics or replacements (Springsteen, for example, is not some vintage guitar purist), but I bet most acts just have their techs take good care of them.

Willie Nelson has entered the chat

agree with SA, I have an early 90s MIM Fender jazz that's been through hundreds of shows and doesn't really look that beat if up except for some nicks here and there

also I generally wear a belt and I really don't understand what kind of Blackie Lawless saw codpieces must be involved in creating the "buckle rash" on some of these relics

Bench plane belt buckles

poly finishes don't wear like nitro

― Larry Elleison (rogermexico.), Saturday, May 1, 2021 10:44 PM

This is honestly a considerable part of the reason. Once those nitro finishes begin cracking, playing them nightly is gonna start wearing them the fuck out.

I see the appeal of wanting to buy something that's been (tastefully) relic'ed. Whenever I have a brand new guitar, I treat it gingerly, which keeps it looking new, which keeps me treating it gingerly. If I bought something that's already worn in, I'd feel better cutting loose on it. But I've never been in a touring band, just one that played shows around my college town for a few years. If you're traveling and playing a certain guitar every night, it's gonna show wear eventually. But if it's a more recent one with a poly finish, it will wear differently and less.

YMMV but I cannot imagine relying on just one guitar night after night. The idea of going to a gig without a backup instrument gives me hives.

When drumming, I have a second snare, and at least two hi-hat clutches.

I have pretty much never needed them, but that's kinda not the point.

My the neck of my mim Telecaster that I bought new in 1998 has noticeable wear through the finish in the “cowboy chords” area which is kind of surprising because there were long stretches where I didn’t play it at all and I’ve never played guitar in a band.

The body on the other hand is finished with some sort of adamantium/vibranium alloy.

an early 90s MIM Fender jazz that's been through hundreds of shows

jazz bass

(that was always my main instrument)

My 3-year old nitro Jazzmaster has quite a bit of checking on the back and arm area, but it’s all in the color coat and hasn’t broken through to the top finish layer.

Yeah, and I have 45-50 year old poly finished Japanese Tele and Strat clones where the finish has yellowed, but there's essentially zero wear apart from chips and breaks in the finish on edges. But just the other day I saw this 80s Japanese Tele, a low end model so the finish would definitely be poly:
https://i.imgur.com/ItamoMs.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/ztv28jf.jpg

Thin is thin, as I understand it - thin poly will sink into wood and wear like that, maybe more likely on a cheap guitar back then.

The Fender finish these days is polyester and comes out thick whether it's a cheap Squier or an expensive American Fender.

That's a pretty guitar

when it comes to ash, gotta say swamp ash is right near the top

Northern Ash is good if you want to lift weight. That was the source of a lot of heavy ‘70s guitars.

I found the world’s lightest Peavey T-60 - normally they’re 10+ pounds, mine is 7.5. Waiting on an aluminum neck to make it playable, the frets were non-existent.

one of my great regrets is not buying a T-40 bass a couple of years ago for $250 or something because it weighed like fifty pounds.

shit I just bought that 80s Telecaster I posted upthread

nice!

I remember when those Peavey T guitars were so common in shops they were basically giving them away. Now they're highly sought after and not cheap. When did that happen??

based on sales itt it seems telecasters are winning

as it should be.

when it comes to ash, gotta say swamp ash is right near the top

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Monday, May 3, 2021 9:27 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

ugh, hate when I get swamp ash

yeah I think this is my 6th Tele or Tele variant (most are Japanese copies)

this is an oddball

https://minneapolis.craigslist.org/hnp/msg/d/osseo-fender-pawn-shop-color-sunburst/7315840263.html

i actually really like that one!

thread inspired me to put strings on my electric guitar for the first time in 13 years. I've been playing a larrivee L-05 the whole time, and this feels like a game controller. started searching for larger neck teles and most people point toward...road worn models.

my wife and kid are out of town so I took my 1978 Princeton Reverb and pedalboard out of the tiny room upstairs and set them up in the much larger living room and it sounds so unbelievably good while sitting on the couch and playing and drinking beer and watching marvel movies with the closed captioning on like the slovenly adolescent that I really am when my true self is revealed

it's been all telecaster so far though I really should try my knockoff japanese strat while i have the chance

the pawn shop 72 is a sweet guitar. i have a prototype of one and its a personal favorite for sure:
https://i.imgur.com/newmWfW.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/6aHp5IG.jpg
mine has binding around the front of the body and is only rounded in the back and mine has two wide range humbuckers and a 4 bolt neck.

that's nice, looks cooler in your pictures than the craigslist one

Spottie that kills the production model. And Sufjan the meaty-neck standard seems to be the Baja Tele, there are a few models which vary in colour and 50s-vs-60s setup. Getting harder to find at a good price tho.

at a certain point you could think about a replacement neck too