Well, maybe, but I’m thinking of naming my Strat “Mary Ann” just to spite you.
Wouldn’t you say the neck scale is an important qualification for a guitar to be Gibson-like or Fender-like (or, if you prefer, Les Paul-like vs Strat-like)? More so than a locking trem?
I shouldn’t even poke my nose into this thread, since I’m a noodling amateur. But I’ve owned two of the food groups he mentions, and thought I’d comment.
Telecaster - I was struck by the lines “As a player, the line is that a Tele boosts your strengths and reveals your weaknesses. You can’t hide behind a Tele, but if you get good on one, you sound better on any guitar.” Which feels exactly right, because no matter what I ran the guitar through, it ended up sounding kind of raw. I think this is the guitar I’m most likely to recognize in a random song because of that sound (and maybe listening to all that Pete Townshend and Albert Collins familiarized me with it).
Epiphone DOT - That’s what I noodle on now, and I love it. It’s forgiving, and the wider neck feels more natural in my hands. Also, unlike the Fenders I owned, the bottom E doesn’t buzz. I’m sure that was something I could have fixed by changing the action or something, but like I said, I’m a noodling amateur.
Good stuff you’re posting, keep it up!
Wordman: I love these writeups…care to write about the ES-175 (Jazz guitar?), or how about a flying V?
I have pretty big hands, but it’s not much of an issue for me. But I don’t play much lead.
(BTW, we’ve added a guitarist, a really, really good one, and we’re likely recording another album this year…)
Sweet! I can’t wait to hear it, I really liked the last one.
Amen!
Robot Arm - you totally should name it Mary Ann! (or at least try calling it that and see if it sticks; naming a guitar is a weird thing). Okay - try this: you know how there are two different kinds of acting? There’s the Meryl Streep / Robert DeNiro school, where the actor completely submerges into the character, and there’s the Cary Grant / Katherine Hepburn school, where they are basically playing themselves - okay, a version of themselves - in every role? Well, a Tele is DeNiro and the Strat is Cary Grant. Fair?
**squeegee **- great question; as you know, I think neck scale matters a lot. I built my Tele Special with a Gibson-scale neck and it delivered the tone I was striving for - by the same token, EVH dropped a Gibson pickup into a Fender-scaled parts-o-caster and got a nice Gibson-y tone, even with a locking trem (I hate that guy!
I really don’t know how he does what he does.). Not sure what to say; I guess I think of basic woods/setneck vs. bolt-on/control layout first, with scale a modifier on top of that.
Maserschmidt - please, no worries; your post is cool. Your experiences track with mine - a Tele is raw - you need to control the sound of it.
**Quasimodal **- you know, I have not logged serious time on a V. I could never strut enough in my high school and college bands to ever think I could pull off a V, Explorer, Ibanez Iceman - or lord knows, any of those graphically-painted Super Strats that the hair metallers use. For reason, I could totally go for a BC Rich Mockingbird, and have occasionally circled vintage Firebirds, but never quite pulled a deal together. Guitar shapes are funny things - hard not to get Freudian about them, given their complete lack of subtlety as a phallic symbol…
As for an ES-175 - wow, whole 'nother world. Jazz cats approach the guitar so differently and the guitars are experienced differently as a result. There’s a guy down my block who’s been taking jazz lessons for about 5 years now - he’s getting pretty good; wide chord vocabulary and decent scale chops. He has a fondness for Tele’s (his main guitar is a small-bodied jazzbox, an Ibanez George Benson - really good guitar), so he got one recently. When Tele’s were originally made, they came with a cover for the bridge - a chrome metal cover, nicknamed an “ashtray” since that is what it was primarily used for - you’d flip it over and it would sorta snap in place over the bridge, protecting the strings and giving your hand a place to rest on.
A place to rest on?! What the hell is that?! Taking away my ability to drop the fat side of my right picking hand palm directly onto the strings would be like taking away my whole hand. I muffle the strings with my palm to get those cool, chunking rock rhythms; I used the palm to kill strings I don’t want sounding during a lead; I use my full hand to mute the strings rhythmically as part of countless songs; I pick really close to the bridge in order to bring out the twang in my tone. It is simply unthinkable to have that cover on - I mean, why play the damn thing?
I ask my neighbor about the ashtray cover still on his Tele and he says “yeah - I’ve never taken it off.” He picks it up and holds the pick completely differently - if you hold your hand straight out and shake hands; that is the motion for most of my picking. This guy - like most jazzers - bends his wrist - when you waggle your hand, it becomes like a weight, swiveling your wrist, anchored at your elbow. It is a VERY hard technique to learn precisely - that’s why jazz players are so damn good; I can’t come close to controlling my pick that way and get a clean tone. So he holds his pick and sure enough, his hand hovers over the bridge cover, not touching it at all. Different worlds.
A ES-175 is meant to be played that jazz way, often with flatwounds. I played a sunburst 1954 with a single P-90 pickup - it simply oozed coolness. But in reality, it was staring at me across a chasm - a chasm of technique where I pick one up, play my nifty rock tune on a big jazzbox and feel like I am utterly demeaning the guitar and doing nothing to bring out its best. I humbly put the guitar back, continuing to yearn for it tragically.
Funny. For me, the 335 (or Epi Sheraton, or whatever) has always been the absolutely most comfortable guitar that I’ve ever played. Something about the way my right arm rests on the guitar body just feels right. I’ve never played a smaller guitar that felt as good.
Yeah - different strokes for different folks, YMMV and all. Do you play acoustic primarily? And where do you hold your guitar when you play standing up - highish or lowish? I play a lot of acoustic, but I strap my electrics down pretty low - not quite Jimmy Page low, but low. Smaller-bodied electrics just maneuver better for me down there…
These days I play accoustic more often, but for many years I hardly ever touched an accoustic, including the years in which I was learning to play (not that I’m not still learning). My first, and only, for many years, guitar was a Telecaster.
I hold the guitar pretty high. Just where it seems comfortable to me. Puts my arms at a better angle. And the 335 tucks under my right arm just right.
a-HA! There you go.
There’s a pretty long and occasionally accurate wikipedia article. It could do with some correcting, I can’t find any mention of Hark Marvin and I’m not sure why Pete Townshend is mentioned at all, though he did once manage to impale his hand on the whammy of his Eric Clapton signature Strat.
Oh, so that’s what those Guitar Method books are about.
I must think Knopfler. Feel Knopfler. I MUST BE KNOPFLER!
Well that is quite OK, but I do think Hank Marvin deserves a few words.
Too funny - and you’re a Brit, right? And you blew the Hank Marvin reference?? Shame! ;)
I played an under-the-bed 1961 Fiesta Red Strat - i.e., a Hank Marvin Strat - that a guy found in the UK and brought back to the U.S. He was trying to sell me an amplifier and graciously let me use that guitar to check out some amps…fine salesmanship, I must say.
Oh - and a maker I neglected to include: PRS. Paul Reed Smith guitars deserve their own Second Tier Food Group category - they have done amazingly well marking out a spot of turf and making it their own. Build quality is normally top-notch, with super-fancy woods and inlays - big honkin’ dragons fighting across the fingerboard and such. I am not a fancy-guitar guy, so I tend to shy away, but more importantly, they have a certain neck feel and an in-between neck scale of 25" and their pickups and overall tone tend to have less lows, etc…which all combine to my not spending a ton of time with them. But they have their supporters - big time.
Oh, and **Robot Arm **- to do Knopfler using Method correctly, you need to lose some hair, wear a funny sweatband, and crooken your teeth a bit…(I love Knopfler, by the way - but he is not a handsome man…)
Two-out-of-three ain’t bad.
I just gonna repeat something from a mag, FWIW:
No concensus exists for a quintessential rock guitar, but for chicken’ picken’ country guitar, it’s Tele, end of discussion.
Mostly true, but Merle Travis, Chet Atkins and Roy Clark might disagree. Maybe not hardcore “chicken-pickers,” but country guitar virtuosos nonetheless.
True - but the Tele is a great starting place
FYI - in the next issue of teemings (unabashed plug!), I profile a guy who played a Gretsch Duo-Jet and pioneered that country sound within rockabilly, and who influenced the Bakersfield Sound, i.e., Buck Owens and Don Rich, the guys who really put the Tele on the map as “the” Country, chicken-pickin’ monster it has come to be…
well, along with James Burton :smack: