You like Teles. I would try a 335 before a PRS. Not a slam on PRS’s at all, just that someone who likes Teles often likes a 335 for a humbucker guitar. Both are versatile with a tight low end, but in very different ways.
Your plan for a live-with trial is smart.
Interesting. I’ve been curious about my reaction to a 335 as well, or perhaps a 339. But a) my Epi is a Dot, so the biggass neck on it put me off 335’s a little, though I like it well enough otherwise. Well that and ever trying to work on the controls, oy! And b) 335’s still have that stupid 7 degree neck tilt, which doesn’t bother me ergonomically, but it’s such a weird way to build an instrument. And c) my LP was such a grumpy instrument; once you get past that the playing experience could be great, but I’m afraid an ES would be as grumpy. I don’t want to buy my guitar dinner and flowers every time I play it.
But not a bad suggestion, thank you. I will consider and go play some ES’s. I know some do come with ‘slim taper’ necks, so that may be a ticket.
Well, it depends on what your idea of modern is, but I have a couple of Danelectros. They are generally great-sounding, but it’s obvious they were built to a price point.
My 12-string is from the late '90s. That one sounds fine and has held together well. It’s failing was that the strap buttons were press fit, and would come out. Two pieces of dowel, some glue and regular screw-in strap buttons fixed its only problem.
The bass is from the early 2000’s. Its strap buttons were fine, but when i got it, the bridge was made out of aluminum, and would bow a bit at pitch. I replaced it with a brass $50 Allparts replacement, and it’s served me for years of playing.
If you like it and know you might have to fix a part or two to make it reliable enough for shows, I highly recommend them. Both of mine sound great, and it’s probably the lightest guitar made of wood that you’ll ever play.
Perhaps… I should just buy both a ES 335 and a PRS McCarty from GC. Play them both for a month, return the one I like less.
Not kidding. I’ve done this before, and posted about it here: I bought a new Blues Junior and a Traynor Y…something amp, kept them both for 4 weeks and returned one of them, kept the other (the Blues Jr, which is sitting next to me now). But wow, doing it with $7k of guitars is a little breathtaking.
Ergonomics matter. If you notice the neck angle, that matters. I am not sure what “grumpy” means, but if you had to play it a certain way to get your sound, you should ask yourself if you like what it is asking of you. As you know, I seek out guitars that reward me when I play “my way” better.
If you already have an Epi Dot, then you have a 335 at a lower price point, right? So you know them well? Many Epi Dots are great guitars - kind of like Mexi-Strats where a significant % are as good as US if you know what you are looking for. My point being that you would be checking out a 335 for it’s mainline level of build and for the neck. Avoid the '59 profile neck on the 339 or 335 - sounds too big for you ?? Either way, understand your options.
If you have a Dot, you might try living with a 339. The smaller body is its own thing. I haven’t lived with one, had a similar 80’s Ibanez AS-50 - which, by the way, with its slim fast neck and small-335 vibe, would be perfect to check out for you. They are around for less than the ones you are considering, but you wouldn’t have a 30-day checkout period which is a very good thing.
Enjoy checking them out. .
ETA: let’s see if I can get this in the edit window. The controls: yeah, I ended up loving a Tele because it only has 1 V and 1 T control. But you can get a great, near-quack tone on a 335. Set the Tones where you want them - I tended to roll them off to 7.5 or so - pick the middle position for both, and then have 1 Volume full out. Tweak the other volume to around 8.5 - try it out with each pickup. There is a sweet spot where the blend is really great for funk. Check it out.
Oh, and cornflakes, I forgot to answer your specific questions:
Yes, the pickups tend toward being microphonic. Throw enough gain on either of mine, and you can scream into the pickups. However, neither of mine will provide microphonic feedback until you’re at very loud volumes (louder than anyone wants you to be at a club) or very high levels of gain (I use more gain than most people, seriously. You’re almost certainly fine WRT microphonics).
Yep, the bodies were poplar clad in masonite and still are. Masonite is the ultimate tone wood. 
The original Dano necks were far more stable than their competitors such as Kay. They aren’t adjustable, but they have 2 aluminum rods going down them, making a warped one rare. The modern ones have an adjustable truss rod. My 12-string’s neck is a three-piece neck, with a scarf joint at the headstock. Either method makes a pretty stable neck.
Staying in tune…hmm. One of mine is a bass. I’m surprised if it ever goes out of tune unless the weather changes 20 degrees. The other one is a 12 string. I’ve never had a 12 string that would reliably stay in tune between putting it down and picking it back up again, and this one is no different. If I pick it up, I have to tune it. On the other hand, it does stay in tune while playing once you get it in tune.
Huge donation of vintage guitars and other instruments to a university close to Nashville: Belmont Announces New Interactive Vintage Instrument Museum to Open Spring 2017 | Belmont University News & Media
Many top-grade Martins, Gibsons and Fenders. Covet.
Re ‘grumpy’: I take a lot of effort to make sure the guitar is ready to play, and plays well all over the neck. Open and barred, pedal tones up high to weirdo jazz chords in the middle. On my AD Tele I can get it there quickly and it stays there reasonably (actually very!) well. My LP I tended to spend much more time, and it was rewarding, but just too damned slow. I want to go from having an idea (or reliving old ones, whatever 
) to picking up the instrument to playing in as few steps as possible. The LP took more steps, plain and simple, where I could go from idea to forgetting the instrument on the Tele quite quickly. That’s all. Grumpy. Also ergonomics: Teles are comfortable, LPs are heavy buffalos laid across your lap; if the buffalo were worth the extra effort, I’d make the effort. It just wasn’t, and I gave the instrument a couple years with me to make that case. It really just didn’t. When I lost myself in the LP it was wonderful, but it was too much effort to get me there. I liked LPs conceptually, the tone could be so cool, but it was like a great date with a hot chick who just isn’t right for you, not having a best girlfriend.
I went guitar shopping at GC today for about four hours, and totally took your advice re ES guitars and even lucked into a couple PRS’s. I’ll share impressions shortly. Definitely had some surprises.
Yep, I get that. One big reason I ended up with a Tele.
I look forward to your impressions. Four hours? Long session checking stuff out!
OK, I’m playing with the effects loop on my amp and have a question for you more experienced electric players: If you have a wah, is it in the loop or straight in? I’ve put my delay in the loop and it’s worlds better tone wise, the distortion definitely not. Thoughts?
Think of it this way:
If you put an effect thusly: guitar -> effect -> amp, you are changing the signal before it gets processed in any way by the amp.
If you do an effects loop, you are doing: guitar ->pre amp -> effects loop -> power amp. Generally that is. Some amps do it a bit differently. If this is the signal path, you are changing the signal after the pre-amp.
A delay just delays/repeats/whatever the signal that comes through it. So if you put it on the effects loop it shouldn’t matter much (assuming the loop doesn’t add much to the signal itself) Where the delay happens isn’t going to affect the end sound as much as other effects. There will be some change but it should be less than things like distortion.
A distortion, on the other hand, will be affected by its position. For tube amps, driving the pre-amp is where you tend to get the nice creamy gain sound. So if you do distortion pedal -> pre-amp, well the pre-amp will add the overdrive goodness to the distorted signal. If you put it on the effects loop you will be taking the overdrive signal from the pre-amp and adding distortion to it, which may not work so well.
My general rule (though I don’t use a lot of effects) is that things that are affecting tone go before the pre-amp and things that are effects on the tone (delay for example) go in the effects loop. Wah is a tone affecting effect. (Did I get that right?) So before the pre-amp.
Slee
Unless you’re looking for non-standard types of effects, it’s usually recommended to put the wah pedal just after the guitar. Placing preamps in front of them gives a different effect.
Here’s a video that demonstrates the different sounds they give when using a distortion pedal as the preamp. Just mentally substitute your amp’s preamp for the pedal when you’re using the effects loop.
I knew I could depend on all y’all :). I might just try the whole Gilmour reverse the wah thing for kicks but I think my layout is pretty much optimized for now! Tele->Wah->Distortion_>amp in. Delay/looper in effects loop.
Here is the link: Mrs. Robinson - YouTube
Apparently he is out with an acoustic album. He is playing fingerstyle - kinda Knopfler-y but very much EJ’s own style.
Incredibly fun - a bit too flourish-y for my taste, but that’s a rich man’s problems. He almost sounds Art Tatum-like in his putting lead fills in the middle of his lead fills. But he maintains the flow of the song, so he must be doing something right!!
I wonder sometimes why people insist on fixing a guitar.
An old Strat went through fire. Burned off the neck and the horn got burned. Electronics destroyed by water. Body has deep cracks all in it. They actually wanted to restore this? Heck Fender has sold hundreds of thousands of Teles and Strats. There no shortage of vintage ones on the market.
I know people love their guitars. But I think this one was a write off.
How much can be replaced before it’s really not a vintage Strat anymore? New electronics, new neck, new finish. All they saved was a cracked and burned body.
I would have belt sanded and lacquered that body before bolting on the new neck. The neck just gets in the way of refinishing the body.
If you watch the video, it states that the owner wanted to keep the charred look. Frankly, that is the only reason I would look to use that body - not worth refinishing.
Reminds me of a Hendrix-flamed body that Dweezil Zappa owns and had set up to keep playing: Jimi Hendrix Stratocaster brought in by Dweezil Zappa at Norman's Rare Guitars - YouTube
As for the dilemma of “Theseus’ Strat” - yes, welcome to the world of Fender guitars. They are designed so modularly and easy to assemble that you want to swap in any part, you can. And yes, when it comes to collectability and value, understanding which parts are original (and how to tell) is a huge deal.
In terms of playability, I will say that, in my experience, a saying I have heard in guitar-tech circles holds true: With Fenders, tone follows the neck. Meaning that if you owned a Fender, separated the body and neck, and built each out with the same parts, the neck-based guitar is likely to sound like/closer to the original vs. the body.
As someone who has swapped a few necks around, I have found this to be the case. So, to me, the guitar in this video and the Hendrix/Zappa guitar are merely guitar bodies that are burnt a bit and could be fun to work with. But each ends up being/sounding like their own guitar.
Maybe that’s Jimi Hendrix’s Strat?
A tad late given my post, sorry!
I think there are 3 known flamed Hendrix Strats: Monterey Pop, the Zappa one from Miami, and one he did in London that turned up a few years ago.
Billy Gibbons has a pink Strat Hendrix gave him. Paul Allen owns Hendrix’ Woodstock Strat, I believe. Beyond that, I am not sure how many “Hendrix verified” guitars are out there.
I think somebody said awhile ago that the neck and body are numbered? A mismatch probably indicates a neck replacement.
There is something oddly compelling about a guitar neck burning down like a candle. Don’t try this at home kids.
This is incorrect. The SN is on the neck. A body’s age is identifiable if you know what to look for. There were some eras where the SN was on the neck plate, or with early Tele’s on the bridge, but these are incredibly uncommon.
Modern Fender “vintage reissues” have words to that effect stamped into the wood in a couple of places to thwart using them for counterfeit purposes.