After playing the same two guitars for twenty years–a beloved Alvarez acoustic and a much-abused Strat–I’ve decided to succumb to some GAS. I want to start playing more electric, and the Strat needs a pretty serious overhaul, and frankly I’ve never really loved it.
After a lot of thought, reading, and playing, I think I’ve decided on a Telecaster. I want something versatile with a hard tail, and as much as I love the Gibsons I’ve played the Teles have spoken to me a little bit more.
Does anyone have any thoughts on the MIM versus the American models? I can certainly afford the American, and that’s the way I’m leaning, but I wanted to know what the guitar nerds here thought about it.
I also played and really liked the Custom Telecaster FMT, but with the smaller body and the humbuckers it’s a very different beast.
… If you want to ditch the strat, I might be interested… I really, really like tearing things apart.
(also, if anyone has pedals they have no interest in, I wouldn’t mind taking 'em off your hands, just to screw with things.)
From what I understand, a good MIM is better than a bad American, but a good American is head and shoulders above a good MIM. The problem is, and again, this is me watching the Something Awful guitar forums which has a huge signal to noise ratio, is that there is pretty huge variance within type.
How wide is the neck on a Tele versus the neck on a Strat? The neck on my NotPaul is half an inch narrower than the Starcaster, and it’s the biggest noticeable difference between the two, to me.
Another way to put it is that there are wider variations between guitars of the same model for the lower-priced Fenders. You might have to try 20 MIMs before you find a really good one, vs 10 Americans Standards and 1-2 American Deluxes (I just made up the ratios, but the point stands).
Also keep in mind that there’s different lines of MIMs which some people like better than others. I’m told the Road Worn MIMs are pretty good (and I’ve played a couple, and they were indeed good, although I’m no fan of relic’d guitars), also the Baja Tele seems well thought of.
Basically, go to the store and play several of every type if you can, and you’ll probably like some MIMs, even of the same model, better than others.
I think it depends on the Tele and the Strat. There’s been some variations over the years with chunky vs less-chunky necks, so you see things like “60’s neck” strats. I don’t know if that speaks to neck width vs neck profile/shape.
Also a Gibson scale neck is shorter than a Fender scale, so the frets are closer together. This helps a bit with hand-breaker chords.
I’m not planning to ditch it, because I want to work it over myself at some point.
OK, here’s the thing. I’m a pretty good acoustic guitarist, but as far as playing electric goes I’m an advanced novice at best. (I’m hoping to change that.) I can definitely appreciate the differences in tone between different guitars, different types of pickups, etc. But I’m just not sure my ears are good enough to discern differences within the same type of guitar. I’ve played a handful of American Standard Teles through the same Blues Jr., and they all sounded very similar to me. Does this mean I just need to play more of them, or will it take a solid-body novice a while to be able to make distinctions like that?
As I understand it, half of it is not them sounding different, but them feeling different as you play them. The other half, I can’t say a darn thing about.
On the gripping hand, I’m currently lusting after one of these:
Warmoth makes replacement bodies for them!
Yeah, the NotPaul has a shorter neck, too. But it is also narrower than even a Les Paul copy.
I have a MIM standard Tele, and I have not modified anything on it. I just haven’t needed to. The stock pickups sound good (think P90 pup sound), with a clean neck pup and a bridge with a little bite, but no icepick. The reason some sound bad is because people raise the pick ups too much - and that’s what makes the neck muddy and the bridge go all icepick. The neck is comfortable - bigger than the neck on the Les Paul Custom, but very playable all the same.
Yes, exactly. A good guitar – any model – is one that just feels good in your hands and makes you want to play it. Some MIMs I’ve played had that, some didn’t (or at least had less of it). I think there’s also not a huge variance in tone in single model year of a given guitar, but the neck feel and other things can vary quite a lot within that model if the maker’s quality control is uneven.
The short answer is: you’ll need to play more. There is a ton of value in playing as many of the same model of guitar to see if one in particular speaks to you, but getting a feel for electrics overall will take time.
My recommendation: buy a guitar that you are okay with the thought of changing in a year. So if you can afford a US-made Tele and don’t mind the thought of swapping it in a year for a different model Tele or different model altogether, then go for it (find a used one so the resale won’t hurt as much?). Either way, a Tele is a great guitar, it is more likely that whatever model you get, if properly set up, will serve as a great intro to electrics - especially coming from acoustic because Tele’s are more responsive like acoustics, vs. responsive like a shredder guitar, which is very different. Learn to work the knobs and get a decent fuzzbox to go between you and the Blues Jr. **squeegee **just got one upthread, and I have a couple I really love, too…
Learning about guitars and finding the right guitar for yourself is a quest. I went on a 4 - 5 year quest, buying electrics guitars with specific features, living with them for a bit and then selling them at a profit on eBay and moving on to the next one. I am doing something similar now with acoustics but not via eBay.
Thanks to everybody. Wordman, the Four Food Groups thread was a huge help when I started looking around, and helped me settle on the Tele.
The biggest problem is that I live out in the sticks, so in-person guitar shopping is a bit of a pain. I’m either going to have to go the internet route or make a weekend out of it someplace else.
Suggestions - well, squeegee just got a Fulltone OCD and one other one - both of which have great reputations. I have a ProCo Rat and a Blackstone MosFET Overdrive, both of which I love. I would say probably that an OCD or a Rat would be a great start - go with the OCD if you are classic rock fan and a Rat if more of a hard rock fan - the Rat has more crunch and imposes itself a tad more on the signal…which is what I prefer - great for AC/DC, Zep, etc…
Yeah, I now have four of the things, and I can’t give any of them up because each has a different cool tone but they don’t sound like each other. I currently have a Fulltone OCD, Proco RAT, Zvex Distortron, and an old Ibanez Tube Screamer. I also just added a Zvex Super-Hardon clean boost that sounds lovely for clean to moderately sizzling tone with my Blues Jr.
DoctorJ, here’s a little background on using these pedals: one approach with drive pedals is to use them to overdrive the input stage on tube amp; turn the gain on the pedal up past unity until the amp sizzles a bit, then use the drive knob on the pedal to add as much grit as you’re looking for. If you don’t want any additional grit, a clean boost pedal can be used instead. This approach is pretty much is only useful with a tube amp.
The other approach is to not use the amp for tone at all, or very little. Just turn the pedal’s Drive control up until you get pedal-based distortion. This works (to a greater or lesser degree) with any amp.
The ‘other’ other approach is to buy a pedal or even amp that has modeling software in it, e.g. Line 6 POD and countless other things. Tone purists insist that amp modeling / digitalFX is a weak imitation. I tend to agree, though I still use modeling software for things that make sense to me or for effects-heavy stuff where I don’t want to buy a bunch of expensive outboard stuff for my ‘real’ amp.
I still think about your home theater-based rig. Please don’t hear me wrong - I am *not *saying that you got a lousy tone out of that rig; I am saying you hadn’t experienced the joy that messing around with a decent tube rig really is in a long time. And I am pretty sure you have extensive tube experience, so this is nothing new to you - but now that you have clearly had a stompbox G.A.S. attack, it does seem like you are doing some fun messing around back with tubes…
Yeah, I’ve been having fun. I hadn’t gone on a stompbox quest since I was young and poor and had to sell a stompbox before I could afford a different stompbox. Instead I now take them home in batches and find out I can’t part with any of them. I can just see my house in 20 years time – open the hall closet and a pile of MXR phase shifters will tumble out and crush you to smithereens.
Thanks for all the advice, everybody! I just ordered a used American Tele from an online dealer with a good reputation and a generous return policy. I’ll take it in to get set up and looked over. If it’s as advertised, I could turn around and sell it right away and barely be out anything, so I feel good about it.
I also ordered up a Fulltone OCD; it’ll be here today.
That all sounds great - I look forward to hearing a report on Tele → OCD → Blues jr. Get the BJ to be generally clean with a little bit of distortion breakup happening. Then, ask squeegee to be sure, since he knows the pedal, but try dialing DOWN the actual distortion, but dialing UP the Level on the pedal - so you aren’t forcing a ton of dirt into the amp, but rather a little bit of dirt, but a lot more Volume signal - that increased signal power will drive the amp’s pre-amp tubes a bit harder and get you more natural overdrive from the amp, with the pedal’s dirt acting as a spice on top.
Then, pick the Bridge pickup on the Tele and dial the Volume down to about 8.5 and the Tone down to, oh, 5 - 6. Tell us if you get a thick, fun classic rock rhythm tone…and then pick the Neck pickup and try rolling off the Tone even further - do you get a nice, thick, tubey lead tone - kinda like Slash on Sweet Child O’ Mine?
To be clear, you mean dial the distortion (drive) down on the pedal, not the amp. Right?
I find that formula needs to be futzed with a bit when I use my Tele with the OCD. The OCD seems to like moderate output humbuckers more than low output single-coils, so you may need to add more drive at the pedal than expected. But, yeah, turn up the level on the pedal to push the amp hard while adding just a little juice/drive at the pedal end, and find a bruising tone. Then turn down the guitar volume a bit and fiddle, and you can get some great rhythm tone. There’s a lot of knobs to dial in, it’ll take some experimenting. It may get loud.
Yes - add a it of grit to the signal, but mostly use the Level to overdrive the amp’s tubes.
This all makes sense. And yes, an overdrive Blues Jr. can be loud - which is a good thing!
E-Sabs - what makes you comment about Slash? People definitely go nuts over his AfD tone, to the point of fetishing about the handmade Les Paul replica he used and the modded Marshall amp he had rented for the studio work - he tried to buy it, then steal it, from the company SIR that rented it to the band for the album, then he lost track, then found it and now Marshall just released a Slash/AfD model based on it. THere are LONG threads on various message boards about the quest for that amp…
and moving on to the next one. I am doing something similar now with acoustics but not via eBay.