They’re both beautiful instruments. I honestly don’t want to fight the hypo, but I just can’t make a one to one comparison between them. It really is apples and oranges.
The Les Paul sunburst.
I bought a knockoff version from a friend 25 years ago for the sole purpose of using it in dressing up as Slash for Halloween that year.
Next to possibly a Strat, it’s the most recognizable “guitar hero” model.
I don’t play the guitar, and I stopped reading the posts in this thread because I didn’t understand them. How’s that for tabula rasa?
Anyway, the first one is cooler because the black contrasts nicely with the orange.
I play guitar. If that affects how you take my answer, so be it.
A. Every day and twice on Sundays.
Whenever you’ve got two guitars, and one has a Bigsby; the one with the Bigsby not only looks looks cooler, it objectively is cooler.
They’re both lovely, though the white pickguard on the Gretsch seems not the most aesthetic choice. It’s not the loveliest archtop. I’m not a Bigsby fan, but I do admit they look cool as hell in a retro way.
the one with the red around the outside
The thing about Bisbsys is (speaking as a player) I get tired of retuning a guitar after every song where I use the thing. Or finding a wooden disk to put in the thing to immobilize it.
This. The cutouts (do those have an actual name? Something in my brain is saying they have an actual name, but I can’t place it) would like weird with some genres (rock, frex), but just fine in others (eg: country).
The paint job on the second one is pretty as fuck, too.
There’s a big difference between Brian Setzer cool and Slash cool. But both are cool.
The f-hole would look better except the pick guard looks like an afterthought. It covers one of the effs, which just looks wrong. So the other guy wins.
I think you’re talking about the “sound holes”, sometimes known on arch top guitars as “f holes”.
Steve Howe plays one that looks like the first one, so I’ll say that is coolest by far.
Yeah…figures I’d be blanking on something as prosaic as that…
Gretsch.
I play regular gigs, and I use a full hollowbody (Ibanez Artcore AF55) for music that it’s supposedly not meant to be good for. Plenty of guitarists do. “Received wisdom” in the world of guitars is 99.9% bull.
Never having played three notes in my life…I like A. The colours are more striking. B has a very original feel, but also seems…old, stale.