Telecaster/Stratocaster: Chevy/Ford?

[moon]

I think it's more like a Tardis / Millennium Falcon kinda thing.

[perttime]

Originally Posted by MBE

"A good tele punches and sings, while the strat stings and screams."

I suppose that could be a fair description of the sounds - and probably mainly comes from the available pickup locations/configurations, and the different bridges.

The contours of a strat are ergonomically better for many players (but not preferred by all!). Particularly the waist and forearm bevels, and also the upper horn which helps with balancing the guitar on a strap.

I think I might like a strat body with a fixed bridge and a tele-like pickup configuration.

[s2y]

Unless using a really light body wood and extremely heavy neck wood, I haven't played too many Teles with balance issues. Some of the Thinline models can be that way. The contours can often be done custom and are sometimes available from Fender.

[zabdart]

In my experience (for what it's worth), the Telecaster delivers more twang and is a bit more metallic in its overall tone than a Stratocaster. The Strat is a much more versatile guitar, not just because of the vibrato bar but because with the middle pickup wired in the opposite direction of the other two, you can put the selector switch in the in-between positions and get a quasi-humbucker sound out of it to go along with the single-coil clarity of each pickup individually. They're both excellent guitars. A Telecaster may give you less trouble staying in-tune because of its hard-tail design (the strings are stopped by the body itself), which makes it sustain a little better. Both guitars will do a few things that the other doesn't do as well.

[royd]

I always preferred the sound of the Tele bridge pup (I would describe them as muscular) over a strat bridge (which always feel weak to me) and the neck of a strat (more liquid?? vs. the tele neck pup that always feels "eh?" to me). Plus I like the "in between sounds" of a strat a lot. So, I have always ended up with three pickups, a strat pup in the neck and middle and either a tele like pup in the bridge or a very carefully selected humbucker regardless of which body style I've had. That gives me more or less the best of both.

my current electric is a strat style body, SSH config, with a Carvin Holdsworth bridge pup (I really like this pickup) and a Schaller megaswitch which does cool things. 1st poisition, I get the bridge as a humbucker, 2nd - one coil of bridge and middle pickup - humbucking, middle - one coil of the bridge and the neck like a tele middle position - 4th - humbucking, neck and middle - humbucking, and 5th - neck. So only one setting is not humbucking (5th) while 4 of the 5 settings are single coil sounds.