Help choosing a guitar!

[Blunote]

I have a G&L Legacy and an ASAT as well as LP and ES-335 style guitars. The Legacy (strat) gets the least play. The ASAT gets the most.

It's not intentional -it just happens that the ASAT is the one if find most comfortable, and that lends itself to a wide variety of music I like to play. Mine is the Classic, with the standard MFD pickups that come with it. There's very little hum and they sound great clean, or dirty.

[guitararmy]

I like Hum-single-Hum strats or tele's with a small modeling amp or a Roland Cube...

[Dadzmad]

To answer the OP's question - Fender MIM is a standard caster, Strat or Tele
They are both quality instruments and cut to the chase. Play em and take your pick. Buy used. Even though I've changed mine out the stock pickups are very good for "playing out".

[Rumblefish]

I wouldn't be without both a Strat and a Tele, but if I had to choose one it would be the Tele, no question. Rock solid, workhorse that can handle any style you throw at it.

The guitars coming out of Fender Mexico are excellent and a great value on the used market. You can usually negotiate 15% or 20% off MAP on new as well.

A modern bridge gives you good intonation which will be good for versatility while still giving you some twang. It sounds like your not going for classic country, chicken picking or real retro sounds, so even though you can get great intonation with a 3 barrel vintage bridge, the six saddle is more forgiving.

I love humbuckers but in a single, main guitar scenario, singles would be my choice. There are lot's of ways to add gain and distortion. It's a lot easier to dirty up a clean guitar that it is to clean up a dirty one.

Go play a bunch a see what feels good. Necks and frets vary, so get your hands on some. You might surprise yourself by liking something completely different. You can really make any music on any guitar. Happy hunting

[Steel and wood]

I own a Stratocaster and a Telecaster but the Stratocaster is the most versatile of the two. (Five position switch and tremolo arm if you want to use).

[frankhond]

Overall good advice, here is a different approach which I believe will work very well for someone not sure what he/she wants yet.

Get a used American Standard Stratocaster. That should give you any tone you need in the country/classic rock/pop/anything except super heavy metal genres. Don't worry too much about specifics, with a good american strat it's all about your fingers. And if you decide to sell it later when you do know what you want, the used price will be about the same or better, so you won't lose money. Or better yet, you probably will want to keep it and get a Les Paul for the iconic humbucker tones. I would personally stay away from the HSS configurations unless there is a specific reason, like needing both single coil and humbucker tones in the same song on stage.

Unless you have a space where you can crank it, get a modeling amplifier. For the bedroom, a Yamaha THR10C is really excellent, I highly recommend it. There are lots of options for the basement or living room, the newest Fender Mustang GT series have a very interesting mix of features and have started to sound really good with the latest firmware updates. I would check out the GT-100.

For a tube amp, this is a maze really, they get really expensive really quickly. Personally I would either get a used Fender Blues Jr III and mod it with some of the kits on billmaudio.com. Or I would save up for something really nice, like a Marshall Mini Jubilee.

For the record, I did the same journey last year. After a few long sessions where I tried every guitar in a big store. This is where I found out that Mexican strats are fine but the American Standard is the perfect mix between price and little construction details (like rolled edges on the fingerboard, more solid feeling pots, two point trem) which make the guitar feel solid and comfortable to play. I ended up with an American Standard Strat (maple neck, got it really cheap because previous owner abused the finish and swapped pickups for some dimarzio crap) and added Lundgren BJFE pickups which give versatile classic strat tones. Then I got a Les Paul Studio (again cheap because of a repaired crack near the headstock) and just for fun I put some Thornbuckers in it although stock pickups were fine. I have a Yamaha THR10C. I got a used Fender Blues Jr Tweed (again really cheap because previous owner was disappointed) and added some billm mods, now it sounds great.

[beninma]

If you want a tube amp look for something that has selectable power levels and/or is just a 1W amp or something like that if it's for home. No matter what the Tube amp will not waste any of your time playing with a PC/iPad/whatever instead of keeping your hands on your guitar.

The Blues Jr, etc.. are stupendously loud for home use.

I have a MIM Tele and I've got an Orange Rocker 15.. it works for just about anything I try with it. A Start would do the same. I can run the amp at 0.5w and it's no louder than my acoustic guitar even if you dial up a metal tone. (It does start sounding amazing at higher wattages/volumes of course though...)

Strats are great too of course... Reasons to grab the Tele instead:

- Simpler switching, less likely to hit the pickup selector switch with your strumming/picking hand
- No pickup where you strum
- No need to worry about tremolo system (doesn't apply to all Strats)

The twang thing is kind of a misnomer IMO. The Tele is obviously great for country but so is the Strat. A large amount of the "Tele Twang" is in the player's fingers, the Strat bridge pickup does it quite well too. The MIM Tele I have is seemingly less Twangy due to the bridge design and/or pickups.

I listened too a lot of Glen Campbell live stuff on Youtube in the last week... he had the twangy sound in spades when he wanted too.. I'd hear it and think he HAS to be playing a Tele. Every time I looked he was playing a Strat.

[FrankHudson]

Originally Posted by Paleolith54

My opinion, for the type of playing you describe, and where you will be doing it.

1. Pick the guitar that feels best in your hand. I've heard pretty much everything played on pretty much everything, so the difference between guitars in terms of tone, versatility, and so forth is of rounding error-level importance.

I want you to pay double attention to what Paleolith says above. I've probably owned in the high double digits models of electric guitars in my lifetime, including a large number of the inexpensive to mid-line electrics, as well as examples of Fender and Gibson's US line guitars. They all sound different, particularly played into a clean amp, but not all that different. I can usually tell single coils vs. humbuckers on a old recording of mine when the part is clean to slight crunch, but can I tell what guitar is hosting those pickups? Not really. I can't tell even "bigger" things like scale length or bridge type, much less much discussed little things like body or fingerboard wood type, or how the neck is attached, or what kind of paint was used on the body, etc. I can easily hear the two-pickup "Strat quack" sound when I use it, but for me I know it often was a 3 pickup Telecaster. I can usually pick out that it's one of my full hollow body on my old tracks, but chambered and smaller semi-hollowbodies? Nope.

So it's much more important that your "user interface" works for you than what kind of electric guitar it is, and the thing that is most important on the guitar besides how it feel to you to play it, pickups, are changeable at reasonable costs.

That said and reinforced, here are three classic "do everything" electric guitars.

A Telecaster, with extra credit if it's a three pickup Telecaster and or a Telecaster with a neck humbucker. There's a reason, other that can't bust 'em durability, that this is classic session man choice. Even a 2 single-coil pickup Tele with both pickups on and enough drive from the amp or dirt box can get plenty heavy, and a few Telecasters have an additional setting that puts both single coils in series for even more of a humbucker vibe. The three pickup models do Strat quack as well as a Strat. The classic Tele bridge pickup is a girthy sound with enough high frequency content that can take on most any flavor with EQ (even just the tone knob on the guitar) and different amps and gain pedals are thrown at it. Tele's on the neck pickup make great jazz sounds. Mexico made Teles and even Squires can work fine.

A 335, Gibson's semi-hollow body classic. I like Les Pauls and SGs too, but the 335 type can do most humbucker sounds you'd get out of those guitars, and played clean it's the least feedback, and the most flexible way to get a bit of the acoustic resonance into the sonic picture. I'm very pleased with my Epiphone ES-335 Pro guitar with dual humbuckers what have a coil tap function that lets them get a valid louder single-coil sound. I can't make one sound like a Strat however (closest I can get, a 345 type I have with the Varitone filter, which can sorta quack, but these are rare).

The "Super Strat," AKA a Strat with humbuckers somewhere in it's arsenal. There was time in the 20th century when it looked like this idea was taking over the electric guitar world, as everyone was making them. Some here have already suggested the Strat design with a bridge humbucker, which is popular not only because a guitar with both humbuckers and single coils is the way to go for greatest sonic versatility, but because the standard Strat single coil pickup is not universally loved, and the bridge position's used for most heavier rock sounds that are associated with humbuckers. I've grown to love the Strat vibrato bridge a bit over the years, and while they are a tiny bit fiddly, their setup is well understood, and you can just deck or even block them if you don't need that feature. Many people love the ergonomics of the Strat, one of the reasons it's the most popular guitar shape ever.

So, for one guitar to rule them all, pick the neck and other features (control locations, weight, body shape) that you feel best playing. If you want the greatest variety of sound, pick a guitar with both single coil and humbucker pickups, or use the Tele two single coils together, or a humbucker that allows the coils to be split in descending order of useful variety.

[adaw2821]

Thanks for all the input. I'm really leaning towards a strat or tell type. I was think HSS strat because I like the clean tone on the neck but thought the hummbucker would be nice in the bridge. I also like teles for their simplicity. I have also just heard a ton of awesome music done on a tele. I honestly don't think I would fidle with all of the in between positions on a strat.

As I said, I'm still pretty inexperienced at getting a variety of tones but I know the sounds I want to hear.

As someone correctly assumed I don't do chicken picking or the kind of classic tell twang.

I really want good cleans, lead tones, and the slightly broken up stuff with a little reverb. Some classic rock crunch would be fun too.

I think a tele would do everything I need unless maybe I would need a hummbucker at the bridge..

[paulp1960]

I think this video gives a good example of the kind of tones you can make with a 2 x single coil Tele.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xABCCXJDCiA

That guitar is a Squier Classic Vibe 50s Telecaster. It looks weird because the pick guard is missing. It has some custom pickups fitted.

[FrankHudson]

Originally Posted by adaw2821

Thanks for all the input. I'm really leaning towards a strat or tell type. I was think HSS strat because I like the clean tone on the neck but thought the hummbucker would be nice in the bridge. I also like teles for their simplicity. I have also just heard a ton of awesome music done on a tele. I honestly don't think I would fidle with all of the in between positions on a strat.

As I said, I'm still pretty inexperienced at getting a variety of tones but I know the sounds I want to hear.

As someone correctly assumed I don't do chicken picking or the kind of classic tell twang.

I really want good cleans, lead tones, and the slightly broken up stuff with a little reverb. Some classic rock crunch would be fun too.

I think a tele would do everything I need unless maybe I would need a hummbucker at the bridge..

Even with the single coils, Telecasters can do this. Because most Tele's have a good amount of treble energy, you can do something as simple as rolling down the tone control a bit to take away some treble and get a more mid-rangey sound characteristic of humbuckers. Because of the way the Tele single coil bridge pickup and the bridge that surrounds it is designed, it can have more of the wider pickup pattern than other single coils (such as the Strat's traditional single coil bridge pickup). When I listen to recordings it can be hard to pick out a hotter Tele single coil bridge pickup from a P90 or a lower output range humbucker.

This difference is why you see more Strats than Teles with bridge humbuckers.

[DukeX]

If I could have only two electrics they would be a Tele and a 335.

If I could have only one it would be a Tele.

Both are very versatile but different guitars. So you really need both.

[rwmct]

This is a good thread for me, as I am pretty much right in the OP's boat, except I already have the guitar: a MIM tele I bought in the mind 90s. I am looking for the amp.

I hear what everyone says about modeling amps, but I don't want an amp that sounds like different amps, I want an amp with a tone that belongs to it.

And I sure don't want an amp that you program. I want to turn it on, adjust some simple knobs, and be all set. I would love to have a set up where most of the adjusting you do is with the volume and tone controls on the guitar.

I also understand that to get that tube breakup tone at home volume levels the very small tube amps are king. But I am more focused on the clean tones.

So I am on the fence at the moment between a Blues Jr. III or a 65 Princeton Reverb Reissue. I am leaning towards the latter. But I need to get my electric playing up a couple notches to be able to appreciate what the amps can do before I go into the stores to check the out. I have seen some videos on the 65 PRRE where the clean tones just shimmer and chime. Goosebumps! I want that.

And while the 15 watts is too much for home use if cranked, my understanding is that you don't need to crank it to get those cleans. The 65 PRRE is almost double the price of the Blues Jr. III, though.

I am interested in what people think of the above. Especially anyone running a Tele 65 PRRE set up. How do you like it?

[roylor4]

Originally Posted by rwmct

This is a good thread for me, as I am pretty much right in the OP's boat, except I already have the guitar: a MIM tele I bought in the mind 90s. I am looking for the amp.

I hear what everyone says about modeling amps, but I don't want an amp that sounds like different amps, I want an amp with a tone that belongs to it.

And I sure don't want an amp that you program. I want to turn it on, adjust some simple knobs, and be all set. I would love to have a set up where most of the adjusting you do is with the volume and tone controls on the guitar.

I also understand that to get that tube breakup tone at home volume levels the very small tube amps are king. But I am more focused on the clean tones.

So I am on the fence at the moment between a Blues Jr. III or a 65 Princeton Reverb Reissue. I am leaning towards the latter. But I need to get my electric playing up a couple notches to be able to appreciate what the amps can do before I go into the stores to check the out. I have seen some videos on the 65 PRRE where the clean tones just shimmer and chime. Goosebumps! I want that.

And while the 15 watts is too much for home use if cranked, my understanding is that you don't need to crank it to get those cleans. The 65 PRRE is almost double the price of the Blues Jr. III, though.

I am interested in what people think of the above. Especially anyone running a Tele 65 PRRE set up. How do you like it?

You are describing the Deluxe Reverb IMO. It's the king.

[j3ffr0]

HSS strat would be my choice for versatility if sticking with a mainstream brand and configuration.