Strat or Tele

[bigbadbikercats]

Get Karter said:

As practically no-one ever uses a clean guitar sound, and with all the amp-simulator gubbins that are so cheaply available to create any sound you want, why is the shape of your guitar's body of any importance other than visually?

Genuine question folks, from someone who has an acoustic guitar....

A few points spring to mind here:

Hollow or semi-hollow bodies apart construction (bolt-in, glued-in, or through neck) and materials (Mahogany, Ash, Alder, Korina, presence or absence of maple top, etc, etc), pickup design (single coil, humbucker, etc, etc) and pickup mounting arrangements and electrics are what really make the difference.

In construction and material terms a Strat is pretty much the same as a Telecaster but they sound very different because of the difference in pickup construction and mounting (both use single coils, the bridge pickups look pretty similiar at first glance but the telecaster pickup has a whopping great metal plate on its base and is mounted to a chunky steel bridge plate rather than the Strat's relatively flimsy plastic scratchplate).

You can to a degree "fake" the sound of one guitar with another but ultimately you'll be getting an approximation rather than "the real thing" and tweaking the output level, tweaking the frequency distribution with EQ won't reproduce the subtle distinction in the way different guitars react to playing style and dynamics - it may well be "good enough" in a mix (either recorded or on stage) but you won't get the same interplay between instrument and player that shapes a performance...

Last but (for me at least) not least the feel and aesthetics of an instrument influence what you play - if you strap on a flying V you aint going to be playing jazz, if you pick up a 335-a-like BB King (or Chuck Berry) imitations are inescapable, and there's nothing like picking up a knackered looking Telecaster to make Keef Richards' riffs, James Burton's[1] licks, or Steve Cropper's chops start drifting into your mind and into your fingers :-)

[1] As if... in fact you can pretty much say say that for all those names but it doesn't stop me trying!

--
JG