Stratocaster or Telecaster?

[raymundo 4]

Anyone know guitars? My daughter wants an electric.

[magsite20 1,664]

[sillydiabetic 0]

This post reminds me of a Meatloaf song...

[PRISONSHANK 70]

screw that fender crap, buy a washburn.

[VaiFanatic90 360]

screw that fender crap, buy a washburn.

 

Meh, I love my strats. Tele's are cool, but I like the weight of a strat and it's classic sound over that of the tele. Granted, if you go with regular single coils or humbuckers, you can always swap them out if you want a different sound. I have Seymour Duncan SH-6 Distortion pickups in my black HH Strat and they still sound excellent when clean for bluesy style playing in almost any position. The S1 switch also adds more tones, but sometimes they tend to be quieter resulting in having to turn up the volume.

[yakdung 2,926]

I purchased one of these and gave it away to my nephew as a surprise gift (brought him to tears). If you are purchasing an electric guitar less than $1000.00 it will probably be made somewhere other than the US. The PRS Se electric guitar is hard to beat at this price point. This is the SE line (student edition) most models

are around $599.00.

 

http://www.prsguitar...tom24/index.php

 

Amp he was also given:

 

http://www.peavey.co.../1/20091307.cfm

 

Good luck,

Yakdung

Edited September 24, 2010 by yakdung

[VaiFanatic90 360]

I purchased one of these and gave it away to my nephew as a surprise gift (brought him to tears). If you are purchasing an electric guitar less than $1000.00 it will probably be made somewhere other than the US. The PRS Se electric guitar is hard to beat at this price point.

 

http://www.prsguitars.com/25thsecustom24/index.php

 

Amp he was also given:

 

http://www.peavey.com/news/article.cfm/action/view/id/423/cat/1/20091307.cfm

 

Good luck,

Yakdung

 

PRS is another great way to go, they're excellent guitars. But if you aren't looking to spend that much, a MIM (made in Mexico) strat is another great deal. Many MIMs play just as well as any American made strat. Epiphones are okay, but as of recently, I've noticed a lot of quality control issues. I've got a Gibson Les Paul Studio (wanted the deluxe, but they stopped producing those) and I'm totally happy with it. I steel wooled the neck a bit to take off the lacquer on the back of the neck as it was sticking more than it was helping my hand glide. Here are a few pictures of my collection. In the photo of the three strats, the one in the center is one that I built myself. Custom inlays as well as a dark emerald green finish which is hard to see in the photo.

[Bvamp 604]

Now, I only have the one guitar left from my years playing and owning them, but I had criteria in this order -

 

Neck width - I have large hands, and I like a wider neck, and the strings a little further apart.. Fenders have a small little bittie neck on them. Very close behind the width of the neck has always been the thickness of it. The electric I still own is a 1st or 2nd year Ibanez RG series with what';s referred to as a "wizard" neck. Most of them have broken, because of how they were made, and the fact they are very thin. fender scale necks are shorter than gibson necks, and thus, gibson necks at the same pitch, are easier to fret, due to the increased string length. the gibson scale has a different tone to it, which brings me to the nexst criteria

 

tone - the older the better. you can find used charvels out there with a fender scale for on the cheap side that sound WAY better than any off the shelf guitars out there right now due to construction and aging of the wood. I always went with a 5 way switch, with a humbucker in the bridge, but the other two pickups have varied over the years, and currently i ahve two single coils and a bridge humbucker. contributing to tone is the circuitry. just because it doesnt have a battery in it, doesnt mean it wont sound good under volume. One neat trick going way back, is to take a guitar that just dont put out the tone loud enough (the louder right out of the guitar, the better, gives you superior tone and versatility) is to take an old boss OD2 pedal (two knob kind, not the 3 knobber, you will have to search for one of these) and use it as a line boost between the guitar and first effects stage. Hard rock and Metal tones REQUIRE something like this, and it is KEY to your tone. I wound up modifying and installing a pricey active circuit into the guitar i still own that gives me a very strong signal straight off the guitar jack, and also have the loudest wound passive bridge pickup ever made in it to acheive this. I set my preamp to 3 or 4 for gain, and I have full control AT the guitar to go from wicked clean to so distorted it will feed back all by itself and i dont even have to pluck the strings. tone is everything.

 

looks - some people care about looks, but i could never give a rat's ass once the above two criteria were met. I rebuilt a 1964 strat for a guy who got it as a pile of parts, and it looked like hell before i plugged it in, hit one chord, and it was promptly wisked away to some professional luthier for refinishing or whatever happened to it. I woulda left it right as it was, is how good the sound was. weird body shapes will give you thin or nasaly tones, as well, and are not well rounded instruments, but rather for getting a signature tone with and should be steered clear from as a begining instrument. nevermind you have to sit only one way with the damn thing to play it sitting down.

 

fretboard - go with a rosewood one, if its an option. reason being, is its an average tone to it, and doesnt impart treble like a ebony board will, or alter it for warmth like maple does. rosewood is right in the middle

 

whammy bar - listen to zack wylde.you dont need a fuckin wammy bar. cheaper guitars wont stay in tune, either, no matter what you do. get one with a solid adjustable bridge, or in the case of a fender, a bar that you can crank all the way down so that you cant pull note sharp with it. The best bar ever made is called a floyd rose (waiting on the arguement on that one) and then the transtrem by steinberger. These are the only two floating bars i have seen that will reliably stay in tune for the length of life of the strings, and under heavy stress. kahler has improved quite a lot since buying floyd rose out, i hear, but I still like the old floyds MUCH better. You will get SIGNIFICATLY better tone and fewer broken strings with a fixed bridge....get a wha wha and learn how to pick and palm the thing, screw the bar, its a gimmic.

 

 

heres a good example of what im talking about with a gibson....no bar, boosted circuit, humbuckers, long string scale, etc etc.

 

granted your daughter probably doesnt want to play this type of music per se, but it aint about the flash, its what you can do with the damn thing that matters....and tone...

 

(oh yeh, fuck solid state, TUBES BABY!!)

 

[VaiFanatic90 360]

Now, I only have the one guitar left from my years playing and owning them, but I had criteria in this order -

 

Neck width - I have large hands, and I like a wider neck, and the strings a little further apart.. Fenders have a small little bittie neck on them. Very close behind the width of the neck has always been the thickness of it. The electric I still own is a 1st or 2nd year Ibanez RG series with what';s referred to as a "wizard" neck. Most of them have broken, because of how they were made, and the fact they are very thin. fender scale necks are shorter than gibson necks, and thus, gibson necks at the same pitch, are easier to fret, due to the increased string length. the gibson scale has a different tone to it, which brings me to the nexst criteria

 

tone - the older the better. you can find used charvels out there with a fender scale for on the cheap side that sound WAY better than any off the shelf guitars out there right now due to construction and aging of the wood. I always went with a 5 way switch, with a humbucker in the bridge, but the other two pickups have varied over the years, and currently i ahve two single coils and a bridge humbucker. contributing to tone is the circuitry. just because it doesnt have a battery in it, doesnt mean it wont sound good under volume. One neat trick going way back, is to take a guitar that just dont put out the tone loud enough (the louder right out of the guitar, the better, gives you superior tone and versatility) is to take an old boss OD2 pedal (two knob kind, not the 3 knobber, you will have to search for one of these) and use it as a line boost between the guitar and first effects stage. Hard rock and Metal tones REQUIRE something like this, and it is KEY to your tone. I wound up modifying and installing a pricey active circuit into the guitar i still own that gives me a very strong signal straight off the guitar jack, and also have the loudest wound passive bridge pickup ever made in it to acheive this. I set my preamp to 3 or 4 for gain, and I have full control AT the guitar to go from wicked clean to so distorted it will feed back all by itself and i dont even have to pluck the strings. tone is everything.

 

looks - some people care about looks, but i could never give a rat's ass once the above two criteria were met. I rebuilt a 1964 strat for a guy who got it as a pile of parts, and it looked like hell before i plugged it in, hit one chord, and it was promptly wisked away to some professional luthier for refinishing or whatever happened to it. I woulda left it right as it was, is how good the sound was. weird body shapes will give you thin or nasaly tones, as well, and are not well rounded instruments, but rather for getting a signature tone with and should be steered clear from as a begining instrument. nevermind you have to sit only one way with the damn thing to play it sitting down.

 

fretboard - go with a rosewood one, if its an option. reason being, is its an average tone to it, and doesnt impart treble like a ebony board will, or alter it for warmth like maple does. rosewood is right in the middle

 

whammy bar - listen to zack wylde.you dont need a fuckin wammy bar. cheaper guitars wont stay in tune, either, no matter what you do. get one with a solid adjustable bridge, or in the case of a fender, a bar that you can crank all the way down so that you cant pull note sharp with it. The best bar ever made is called a floyd rose (waiting on the arguement on that one) and then the transtrem by steinberger. These are the only two floating bars i have seen that will reliably stay in tune for the length of life of the strings, and under heavy stress. kahler has improved quite a lot since buying floyd rose out, i hear, but I still like the old floyds MUCH better. You will get SIGNIFICATLY better tone and fewer broken strings with a fixed bridge....get a wha wha and learn how to pick and palm the thing, screw the bar, its a gimmic.

 

 

heres a good example of what im talking about with a gibson....no bar, boosted circuit, humbuckers, long string scale, etc etc.

 

granted your daughter probably doesnt want to play this type of music per se, but it aint about the flash, its what you can do with the damn thing that matters....and tone...

 

(oh yeh, fuck solid state, TUBES BABY!!)

 

 

On the whammy's Vamp is right, Floyd's are definitely the best (though they can be a pain in the ass to setup if you're changing string gauges, or take all the strings off at once) but Ibanez has done an excellent job making their own style of bridge modeled after the Floyd Rose. You can see it on my Jem, and that this is just rock solid. No issues with it, ever. I can pull all the way up or crank it all the way in and it stays in perfect tune. The Floyd Rose knock offs just aren't the same.

 

As for amps, solid stats are garbage, tubes will give you any sound you could ever dream of. Because of my moving around, I only have a Peavey Classic 30 Tube Amp, but I love that damn thing.

 

ETA: Here's an excellent example of what a quality whammy bar can do for you.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vv5UUEHfOXU&feature=related

Edited September 24, 2010 by VaiFanatic90

[Bayoupiper 738]

 

 

PRS is another great way to go, they're excellent guitars. But if you aren't looking to spend that much, a MIM (made in Mexico) strat is another great deal. Many MIMs play just as well as any American made strat. Epiphones are okay, but as of recently, I've noticed a lot of quality control issues. I've got a Gibson Les Paul Studio (wanted the deluxe, but they stopped producing those) and I'm totally happy with it. I steel wooled the neck a bit to take off the lacquer on the back of the neck as it was sticking more than it was helping my hand glide. Here are a few pictures of my collection. In the photo of the three strats, the one in the center is one that I built myself. Custom inlays as well as a dark emerald green finish which is hard to see in the photo.

 

 

 

 

Sweet!

 

A lute!

[VaiFanatic90 360]

 

 

PRS is another great way to go, they're excellent guitars. But if you aren't looking to spend that much, a MIM (made in Mexico) strat is another great deal. Many MIMs play just as well as any American made strat. Epiphones are okay, but as of recently, I've noticed a lot of quality control issues. I've got a Gibson Les Paul Studio (wanted the deluxe, but they stopped producing those) and I'm totally happy with it. I steel wooled the neck a bit to take off the lacquer on the back of the neck as it was sticking more than it was helping my hand glide. Here are a few pictures of my collection. In the photo of the three strats, the one in the center is one that I built myself. Custom inlays as well as a dark emerald green finish which is hard to see in the photo.

 

 

 

 

Sweet!

 

A lute!

 

Actually, it's a Middle-Eastern Oud. It was made for me as a gift in Iraq.

[Bayoupiper 738]

Strat for rock, Tele for blues.

 

Other great brands have already been mentioned above.

 

 

But what do I know, I play drums!

[Bayoupiper 738]

 

 

Actually, it's a Middle-Eastern Oud. It was made for me as a gift in Iraq.

 

 

 

 

Sweet!

 

An oud!

 

 

 

 

 

Nobody knows the difference these days.

[VaiFanatic90 360]

Strat for rock, Tele for blues.Other great brands have already been mentioned above.But what do I know, I play drums!

 

Me too! Been playing drums longer than the guitar, but the guitar is my main squeeze.

 

 

Actually, it's a Middle-Eastern Oud. It was made for me as a gift in Iraq.

Sweet!An oud!Nobody knows the difference these days.

 

But there is a difference

[Bayoupiper 738]

 

But there is a difference

 

 

Oh absolutely!

 

 

But I am seeing them more and more at SCA events and steampunk conventions where they really CAN'T tell the difference!

 

 

 

 

And that includes the guy playing it.

[VaiFanatic90 360]

 

But there is a difference

 

 

Oh absolutely!

 

 

But I am seeing them more and more at SCA events and steampunk conventions where they really CAN'T tell the difference!

 

 

 

 

And that includes the guy playing it.

 

I believe it. The pick you use to play that thing is so strange, and the method of holding it is just as weird.

[raymundo 4]

Cool, lots of good info. My daughter has been playing & taking lessons for a year now and plays pretty good. Youtube has co-taught her a lot too. She is influenced by the likes of Joan Jett & Green Day. She's a good kid who gets good grades and does the chores without a lot of dramma. My old lady and I want to surprise her. I initially thought Gibson Les Paul but when I went to the sight I was shocked to see how big the range in prices were. She plays a Chinese made Fender acoustic right now and really makes an effort to make her bar chords sound clean. Someone at the guitar shop where she takes lessons told me it was easier on an electric guitar. We want to surprise her with a guitar but it seems like it is about personal preference. I'm wondering if we should just take her to Guitar Centers and tell her 1K is her limit... Please keep the input coming.

[raymundo 4]

I like that answer!

Strat for rock, Tele for blues.

 

Other great brands have already been mentioned above.

 

 

But what do I know, I play drums!

[Klassy Kalashnikov 1,393]

Damn Vai, that is a sick guitar collection man!

[number1punk 17]

a mexi or japan strat, with the right setup is all the guitar one really needs. i've made $100 squire strats into really nice instruments after a little work. unless you drop a couple grand on one, no guitar is going to be "right" out of the box. the all need a little tweaking in the truss rod, the frets worked over, and the intonation and radius set up for the specific strings that are going to be played on it. this is all easier than it sounds, and any decent music store can do it for $50-$100. that being said, i personally don't care for a strat but with a HSS configuration it would be a versatile guitar that she won't outgrow as she improves her skills. Tele's are badass, but a little esoteric for a first guitar.

[RobRez 1,895]

Ahhh... That "Rock and Roll" stuff will never catch on! It's just a passing Fad! Bah!!

[yakdung 2,926]

Cool, lots of good info. My daughter has been playing & taking lessons for a year now and plays pretty good. Youtube has co-taught her a lot too. She is influenced by the likes of Joan Jett & Green Day. She's a good kid who gets good grades and does the chores without a lot of dramma. My old lady and I want to surprise her. I initially thought Gibson Les Paul but when I went to the sight I was shocked to see how big the range in prices were. She plays a Chinese made Fender acoustic right now and really makes an effort to make her bar chords sound clean. Someone at the guitar shop where she takes lessons told me it was easier on an electric guitar. We want to surprise her with a guitar but it seems like it is about personal preference. I'm wondering if we should just take her to Guitar Centers and tell her 1K is her limit... Please keep the input coming.

 

Cool. Good luck to your daughter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDhV-xXDWsE&NR=1

http://www.prsguitar...nthi/index.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmarK1bosZU&feature=related

 

Yakdung

Edited September 24, 2010 by yakdung

[sidewinderl 43]

Strat for rock, Tele for blues.

 

 

This. Personally I don't think it really matters a whole lot what you use (as far as brands go), as long as you like it and it plays. Kirk Hammet started out on a Montgomery Ward guitar (or some dept store like that) and an amp made out of a shoebox. Worrying about varying nuances is better left to virtuosos like Malmsteen...and he plays a Strat, so that's good enough for me lol

 

But what do I know...I can hardly play a note and I never practice xP

[going12220 125]

good point about the amp, electric get-fiddle without one not a lot of fun

[number1punk 17]

good point about the amp, electric get-fiddle without one not a lot of fun

 

truth...stay away from the behringer stuff. you cant go wrong with a peavey amp. you can by better sounding stuff, but you cant buy anything tougher.

[VaiFanatic90 360]

Damn Vai, that is a sick guitar collection man!

 

Oh yeah, and it's always growing!! I'd still love a Les Paul deluxe, but on ebay they're so overpriced.

[raymundo 4]

Well, I finally found a used Mexi-strat from another student where she takes lessons from for about $400. Now what is a decent amp to go with it?

[Paulry 50]

Strat of course!

 

But, as I play Bass

 

A Rick or Thunderbird.

 

[DogMan 2,343]

Jimi Hendrix played a strat. Nuff said.

[ktcm7271 999]

Well, I finally found a used Mexi-strat from another student where she takes lessons from for about $400. Now what is a decent amp to go with it?

 

Crate and Peavy both make good little combo's for the price. If possible, get her a 2-12" or 1-12" or 2-10" combo amp. Avoid single 8" and 10" speakers-they sound aweful.