My lovely wife surprised me yesterday with a new guitar for my B-Day. It's an Eric Clapton artist edition Blackie Stratocaster. I played it last night and it's an awesome playing guitar, really nice maple neck and the noiseless pickups have a good range of sound coupled with the TBX and contour controls. It was probably close to $2K, so I want to make sure it's right before my time runs out to swap it. Guitars are kind of a personal thing.... She did listen when I told her once that I don't have a single American made decent guitar. Apparently the guy at GC was pushing the Mexican strats saying the MIA was a rip off and there was zero difference.
Here's the issue, while I totally respect Clapton as a great guitar player, he's not really one of my favorites. I'm more of a Wylde, Page, Gibbons, Rhodes, and Iommi kind of a guy. That, and I already have a strat that I like. Right now I have an Epi SG with EMG 57/66 set, a fake Les Paul, an E series Japanese strat with SD pickups, and a Les Paul semi hollow. I play the Strat 90% of the time, I like the 7.25" radius. The others are 12" radius and are kinda flat for me.
I have been playing a lot of ZZ Top and Zeppelin lately, btw I'm not gigging, just an intermediate home hack for ~ 35 years. I was thinking of getting a Telecaster, that new Jimmy Page one brings me back to Zeppelin 1 & 2. I am one of those guys that always hits the center pickup with my pick, so a guitar with just 2 pickups might be good. Not sure how comfortable the tele bridge is.
I will say that the new Strat smokes my old one for playability. The neck is in another league for ease of fretting clean notes quickly, feel and overall speed. The pickups are nice, but I like to change them around every few years to keep it fresh. I just don't want to put it under the bed and keep it nice for the next guy, I wanna play it.
I will probably go to guitar center this weekend and play a few tele's to see if that's a sound and feel I might like.
Thoughts?
Here's the issue, while I totally respect Clapton as a great guitar player, he's not really one of my favorites. I'm more of a Wylde, Page, Gibbons, Rhodes, and Iommi kind of a guy. That, and I already have a strat that I like. Right now I have an Epi SG with EMG 57/66 set, a fake Les Paul, an E series Japanese strat with SD pickups, and a Les Paul semi hollow. I play the Strat 90% of the time, I like the 7.25" radius. The others are 12" radius and are kinda flat for me.
I have been playing a lot of ZZ Top and Zeppelin lately, btw I'm not gigging, just an intermediate home hack for ~ 35 years. I was thinking of getting a Telecaster, that new Jimmy Page one brings me back to Zeppelin 1 & 2. I am one of those guys that always hits the center pickup with my pick, so a guitar with just 2 pickups might be good. Not sure how comfortable the tele bridge is.
I will say that the new Strat smokes my old one for playability. The neck is in another league for ease of fretting clean notes quickly, feel and overall speed. The pickups are nice, but I like to change them around every few years to keep it fresh. I just don't want to put it under the bed and keep it nice for the next guy, I wanna play it.
I will probably go to guitar center this weekend and play a few tele's to see if that's a sound and feel I might like.
Thoughts?
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