Favorite Fender Model?

[Sirion]

Re: Favorite Fender Model?

Post #28.

I saw that, but I wanted to give you the benefit of doubt, because those are pretty slim pickings. Besides, if we are talking about skills (re your last post), it is possible to "uncontour" a strat body (although I have never heard of anybody wanting to do this) by cutting off the relevant pieces and gluing on new ones. You would have to repaint it, but you would have to do that after adding contours to a Tele as well. A Tele neck can be made to fit a Strat body snugly by rounding the corners off the corners of the heel. You are right that you cannot change a top-rout guitar into a rear-rout one very easily, but the Tele is a semi-top routed model as well, and would require significant modification to become entirely rear routed. After all, this is what a normal Tele looks like stripped down:



In these cases, I think one would be better off getting a new guitar body in any case, but I fail to see that the Tele performs better than the Strat in any of them. Your last two points are æsthetic (and I disagree with the last one), and may be disregarded.

As for counterarguments, I would say that the Tele is a worse platform for (1) changing type of pickup, (2) adding extra electronics, (3) changing type of bridge. For the first two, a Tele would need extra routing and probably an extended pickguard; the third would most likely demand significant re-routing.

 

[Jacew]

Re: Favorite Fender Model?

It's not a "problem." It is "annoying."

Well sure. I agree with that.

I guess I don't value "lack of annoyance" much. In modern world, I'm perpetually annoyed anyway.

I wonder why there's no two-piece strat pickguards to fix that. Can't be difficult to do...

 

[beaubrummels]

Re: Favorite Fender Model?

It depends how much you want to modify it. Try to make a Tele S-S-S, with two sets of volume and tone knobs, and you would have to rout space for a pickup and for more electronics, and find a new cover that fits the latter; on a Strat, you would simply have to drill a hole through the pickguard.

The more exotic stuff you want, the more the Tele is going to show its limitations.

You don't have to route. You can use stacked concentrics. And it's not as simple is drilling a hole in the pickguard on a strat because there still isn't room for the pot body underneath it, unless you go all mini pots, which you could do with a Tele just the same.

 

[beaubrummels]

Re: Favorite Fender Model?

The giant elephant in the room is the tremolo system. Strats allow the user to choose between a hardtail and a tremolo model, whereas a Tele normally will fit a Tele bridge only. This might have to do with tradition, but I have seen far more people switch out the hardtails on a Strat than a Tele. Tremolos are another matter: here, a Tele would require significant re-routing to even be part of the game. One might argue that this is comparing apples to oranges, but I don't really see people doing much to their tele bridges, except perhaps adding a humbucker rout or using saddles that are individually adjustable. In this respect, the Strat seems to give far more choices… if we are talking about mods that are practical to do on stock instruments. With a Warmoth model pretty much anything is fair game with either.

It's the other way around. If you want to convert a hardtail strat to strat tremolo, you've got to route the guitar. To put a vibrato on a Tele, you just neec a vibramate for a temporary conversion you can restore back later.

 

[Sirion]

Re: Favorite Fender Model?

It is a tight fit, and I will admit to not having tried it, but it looks like there is space between the volume knob and the pickup switch to me?

 

[Sirion]

Re: Favorite Fender Model?

It's the other way around. If you want to convert a hardtail strat to strat tremolo, you've got to route the guitar. To put a vibrato on a Tele, you just neec a vibramate for a temporary conversion you can restore back later.

Fair enough, if a Bigsby is what you want. It wouldn't be my choice for a tremolo, to put it mildly, but if that is the one tremolo you want, then I suppose it works. Now, virtually every other tremolo system on the planet, on the other hand…

I don't quite see where you got the "convert a hardtail strat to strat tremolo from", though. I merely meant to state that both set-ups are common on Strats, and that there are far more options (and diversity) with either that one sees on Teles (or, at least, that I have seen). To give the most common example: installing a Floyd Rose is going to be a lot simpler on a normal Strat than on anything resembling a normal Tele.

 

[Chistopher]

Re: Favorite Fender Model?

.
As for counterarguments, I would say that the Tele is a worse platform for (1) changing type of pickup, (2) adding extra electronics, (3) changing type of bridge. For the first two, a Tele would need extra routing and probably an extended pickguard; the third would most likely demand significant re-routing.

I guess that's about right. But one thing I have noticed, there are a lot more Tele varieties than Strats from the factory. Teles can be SS, SSS, HSS, HS, SH, HH, and rarely HSH. There's also Cabronitas, Bajas, Thinlines, and a few others. Strats only really have SSS, HSS, HSH, and H. This can be a good or a bad thing of course, it's easier to get a crazy Tele if you don't want to mod, but it's easier to make a unique Strat. For example, I once met a guy who had a semi-hollow Strat with nothing but a Hot Rails in the neck and a Broadcaster in the bridge. You could easily do the same thing with a Thinline Tele, but it's so much cooler on a Strat.