Re: Here we go again...Sg vs telecaster
Blueman - I totally agree with you about everything. The points you make about the versatility of the SG as opposed to the very one dimensional tele are spot on. As for the Fender sound in general I've just posted a comment on one of the Jeff Beck threads about his recent show at Ronne Scott's. An hour of listening to the thin, scratchy sounds of a strat made me long to see him pick up a Les Paul. One of the few strat/tele players I can listen to is Rory Gallagher...There was an interview in UK Guitar mag recently with a guitarist called Stephen Dale Petit who made many good points one of which was (and I quote) 'Strats are versatile but in terms of tone they're really limited. When I hear somebody playing a Strat I always hear a Strat before I hear the player, but with Gibsons I hear the player first'. I know this is a Tele/SG thread but it does seem to have taken a Fender/Gibson route so hey ho.
I like you, Mr. Parker, you know something about tone. Jeff Beck on his bluesy 1968 "Truth" album was amazing, he made that LP sing. Wish he still played like that. Can't get into him these days. I agree about Rory Gallagher too, he did some great stuff with his Strat. Too bad he's not around anymore.
The differences in the Fender/Ginson approaches: Fender stayed with the SS Tele & SSS Strat for (what seemed like) decades. Look at what Gibson did with the LP: archtop, flat-top, P-90, HB, single cutaway, double cutaway, one P90, two P-90s, two HB's, three HB's...all in the first few years. We usually assume the "LP sound" is a PAF HH Std, but it's really a wide spectrum of guitars and tones. Even in the 1950's, Gibson approach was to offer a whole line of LP's, so everyone could get the sound & price they wanted. If you look at the Fender catalogs over the last 60 years, how many "models" of single coil Tele's & Strats are there (not counting the ones with HB's)? 100 of each? 200 of each? 500 of each? You'd need a microscope and a wee gee board to tell them all apart. How much difference in tone is there in those hundreds of models? No wonder why people can identify Teles and Strats by their sound, Fender's marketing campaign has been to basically put out the same 2 guitars for 60 years under hundreds of different names. Gibson started out with about half a dozen distinctive LP models during the 1950's, and every one was different in body shape, thickness, and/or PU's. During that same decade, they were also selling very successful hollowbodies (175, ES-5, L-5, Byrdland, 330, 350, 225, etc), and semi-hollowbodies (335, 345, and 355). Gibson could multi-task. I really like their approach of offering more models, more tones. If you have a hard time identifying a particular Gibson model by sound alone, it's because they gave players far more options. Fender wasn't quite so creative or inspired.
