strat colors, halp!

[FuseG4]

I'm getting a MIM standard strat in a week or so. I'm just hung up on color. I've been playing a few of them recently in stores and 8 or 9 out of 10 of them have sounded good enough to me acoustically, so I'm gonna go for a color I like and if the store has to order it in, they can do that.
Anyways, I already have a white MIM tele. So no on the white strat. I'm hung up between LPB, black, candy apple red, or the burst.
I'm thinking not the burst because all the ones I've seen aren't very transparent. Sunburst is only cool if it shows the grain.

So, blue, black, or red? I love rosewood and maple pretty much equally on strats.
I already have a black LP... but wouldn't mind a black strat with a maple neck. The clapton look, kinda.
Lake placid blue, not sure. maple looks so clean with LPB but rosewood looks very 60's.
If it's red, i wanna get a rosewood board for that. Definitely a 60's look.

Midnight Wine w/ maple would look interesting. I used to want one really bad but I've never seen one in person.

 

[ehdwuld]

Re: strat colors, halp!

wine red
with maple board
mmmmmmm


candy cola with rosewood board
mmmm

ummm Maple on Black
had one of these once

seinna sunburst is nice

Charcoal Frost
good gracious aint that nice

oh wait you were lookin at MIM strats
hang on

maple on black yeas

you're right the sunburst are kinds plain

"Spill my wine....."

Candy apple
not so great after the wine is it

just not diggin the lake placid blue

oh did I vote for midnight wine?
yea wine

 

[joelap]

Re: strat colors, halp!

sienna sunburst is the best fender color evAr. But, I voted for Lake Placid Blue on Maple. Although black with black pg on maple is also = hawt.

 

[JeffB]

Re: strat colors, halp!

I'm getting a MIM standard strat in a week or so. I'm just hung up on color. I've been playing a few of them recently in stores and 8 or 9 out of 10 of them have sounded good enough to me acoustically, so I'm gonna go for a color I like and if the store has to order it in, they can do that.

Don't do it.

Pick the one that plays and feels best. Even if its not your fave color, you'll end up falling in love with a real player/tone monster.

It's like the Girl you pick for looks , knowing she has a sucky personality. Never lasts for long, and usually ends badly. But there are those women who may not be drop dead gorgeous, but who grow more and more attractive to you because of how they make you feel- great personality.Thems the best kind.

 

[BrockSamson]

Re: strat colors, halp!

I voted Black/Maple.

However, the Candy Red / Maple will also be very hot.

For some reason, the rosewood fretboards on Strats just never looked right to me. Guess cuz of the light colored headstock.

 

[BrockSamson]

Re: strat colors, halp!

Don't do it.

It's like the Girl you pick for looks , knowing she has a sucky personality. Never lasts for long, and usually ends badly.

Yeah... but you still get to play with a real nice toy for a bit... :smokin:

 

[Invader09]

Re: strat colors, halp!

I've always liked dark purple with maple FB. But not sure if they still make them...

 

[FuseG4]

Re: strat colors, halp!

Don't do it.

Pick the one that plays and feels best. Even if its not your fave color, you'll end up falling in love with a real player/tone monster.

It's like the Girl you pick for looks , knowing she has a sucky personality. Never lasts for long, and usually ends badly. But there are those women who may not be drop dead gorgeous, but who grow more and more attractive to you because of how they make you feel- great personality.Thems the best kind.

I've played like 6 mim std.'s and they feel about the same to me. I tried one that was plinky but basically the run of the mill std. sounds great. I don't like the pickups so much but I haven't had but the one resonance issue yet.

 

[JaySwear]

Re: strat colors, halp!

i would love to build the start version of my tele deluxe. i love the black pickups / knobs / pickguard with the maple neck and LPB

EDIT: but it's not much of a classic look. if you're going for a more classic look i think rosewood and LPB is extremely cool

 

[PFDarkside]

Re: strat colors, halp!

Must be Maple....


Then, Black or Red.

 

[FuseG4]

Re: strat colors, halp!

Lots of love for maple, it seems! it does "look right", but strats are bright as hell and rosewood takes just a lil edge off the attack. It's not a huge difference to my ears though. I think LPB and candy apple red look great with it, just because every time I see a vintage 60's strat it either white, red, or blue, or 3T sunburst.
The last MIM strat I had was 2 years ago, and it was maple. I wish I'd never sold it, because now I'm trying to get it back.
I put '57/'62s in that one and it sounded really nice, but I sold it thinking I was gonna get another guitar when really I ended up using it for summer tuition. yeesh. Lesson learned: try not to sell your damn gear.

They do make a FSR sienna burst MIM std. strat but it's HSS, and I don't think I wanna have to swap out the pickguard the second I get the thing AND buy a single coil just to get the same thing as a regular MIM. That ones ash, but the one HSS sienna burst I played didn't sound much different than the other MIMs. Must be the thick finish or something.

 

[JaySwear]

Re: strat colors, halp!

oh man, i completely passed over sienna burst! those are really cool, and all the ones i've seen in person or seen "real" pictures of are great. they definitely look a ton better in person than the stock photos, and the stock photos look great too

 

[FuseG4]

Re: strat colors, halp!

oh man, i completely passed over sienna burst! those are really cool, and all the ones i've seen in person or seen "real" pictures of are great. they definitely look a ton better in person than the stock photos, and the stock photos look great too

hawt look, but I'm just not diggin the 'bucker. I could just get another guard, but it seems kinda dumb.
The one I played sounded good, but in this guitar I'd rather have a single coil. I like the sound of a bridge single coil with the tone rolled back.

I guess I am just gonna replace all the pickups at some point anyhow, what's a $30 pickguard on top of that? OTOH, $30 is THREE steak burritos. That's a lot of burrito.

 

[Benjy_26]

Re: strat colors, halp!

$10 per burrito? You're getting raped.

As for the strat, I'd go LPB with a rosewood board. I'd leave it completely stock at first, then get a mint pickguard and aged plastic parts along with a good set of singles.

 

[MrD4rK5]

Re: strat colors, halp!

Charcoal Frost
good gracious aint that nice

BUY THIS! and disregard anything else. This guitar is beautiful.

 

[FuseG4]

Re: strat colors, halp!

$10 per burrito? You're getting raped.

As for the strat, I'd go LPB with a rosewood board. I'd leave it completely stock at first, then get a mint pickguard and aged plastic parts along with a good set of singles.

Ok so it's like 9 bucks including the drink. DAMN good burrito tho, not some 24-hour drive-thru Mission tortilla with beans and cheese. I'm talkin lime cilantro rice, black beans, hot sauce, a bunch of cheese, and A LOT of good steak. Big. Hard to eat the whole thing.

But about the LPB rosewood thing. Mint guard? YES. aged plastic? YES. You basically read my mind with regard to what I would do once I got it.
As much as I like Duncans I may just go back to fender '57/'62s. Very clean, very chimey, very very fender. The SSL-1s feel like they got more meat to them, and maybe the SSL-1 would be better as a bridge pickup. If the middle isn't RW/RP anyways can north="top" pickups be matched with south="top"? Can you just switch the wires or something on one of em?

Anyways, CAR also looks good with those things. Not as good, but still quite interesting.

 

[FuseG4]

Re: strat colors, halp!

BUY THIS! and disregard anything else. This guitar is beautiful.

I'd actually been thinking of buying that exact guitar, BUT... those things are like a $1000. I could maybe, maybe fit it into the budget but I'd have to really bust my ass at work and probably stop going out for $9 burritos.

The Am Stds are nice. I would be lying if I said I didn't want one, but it's borderlining on "financially stupid". Especially since a MIM std, while not the coolest thing in the world, would work for me very nicely. I mean, I haven't been gassing for a tele since I got my MIM std. tele. It's great and all I had to do was change the bridge for $30 and buy $80 worth of pickups.

 

[marcello252]

Re: strat colors, halp!

Pick the one that plays and feels best. Even if its not your fave color, you'll end up falling in love with a real player/tone monster.

+1

22 years ago I sweared I'd never buy a cream strat in my life, that color really sucked in my point of view, I was more in to lake placid blue and sunburst with rosewood fingerboard.
Well, at the buying moment I played a lot of guitar but strangely the one sounding better was a MIJ '72 reissue cream strat with rosewood fingerboard. With some sadness in my heart I decided to follow my instinct and I bought it.
Since then it (she? in italian the word 'chitarra' - for 'guitar' - has a feminine genre) became MY axe, really, it never betrayed me.
So keep an ear on the sound, these are things you'll appreciate in the future.

 

[FuseG4]

Re: strat colors, halp!

Yes, that is good advice.
The thing is I've played like 10 MIM strats recently and only one sounded "bad" so far, the rest being average. I only played one that had a dead fret.

So, I'm just starting to think about color because I happen to like the tone of the average MIM strat. If I get the "average" one in the right color I know I'd be pretty happy.
worst case scenario is I buy a guitar online, and it's basically DOA. I'd send it back in a hurry. This is kinda the last resort type of thing.
What I'd like to do is just go into the guitar center and just say "do you have this kind of strat" and they always have at least a few of the common colors, and if I like 2 or more of them equally, I'll think about color after that. If I try one and it's awesome, and it's "the wrong color", maybe I'll go to some other stores and if I can't find something stellar in "my color" I'll come back to the GC and get the "wrong colored one".

 

[ImmortalSix]

strat colors, halp!

LPB + Rosewood