Re: What is the Mount Rushmore of electric guitars?
1) Fender Stratocaster
2) Gibson Les Paul
3) Fender Telecaster
4)Charvel
Additional) PRS
I read a book several years ago and it stated that, at that time, 75 % of all electric guitars in the world were either a strat or a strat derivative. Interestingly by the mid 60s the strat was just about on the chopping block and due for discontinuation. Then Hendrix happened. And later SRV happened.
The Les Paul was actually discontinued by 1961. Clapton saw a photo of a blues player with one and started playing them. It became the standard guitar of British Blues and soon just about everybody who was anybody was playing them. Duane Allman, Betts, Bloomfield, Green, Kossoff, Beck, Page, Framptom,....... It and its Gibson brothers and sisters is the sound of classic rock
The Tele needs to be there because it is the standard guitar of country and also a good portion of roots rock-n roll. A non tele in the country genre is as odd as a traditional tele would be in metal.
Charvel needs to be there because it was a revolution in electric guitar culture at a critical time. All the other superstrats (Ibanez, ESP...) and shred sticks, and most modern innovative guitars owe their existence to Charvel. At the time, traditional Fenders and Gibsons had reached a low ebb in terms of build quality and also in terms of relevance to what was needed by the more innovative musicians of the time. There had been individual musicians besides EVH who combined Gibson pickups with Fender scale length and ergonomics such as Allan Holdsworth and Mich Ralphs, and Seymour Duncan, but a custom shop guitar builder that could build anybody just about anything you needed or wanted for about the same price as a questionable quality off the shelf guitar was a game changer.
What about PRS? Love them or hate them, PRS is established as one of the primary American electric guitars along with Gibson and Fender today.
