Guitars: What you expected and what you got.

[tapper mike]

How can he shred like that without neck tats?

I've got a guitar with vine inlay on the neck and.... It looks like a weed (not that one) as well the leaves flower out at the 14th fret not the 12 so if I even glance at it I always target the wrong area when playing on the dusty area.

[Uncle E]

Inadvertent whole step modulations rule.

[tapper mike]

Getting back to the Fender love. The tone is imprinted in us. Other guitars can sound similar and if we are dedicated we may be able to infuse ourselves into the instrument. But they will never be fender telecasters and stratocasters. Maybe we like them more or less.

I'll take the Gibson analogy. Orville Gibson was more about "Fashion" than virtuosity or lutherie. These local builders/businessmen wanted to build musical instruments wanted a memorable name. A local bank wanted to front them them but they wanted a brand name to go along with the product. Orville Gibson was a showman of sorts and both the Company and bank agreed to pay Gibson for his name. Paul Reed Smith goes into great detail about what a terrible guitar Orville designed I can't find the video for some reason.

Yes Lloyd Loar designed the archtops we all credit with Gibson and the archtop guitar however Gibson wasn't the only one designing archtop guitars and many other manufacturers were doing as good if not better designed/sounding guitars back in the early days. Gibson bought out those that it could (Epiphone) and used the power of expensive advertising + endorsements to do the rest. If a guitarist was seen in print holding a guitar Gibson wanted it's headstock on it. Ergo if you made X amount of money and had X amount of recognition gibson would come calling with free guitars and possibly endorsement deals on models you might not even touch (See Barney Kessel) Kessel got taken by this twice. He covered up the Gibson logo on his ES350 and tried where ever possible not to side with one or another guitar maker.

I've played hundreds of hollow body archtops over the years and owned about a dozen. No matter how impressed someone may have been with my playing the uninformed always ask the same question.... Is that a Gibson?
...Oh well you should get a gibson I hear they are the best. That's how deep the marketing can go into the human psyche.

I don't have anything against Gibson archtops in general. And the finest 16 inch box I've ever played was a Herb Ellis ES-165
17 inch however goes to a discontinued Sam Ash product manufactured by Peerless. The Eddie Durham JX17

But on to Fender love. I've liked a lot of other "me too" guitars that had their own vibe. Maybe my ideal of a fender telecaster or stratocaster is simply a dream in my head. Maybe if I had that dream guitar I wouldn't be able to chase the magic I hear when others play theirs. Or maybe I too have been so overcome by the fender marketing that I can't escape the archetype no matter how I try.

[Uncle E]

I've played hundreds of hollow body archtops over the years and owned about a dozen. No matter how impressed someone may have been with my playing the uninformed always ask the same question.... Is that a Gibson?

It's something for normies to bond over. A popular tennis YouTuber starts all his interviews talking about racquets, strings, string tension, and clothes. Venus Williams doesn't do that, but this guy is a normie and that's something us normies can relate to. Deep down, we know we'll never be Rafa or Venus, but we can still buy cool racquets.

You'll notice no normie talk amongst these guys:

[stoopicus]

There is absolutely nothing wrong with being the standard that other instruments are measured by. Fenders will rarely be a bad choice. They will also rarely be superb. They will generally just be good, solid instruments with a sound that's a known and familiar quality. That's fine, being the standard has value in itself.

[Uncle E]

The best Fender I've ever played was a Japanese 115 series.

[stoopicus]

The nice thing about MIJ guitars is if you really want a nice Fender, there’s lots of smaller local brands making better Fenders than Fender does. There is no standard production Fender as well made as the typical Momose (or several other brands) S and T shaped instruments.

Even so, the current MIJ Fenders are also great. I really liked my Tele/P-bass pair of Hybrid II’s. They reminded me so much of Fujigens that I was convinced they were manufactured by them just like they used to be.

[tapper mike]

I wouldn't say better as a blanket statement. With lesser Fenders MIA/MIM vs higher end me toos you might have something.

I find Yamaha strat copies to be crap with regards to tone. And considering you can buy them for under $300 it's not surprising. My Yamaha Variax Standard is actually well built but it sounds like crap to my ears using the magnetic pups. I've seen more than a few online teachers using them and while the technique is fine the tone is terrible.

In price to price the Sire S10 goes for about the same as a MIM Strat. S10 is built better and has an ash body. Looks great has a little more snap to the tone because of the ash. I've played a 70's ash body stratocaster and.. It was a little heavy for stage use for me. I'd play it for a bit then turn to my Strat Plus. How does the S10 compare to an Ash body fender strat?


The thing I'm noticing is that the Sire is a little brighter. It could be the stainless steel frets it could be maple vs rosewood fretboard. It could be the pups.

Of all the Me too strat's I like the sire's most. And when you consider that an American Pro2 is almost twice the price. One begs the question is it really the brand identity you are buying and not the guitar?

While I haven't played an S10 I did play an alder strat pro II at a local music store. My hands loved that neck, my ears loved that tone. My bank book wasn't feeling the love. I've already got plenty of necks to wrap my hands around now.

[stoopicus]

Well, I specifically called out Momose as a relatively common brand and brands like them, and said production models, not Fender CS. There’s also a lot of super high quality small brands here you never see much outside of Japan.

Lots of production models out of Matsumoku are also generally higher quality than equivalent price range Fenders. Fujigen is a good example.

Sire are not Japanese.

Yamaha is my personal favorite brand for midrange guitars and basses (and motorcycles) but I do get what you mean about Pacificas. The Revstars are much better IMO but are also more of a SG/LP style instrument in tone.

[Naillerz78]

No mojo from Leo's other companies, Music Man and G&L? Also, FWIW, John Suhr was the Fender Custom Shop Senior Master Builder. The best strat I've owned was a Suhr.

Suhr's always seem to have an air of sophistication to my ears. G&L's seemed to have more gutsy punch.

The only MusicMan/Ernie Ball that rocked my world was Alvin Lee's
That guitar shot my dog, called me late for super and I still can't say a bad thing about it.

Now that’s MY kind of shredding.
Always wanted to play non-stop breakneck country solos like AL (or many others) he’s awesome. such a cool sound and techniques.

[tapper mike]

I'm not a fan of country per say. But my god give me a country shredder like him or brent mason and I'm slapped stupid.

[ThoughtExperiment]

Small point, but important to at least one person - that's AlBERT Lee, not Alvin Lee. Albert is indeed an absolute monster of a guitarist with a long and very distinguished track record and awe-inspiring technique. Alvin Lee was (IMO) a very mediocre guitarist with the (also mediocre) band Ten Years After.

[tapper mike]

Small point, but important to at least one person - that's AlBERT Lee, not Alvin Lee. Albert is indeed an absolute monster of a guitarist with a long and very distinguished track record and awe-inspiring technique. Alvin Lee was (IMO) a very mediocre guitarist with the (also mediocre) band Ten Years After.

Correct you are.

Perhaps you would like to add your contribution to the main premise of the thread now. How has the guitar that you purchased lived up to, exceed, or surpassed your expectations.

[ThoughtExperiment]

Fair point. No offense intended BTW. This might sound a bit low-rent but one guitar that recently surprised me in a good way was a Harley Benton telecaster. Fair enough, I bought it with the specific intention of replacing the pups and electronics, and that was indeed necessary. But what surprised me was its playability. I fancied having a telecaster again, and as a retired person I can't really justify even a Squire, but I find myself picking it up more and more just for the fun of playing it.

[Uncle E]

Nothing wrong with that. The 1959 Telecaster I once played sounded incredible but the neck was awful. It felt like a baseball bat ALL THE WAY AROUND. The fretboard was as round as the BACK of an Ibanez neck.