Best electric from an Acoustic Player's perspective

[Mark Blackburn]

There's a reason why you keep seeing guitarists on TV playing Fender Stratocasters and ES-335s (or the upscale variants). My all-time favorite, not just for sentimental reasons, is the ES-355 with the gold Bigsby, which the guitarist in the house band for "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" has been playing each night on this the first week of that replacement show for Conan O'Brien: Check it out -- what a lovely looking, beautiful sounding electric -- just the way I've always remembered them.

 

My youngest son "Ben" phoned me from Toronto recently to say he's spent some time playing a dozen Stratocasters, American- and Mexican-made -- looking for that "fat, snap" sound I'd told him about (no other electric produces that same sound, heard on thousands of recordings).

 

"You won't believe this, Dad, " he said, "but I kept coming back to Mexican-made Strat. It had the best sound -- exactly as you always described!"

 

I was able to tell my son, next phone call, that when I pointed out his same model (all white, maple-neck) Strat among the dozen or so in our largest fine-instrument store, the salesman (who last year visited Gibson's plant in Bozeman Montana) said he'd visited the plant in Mexico -- "bigger, cleaner much more impressive" he said than the American Fender plant. "Tell your son," he added, that Eric Clapton tried a Mexican Strat in a NYC store and (loving their particular V-style necks as well as their sound) "he's playing nothing but Mexican Strats now!" (Though his signature model is made in the U.S. Fender plant.)

 

The best jazz guitarist in Montreal, Jordan Officer (son of a childhood friend -- plays with the Suzie Arioli Trio) loves his archtop Gibson L-6, but still performs with his old "Kay" with its "Kelvinator head" -- he just likes the tone for certain applications. A reminder that every now and then, someone performs on television using a Silvertone with those utterly plain stainless steel pickups. And hey! The sound's not bad, right?

 

I haven't mentioned Les Pauls which have such varied sounds depending on the model and age of the instrument. To my ears though, they always have a more metalic, cool sound -- not that hot, fat, 'snap.' The moment I hear that sound -- on the radio -- I know in an instant, "That's a Strat!" And I love it!

 

Mark Blackburn

Winnipeg Manitoba Canada

[tuckomf]

The thing I love most about the acoustic is the roomy fretboard, the big neck, and the way you can really feel the chords from your chest to your spine when it's tucked in and you lay into it. The only electric I have that I get that familiar feeling from is my Les Paul.