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What guitar do I want?


krock

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Im looking to buy my 4th guitar. Ive got my MK guitar with buckers that I use as my raw gibby sort of sound but I wanted something that was better suited to blues. What would you suggest? A strat? A tele? Any suggestions are welcome. My budget is around £600. I cant really afford to go over by much because, being a student, I should actually be spending this money on food and alcohol. Thanks in advance.

 

Krock

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I'd agree with Knight on the Tele. I have to admit that I wondered "what's all the buzz about a Tele anyway?" I love so many electric guitars, but I just broke down & got a 60th Aniv. Tele. Was slow to get into playing it. After having it a few months I took the time to touch-up the neck & action. Again, I thought, "man, this things really limited on what you can do with the sound w/ one vol & one tone control." Started messing around playing it and with those "limited appearing" controls and IT happened. I fell in love with the way it sounded & played. It was just different to get the sounds from & the sounds were different from my Strat or anything else I had. Just love it now. It's one heavy SOB however & I do have to play it with a 3" strap. I will admit I really prefer single coil Pups. Ric's, Gretsch's, Fenders, & my P-90 Casino's. You could get a Ric, but that's going way over the budget even used. A nice "real Tele (USA Standard or vintage) is worth the diff. in price IMHO for sure. Hope any of that helps. I wouldn't get rid of it.

 

That's all I have to say about that (right now, until the next question).

 

Aster

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I love my Strat for blues (particularly neck pickup with the S1 switched off), but a Tele will do the job amazingly too [thumbup]

 

Best go play several models of each everything just to find what you like the best.

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Well... it looks as if there's already a tele and a Strat in his patch.

 

So...

 

I guess from my perspective, a lot depends on your own head. Real old blues came out of flattops or after they got invented, occasionally a resonator guitar. Leadbelly - who ain't the kinda blues player some folks think blues has to be defined as - played a big old 12-string flattop.

 

Me, I think with your cash supply, my thought would be either an Epi Dot-type and/or an Epi version of the ES175. Use leftover cash for a good case and probably still be in your budget. My 175 version makes me play better than other guitars; the Dot is pretty close to that and resists feedback and goes further up the fingerboard. My old '70s Guild s100c SG style runs a close third. An AE can give earlier blues sounds including a bit of more traditional-sounding slide.

 

For the cash: Epi Dot or 175 plus a good case, a kind face and a laid-back attitude.

 

My reasoning? Well, I think more than a few blues and blues/rock transition players did rather well with thin semi hollows and full-size full hollow archtops. Bottom line: A lotta the real deal transitional blues guys, John Lee Hooker, BB King etc., used that type of guitar at least at points in their careers. Blues/rock? How 'bout some guy named Chuck Berry? Muddy Waters?

 

You've gotta figure too that as electrics were coming in, music was reeally churning, and I'm not sure you could say whether a lotta guys making that transition to electric were urban (as opposed to farmer) blues, jazz, rock, country... A lot of that labeling came later.

 

The Strat and Tele were not the immediate blues choices in the transition, although a lotta the black blues players tended to play what they could get, just like a lotta white country pickers. Both used a lotta full hollow and semi hollows. BB went for the Gibbie semi, for example.

 

Then the white rock guys put their Strats and LPs into it later on and folks nowadays say, "hey, those boys play blues." Well, yeah... in a sorta blues rock style. Ain't BB or John Lee...

 

The problem is that what I'm telling you is what old guys will tell you about the era in which the flattops were traded in for electrics. You may not perceive "Blues" as something from that transitional period I lived through, but rather the later rock-type version.

 

Don't get me wrong, the talented white guys and talented black blues pickers influenced each others' styles and guitar choices and pushed the envelope in technique quite nicely. But don't forget Howlin' Wolf was a fan of white ... country (???) singer Jimmy Rodgers and black country blues guys fingerpicked Stars and Stripes Forever on acoustics.

 

But... Blues?

 

It's ... it's ... what guitar have you played in a store where the blues just came out of it?

 

Not "blues technique," but Blues? That's the guitar you might should consider.

 

m

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Some luthier made guitars are very reasonsbly priced. The guy who made the late Worzel's guitar from Motörhead also makes Tele and Strat type guitars as well as more 'metal' shapes. None of them cost more than a grand. The tele type guitar is around £700!

 

 

Matt

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Man, I never thought I'd say this, but it's true. You can get almost any tone you want out of a Tele.

 

So true!

 

You can 'beef' a Tele up for rock and then in the next instance just roll back the tone controls, switch to the neck pick up and you have a lovely jazz tone!

 

I thought Teles were just country and blues 'twang guitars' until a young guy on the jazz course (at music college) turned up with a Mexican Telecaster and proceeded to make jaws drop with some just beautiful jazz playing and with the most warm tone too!

 

Matt

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if you like tone, go with a tele.

 

If you wanna look like a blues player, get a sunburst strat.

 

In your sig it says you have a squier tele though, so I'm borderline confused on that, but always go with the tele. everyone knows they are best for making real music

 

Sorry, I should have mentioned before. The tele I have is HH config.

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