MSU Red Cedar Message Board

Is that yours? Nice looking axe. Downright beautiful.

I really need to buy one of these.

I would agree with this. A lot of personal preference. I have a highway one strat that has a humbucker. For me I love the neck and lightweight of the strat and the humbucker can really scream over the single coil. It works for me.

Edit. Meant to quote manofthrwild

it's not the guitar - its the player

The answer is: whatever feels the best. Depending on your rig, you can make anything pretty much sound like anything else. Clean channel is best with a tele, although check out a tele Thinline (Mexican built only). I like them for the classic tele sound (jangly) but with some perceived warmth. Gibson SG might be the most playable guitar ever built. If money is no object, quality of PRS is unsurpassed. If you simply want to tell people you own a strat or Les Paul, don't get a Les Paul from late 70s as the quality was so bad it almost bankruptd the company. Watch out also for strat single coils as the originals are very noisy. Ditto for Fender Jazzmaster guitars which you should check out. Bottom line, it's 99 percent feel and rig set up.

2 of my guitars.

It's a 2012 standard. All 4 pots are push-pull (neck coil tap, bridge coil tap, switch phase, and bridge control bypass).

I'm not a huge fan of burstbucker pickups though -- it was the look and feel that drew me to that guitar, as well as the fact that I just wanted a really nice LP. So I switched all the electronics out of the new LP with the traditional wiring and Duncan pickups that were in my LP Studio.

So now I've got a 2002 Studio with stock 2012 wiring (it's actually a plastic circuit board) and a 2012 Standard with custom pickups and traditional wiring.

Maybe the better question for this thread is: which guitarist had the best sound? For me it's hands down Trey Anastasio. But he uses probably the most complicated rig ever put together to create that super warm tone on his Languedoc. For just straight BA sound, EVH on Van Halen I is hard to top. For newer guys out there, I'm a big fan of Jake Cinninger's versatility and he gets great stuff out of a simple stripped down sound from his G&L. Finally, Jerry Garcia was the master of getting all kinds of different sounds from a variety of well known and custom designed guitars. Not always a fan of his music, but huge respect for his ability and unique style.

Name recognition? Couldn't the same be said for Fender products? Let's be honest: A huge part of a person's opinion on a guitar depends on what he/she owns and the players they look up to. Maybe there are "superior" guitars out there when compared to Fender and Gibson's offerings. That doesn't change the fact that millions of people love Strats, Telecasters, and Les Pauls.

It's kinda like cars. There are certainly "superior" modern cars available compared to classic Mustangs and Corvettes, but those cars will never cease to be popular/desirable.

In what sense is it far far superior?

So much truth in this post.

I'll be honest though, Cinninger's sound is a little too edgy for my taste some times. I love Umphrey's too.

Trey 94-97 is pretty hard to touch both in terms of technical prowess and the sound he was putting out on a night to night basis.

Don't get me wrong, he's still doing it big, but take a listen to fall 94. Some of those Rebas and Divided Skys are absolutely gorgeous.

"Ahhhhhh! You could go and have a bite and, ahhhhh, you still be hearing that one."

I like Umphrey's for what they are; if I want soul, there's a long list of others I'll go to. Umphrey's delivers a broad range of stuff. Cinninger is pretty edgy; he was in a speed metal band prior to Umph. But he's also prone to throw in some gorgeous runs over a nice backbeat. His picking is one aspect of his playing that really stands out.

Also agree with you on the Phish golden era of the mid-1990s. Today's Ocelot just doesn't deliver the beauty in terms of tone; but that's probably more rig-related. Also, Trey has toned down the "guitar god" aspect of his playing that made him so fricking untouchable in the 1990s. We all miss Old Trey to some extent.