Nice tele, Jim. Play it in Good health. Clapton used a Fiesta Red tele when he played with The Yarbirds
Quote:
Originally posted by Sonic dB
No matter what you do to a Tele, it
always sounds like a Tele. It has something to do with the
fretboard length which is longer and lengthens the string in
a way to add that familiar twang...funny I was just thinking
about this over the past weekend. Why a Tele sounds like a Tele.
That is a great Tele, how many guitars do you have now Shuie?
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Not many. I've actually sold a couple recently.
The scale length is actually the same on a tele and a strat. The wood is essentially the same as a strat also. Unlike a conventional strat, its a string-through body, but I've owned hardtail and tremelo equipped strats and I don't think this detail made them sound drastically different.
So, what makes a tele sound like a tele then?
Well, there are different tele sounds. Broadcasters, Black Guards, '50s White Guards, '59 top loaders, slab boards, and the mid-late '60s guitars all sound different due to different pickups and material specs that were used. They all have the twang and the tele spank, but they still sound different.
IMO, the wood is always the most crucial component to the way a guitar sounds, but the signature tele spank and twang is in the pickups and the bridge plate. A good tele neck pickup can almost sound like a good strat neck pickup, but a good tele bridge pickup is just fatter and nastier than any strat on the planet. You don't have the middle position like on a strat, but Im okay with that.
The bridge plate also makes a difference. The bridge pickups inductive qualities are different if the bridge is magnetic vs. non magnetic. People also claim that the older hot rolled magnetic bridge plates sound different than the later cold rolled versions, but I have no real opinion or experience with this theory.
Here's my latest, its a '50s Black Guard Esquire replica. One piece Ash body, all maple neck, thin nitro lacquer, boutique electronics, boutique '50s Esquire pickup, real bakelite pickguard, etc..
