1) Wood does suprisingly little. I have built guitars, I know this for a fact. D'Aquisto once built an archtop out of, I shit you not, cardboard, a little bit of plywood, and paper maché. It could kick more ass than 90% of guitars out there. It's how the materials are put together, not what they are.
Again, that was from a qualified luthier. If it's something put together by a machine, it does make a difference. Why is it then, that mahogany and alder guitars sound totally different? The guitar fairy you mentioned earlier?
2) You really have no faith in people. It's easy to say "people know Fender, so they're going to buy them." As far as I'm concerned, anyone who goes into a store and buys the first guitar they see just because of some name isn't a guitar player, they're a tool. God forbid they'd play more than one thing before they buy.
You mean to tell me there is absolutely no unjustified hype around this brand?
3) http://toronto.craigslist.org/msg/180920377.html enough said.
Holy Squier Showmaster Batman!
Name something revolutionary that another company is doing?
Gibson inventing the humbucker.
Conklin's fanned-fret extended range instruments, Steinbergers Graphite necks since god knows when, Ibanez and Schecter making 7-strings and baritones available to mere mortals, Rickenbacker (IIRC) making 24-fret guitars available.. The list goes on, but that's all I can recall at the top of my head.
4) Lets see... Funk, Punk, R&B, Jazz, Soul, Gospel, Rock (and yes, strats can handle hard rock, and regular teles can actually hold their own in metal settings), Pop, Klezmer, Reggae, Ska, Dub, and just about everything else - Fenders can handle it.
Handle is one thing, excel is an entirely different ball game. Why is it that I only see a fraction of Jazz guitarists playing anything other than hollowbodies? Why do the punks either use Gibson-style guitars, or put humbuckers in their Fenders?
You're right on the Ska, Funk, Reggae and that stuff. That's where they do excel.
But tele's for metal?! What? Do you even play metal in the first place? First of all, you'd need a pickup change. The body woods used for teles are actually good for that genre, as Ash and Alder give a nice clarity in the tone, especially when detuning. However, the standard Tele bridge just looks to flimsy to me, and not really well suited for palm muted trem picking, or any kind of brutal playing.
A few death metal dudes, most notably Obituary and Jon Levasseur (ex-Cryptopsy) have used strats, but with modifications aplenty.
And IMO(!!!!) single coils just don't deliver a good rock rhythm tone, no matter what you do amp-wise, it'll always lack balls compared to humbuckers.
5) Fuck /no one/ needs an American strat. Shove some Duncan's in a Mexicaster and holy hell that's a fine ass guitar for way less than your nancy-boy pointy-ass Ibanezs. The only thing cool about the Prestige series (other than the DiMarzios in some, those are the sex) is the piezo bridge - but wait, Fender has that. And they're better piezos at that.
Still a matter of taste. And just for the record, my Ibanez is as pointy as a tennis ball. It's an S-series. My washburn on the other hand is a lil' kinky lookin'.
What model fenders have piezos? I've never seen those. As far as I recall, Carvin has them as well.
Go out and actually play a Fener tomorrow. A stock, Mexican made (Japenese if you're feeling particularly peckish) Fender. Play a couple. Guaranteed you'll find something you love. Perhaps a nice black telecaster with a sexy sexy maple fretboard. Then you're going to go see a replacement pickguard in the clearance bin, and suddenly you won't feel so bad about it looking like someone else's guitar.
Dude.. Why do you think I've been saying all this? Really. Think hard.
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1) People who work for Fender and build their guitars are trained. Since they built guitars (and other stringed instruments for that matter) they qualify as luthiers. And mahogany and alder sound different mostly because being different woods they have different densities. Don't be an idiot.
2) Oh,
absolutely. Congratulations, you're a humanitarian! You're offended that idiots are being played like the guitars they're buying! Wowee!
3) Seth Lover invented the humbucker, not Gibson. And even that's not true. Technically a split pick-up you'd find on a P-Bass is humbucking, which would put its invention at around 1937 when Rickenbacker started putting them on their lapsteels.
I'll give you the fanned frets, they're pretty cool. Except for one thing. Extended fretboards suck the tone out of your neck pickup. They push it out of the sweet spot and it just ends of muddy. Are those extra two notes
really worth it? I really doubt it.
Does anyone else see anything funny about him saying that Fender needs to do something new because they haven't since the advent of the strat, yet he's just listed a bunch of things that aren't exactly new in the slightest? When does sliced bread get put on the list?
4) You haven't seen guys play jazz with other stuff than hollowbodies because you don't go and see to many jazz shows. Only the traditionalists really stick with hollowbodies. Some of the best jazz guitar players out there (Mike Stern, Michael Occipinti, Geoff Young, Ryan Droplet, the mighty Holdsworth, etc) all play Fender (or in Stern's case, a Yamaha pretending to be one). Not all punks do that, anyways. Strats are still huge in punk, and teles
never go out of style.
When I say metal I don't mean "hey lets tune our guitars really low and growl like fucking idiots because that's way hardcore" metal. Teles are awesome, but you really need a specialized (and pointy) guitar for stuff like that. I'm talking good old earlier and even glam stuff. It's not how much gain you have, its how you use it, and teles can bust out some fuckin' heavy tones with the right amp. Especially the maple fretboard ones.
Oh, and no. I don't play metal. I don't like metal. That is why I play a lot of other stuff instead. And I'd be comfortable bringing my strat out to anything.
Single coils are awesome. Tom Morello knows this, and gets metal tones this way. Rhythm pickup too.
Fender had a couple special editions (a strat, tele, and a jazz bass if I remember) that all had Fishman powerbridges in them. The more upscale Nashville tele also comes standard with it.
They are options with Carvin, because Carvin is hardcore awesome.
And no, I have no idea why you're saying things. I really don't care. I know why I am though, but that's my dirty little secret.
Oh wait, no its not... Ibanez suck. Almost forgot.
