The dreaded Fender Strat knob inadvertently moving.....

gball said:
My own response to the single-coil question:

View attachment 84918
Click to expand...
This just reminded me of something, gball.

I often wondered why Alex favored the LP vs SG, when the 1275 is essentially a double neck SG with the 12 string neck too.
The thought I had was I wonder how his sound would have been if his 1275 had P 90's instead of Humbuckers.

That would be an interesting guitar for sure.
 
chilipeppermaniac said:
This just reminded me of something, gball.

I often wondered why Alex favored the LP vs SG, when the 1275 is essentially a double neck SG with the 12 string neck too.
The thought I had was I wonder how his sound would have been if his 1275 had P 90's instead of Humbuckers.

That would be an interesting guitar for sure.
Click to expand...

Lots of buzz and hum loudly amplified.
 
Thinking about all the hum and hiss and offensive noise from P90's, my thoughts go out to numerous 60's bands which weren't exactly known as high gain type acts. Of course when getting back to the thread topic at hand, I am guessing that there are plenty of examples of " bad sound" single coil Fender guitars, and the occasional unwanted Volume Knob strum out of adjustment occurrences. As, I used to tell/show Adrian, the most accomplished Strat players simply seem to all strum/pick elsewhere away from the knob, even the Humbucker equipped Strat players like Adrian Smith, Dave Murray or Glenn Tipton even.

Santana, Beatles, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Chicago's Terry Kath, Robby Krieger,

 
chilipeppermaniac said:
That's funny, but likely true and considering the source, LOL.

Good one Robert.

I think I need to see what @Thatbastarddon has for insight on this, seeing that he has at least those 2 P90 SG's and does not play Joan Baez type music with them I am sure.
Click to expand...

I can't deal with noise, most likely from 7 years working day in a studio. Live players might tolerate it. It's a no from me.
 
chilipeppermaniac said:
This just reminded me of something, gball.

I often wondered why Alex favored the LP vs SG, when the 1275 is essentially a double neck SG with the 12 string neck too.
The thought I had was I wonder how his sound would have been if his 1275 had P 90's instead of Humbuckers.

That would be an interesting guitar for sure.
Click to expand...

Hmmm. Interesting thought experiment. I'm sure somehow it would still sound like Lerxst ;)
I'd bet as much as anything it came down to the necks. And as much as I like the way SGs play and sound they always feel like I'm gonna break them when I play one so maybe that. But he was always a humbucker guy live (I know he used that Tele and a Strat or two in the studio) and I couldn't really imagine how the single-coil might have changed the tone and feel of things.

Also, he really only used the 1275 for a couple of tunes, otherwise he was always mostly, over the years, associated with the ES guitars or Les Pauls (that interesting diversion in the '80s and '90s with the Sportscasters and PRS' being the generally rare exceptions). Even though...I personally always saw him as a Les Paul player - he used that clownburst for 2112 and ATWAS and that more than anything (even Jimmy Page) made me want to get my first Les Paul: his tone in that period, and lets be honest here - how damn cool he looked with the LP - was a drug for me as a teenager.

There was an article back when Test for Echo came out (in Guitar World I think, but may be wrong as usual) where he mentioned that when he strapped on a Les Paul both Geddy and Neil commented that his sound was just more huge and had bigger balls than when he played anything else, and really he kind of stuck primarily with Les Pauls from that day forward. I couldn't agree more about his live sound over the last few albums - its epic.
 
gball said:
There was an article back when Test for Echo came out (in Guitar World I think, but may be wrong as usual) where he mentioned that when he strapped on a Les Paul both Geddy and Neil commented that his sound was just more huge and had bigger balls than when he played anything else, and really he kind of stuck primarily with Les Pauls from that day forward. I couldn't agree more about his live sound over the last few albums - its epic.
Click to expand...

Nothing more needs to be said....

Angus Young from the March 1984 issue of Guitar ... "I tried Fenders but they were too heavy and they just didn't have the balls".
 
Since it's late for me (I'm in Germany now), and the first time I've been here in a while, I have a couple of observations (and I'm being lazy). I don't feel like doing a multi-multi-quote.

1. P-90s are fun. As well as single coil pick ups. They do their job well. There were never any complaints until guitar players started leaving their volume knobs on ten, and never deviating from that. Then they came out with high gain amps, so some swapped them for humbuckers. They have been around a long time, and many players have never had an issue with using them. I use them, and I also use my volume knobs. Easy Squeezy, problem solved.

2. The George Harrison model will sellout. There are many non-players who are absolute Beatles freaks who have collections of every Beatle signature guitar ever made. There are guys over at the Rickenbacker page who don't play who have Rick 360/12-C63, or Lennon Casinos, or Vox Super Beatles, or Hofner basses, who don't even play. I was at one shop where one of the machine operators collected Fender Artist Series Strats. He had about twenty or thirty different Beck, Clapton, Trower, SRV, and every other model. He didn't even play. His friends help him maintain them so they do not lose value. There are folks like that out there.

3. I don't understand the big issue with neck shapes. When I was learning, I had my '68 SG Junior (narrow nut, very huge round neck) and my '82 Les Paul Standard (wide nut, 59 style neck. Round but not too big). I jumped back and forth fairly easily. I just thought it was the thing that you learned to do. As a result, I'm fairly comfortable jumping around between Gibsons, Ricks, and Fenders. My only complaint is my Rick 12 string. I do wish that was a tad wider. But the single coil pickups sound fantastic.


Because Chilli and Don posted P-90 SGs, here you go.


IMG_2202.JPG
 
Last edited:
gball said:
Hmmm. Interesting thought experiment. I'm sure somehow it would still sound like Lerxst ;)
I'd bet as much as anything it came down to the necks. And as much as I like the way SGs play and sound they always feel like I'm gonna break them when I play one so maybe that. But he was always a humbucker guy live (I know he used that Tele and a Strat or two in the studio) and I couldn't really imagine how the single-coil might have changed the tone and feel of things.

Also, he really only used the 1275 for a couple of tunes, otherwise he was always mostly, over the years, associated with the ES guitars or Les Pauls (that interesting diversion in the '80s and '90s with the Sportscasters and PRS' being the generally rare exceptions). Even though...I personally always saw him as a Les Paul player - he used that clownburst for 2112 and ATWAS and that more than anything (even Jimmy Page) made me want to get my first Les Paul: his tone in that period, and lets be honest here - how damn cool he looked with the LP - was a drug for me as a teenager.

There was an article back when Test for Echo came out (in Guitar World I think, but may be wrong as usual) where he mentioned that when he strapped on a Les Paul both Geddy and Neil commented that his sound was just more huge and had bigger balls than when he played anything else, and really he kind of stuck primarily with Les Pauls from that day forward. I couldn't agree more about his live sound over the last few albums - its epic.
Click to expand...

To my best Lerxt aficionado east to west coast buddy, this is a nice summary you put out there.

Yup, I do know Alex only played the double neck guitars on particular songs and certainly I could see him playing a 12 and a 6 of different single neck guitars while recording. I'd think double necks are a LIVE performance specialty type tool.
What I always liked about Alex's choices of guitars is like you said, the ES's and the LP's. Of course by the time I was able to drive and actually go to concerts they were hitting their Moving Pictures, Permanent Waves, Signals which all had me seeing these tours at Cap Center or even the road trip to the Carrier Dome show in Syracuse NY.

By the time of the Syracuse show, Alex had broken out his new hairstyle, clothes, and Strat type guitars.
I also saw them in the PRS days and then again during the return to LP days when he had his Gibson Axcess LP's. It might have been in that article you mentioned or elsewhere that Alex said he went back to the LP's because the PRS's were thinner sounding. He wanted his LP sound back.

To quote you on the seeing Alex and Page with LP's being like a drug to you. At every concert I saw them, it was like that. ES LP Rick Bass, Tama Drums, yadda yadda. Even the Strat type guitars had no ill effects on my enjoyment. Jimmy was a whole other story, AND since R n R from all periods and all manner of artists was like a drug to me, I enjoyed players of all styles and instruments of all styles/ sonic palettes as I am sure you have seen. Of course, the more unique, edgier, harder, and faster the tunes were, the more they appealed to me.

Needless to say. I think you and of course bdon and the other fellas can tell Alex and Rush made mucho music I loved.
 
When did Jimi Hendrix begin playing the Strat.

The story goes that Linda Keith, the daughter of a British radio bigshot, Vogue model and blues maven in the British music scene, had a Stratocaster that Keith Richards left in her hotel room in New York City.

Linda saw Jimi Hendrix playing in a Greenwich Village club, one thing led to another and Jimi wound up in her room. Of course, he grabbed the Strat and noodled on it — Jimi noodled constantly, all day, every day.

“Keith Richards left that here,” says Linda. “You want it?”

And the rest is history.

I guess if you don’t know the history, Linda also knew Chas Chandler, the bass player for The Animals. Chas wanted to get into band management and record production. So she takes him to see Jimi play. Chas is knocked out, puts up the money to take Jimi to London, meet Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck (that was part of the deal), form a band, write some songs, cut an album . . . .

And the rest is history.

The actual history of Jimi’s first Stratocaster is muddled. There are claims that his girlfriend Carol Shiroky bought him one at Manny’s in NYC before he got his hands on Keith’s.

Also, the first “real" electric guitar Jimi played was supposedly a Strat that belonged to his cousin, who showed him how to play on a trip to Georgia with his mother, one of the rare times they were together in his childhood.

Connect the dots and some hypothesize that the Stratocaster, for Jimi, had a maternal resonance besides being the guitar his hero Bob Dylan played when he turned “electric.”

Anyway the question was when he had his own Strat to play and the timeframe is 1965–66.
 
SG John said:
I don't understand the big issue with neck shapes. When I was learning, I had my '68 SG Junior (narrow nut, very huge round neck) and my '82 Les Paul Standard (wide nut, 59 style neck. Round but not too big). I jumped back and forth fairly easily. I just thought it was the thing that you learned to do. As a result, I'm fairly comfortable jumping around between Gibsons, Ricks, and Fenders. M
Click to expand...

For me its not only a big issue, it's an absolute deal breaker.

I wear a size 13 glove. That's XXL and I can cover a nickel with my middle finger tip. I find the neck on my 2021 Gibson Les Paul 50's Standard Gold Top - at 1.695" wide - difficult to play some open chords on. I cannot accurately play open "D" and "A" on the smaller necks.

The custom Warmoth 1.755" neck on my Stratocaster makes these chord shaoes .uch easier.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top