So on a previous post Ing brought up the old classic Stratocaster. I happen to love my strat, even it it is hardly classic. I purchased this back in '99, towards the tail end of my massive music spending days. It was used and I didn't care anything much about it except that it looked cool and had humbuckers. It had a ding in the paint, but other than that it looked and played great. I ended up with an American Special strat with two humbuckers and a Floyd Rose double-locking tremolo.
I paid about a third what the guitar would cost new. It apparently is even more special than I've thought all these years because I tried to find a picture of anything similar anywhere on the net and failed miserably. These pictures are taken by me of the actual strat.
After I'd had it a while, I was telling a friend who'd played bass in a couple of bands with me about it. When I told him about the Floyd Rose he looked skeptical. "How does that sound?" he asked with this look on his face.
"It sounds fine. Why?" Riotimus said.
"Oh . . . I've just heard that those really screw up your tone."
Who ever would have guessed? Whoever threw that out into the universe hasn't ever heard this guitar. This is a really hard rocking guitar. I mostly use the neck pickup and it is so hot that I practically don't use any gain for my distorted sound. Lackhand has seen it first hand. It really is a hot pickup.
My brothers and I have talked on more than one occasion about started little jazz/fusion trio. I have another great guitar, an Ibanez Artstar. (I found this picture online. I actually pulled the pickguard off of mine.)
It is a good guitar and very versatile. As you can probably imagine at a glance it sounds good whether playing "Stranglehold" or "Take 5."
It is my oldest guitar and the scale by which I measure every guitar I meet. But I digress. The Artstar has a lovely jazz sound as might be expected with the semi-hollowbody design.
It was my plan to use the Artstar for our little jam-borie, but one day I was jamming on the strat and someone wanted to hear one of the tunes we'd been messing with. I said, "I don't know what it'll sound like on the strat, but here it goes."
So I switched to the neck pickup and went to my custom jazz setting on my amp . . . and it blew the Artstar away. Some things just aren't fair. The Artstar is a specialized tool, generally misused by rockers like myself, a jazzy sounding beast. Why should the strat be able to rock so hard and still sound so pure, so rich, so magical? It doesn't look the part, but if I recorded both of these guitars playing jazz and then asked just about anyone to identify which sound went with which guitar, they'd want to put the best sound with the Artstar, the obvious jazz implement. Let it be known that, even though I would enjoy having any of the guitars I've talked about here, I love my strat. It rules.
R.
4 comments:
Nice pics. I love both of those guitars. The strat is a precision machine, but I love the look of the Artstar. It looks like an instrument that would be played by an important musician. Of course I always thought it sounded pretty sweet too.
I also love both those guitars. And the Artstar is a fantastically sweet sounding axe. I don't think many musicians have the opportunity to be as totally thrilled with their equipment as I have been for the last decade. Do you think it is unfair to say that the strat beats the Artstar in every category save appearences?
R.
I think that's a fair assessment, and I'm sure there are some folks who wouldn't care for the vintage look of the Artstar, and they may prefer the strat in every way. Between the two you've got a pretty versatile arsenal at your disposal.
Those "some folks" would be me. :) Though I do think the Artstar looks sweet, there's just something about that Strat look. Practical, elegant, solid, durable, and fantastic-sounding all at once.
One time, before we were married, I was comparing various types of people to musical instruments, and I told my wife that if she was a guitar she wouldn't be one of those super-expensive custom-built things, she'd be a Strat. She didn't understand at first. She does now. :)
The one I used to have was only had a Mexican Strat, the real cheap bottom-end version, but it did look good and it played nice. Won it in a contest, actually. We never played anything except hard rock on it (I say "we," but I couldn't do anything except AC/DC's TNT, and hardly even that), but man, did it ever rock. My brother Jake (better known as Mr. Bus) used to have a Marshall half-stack, and that strat going through it was like the lightning of the gods.
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