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OK, so equipment fails. To this date my Strat has not failed, but I'm gigging, so I need a backup guitar. Now ideally your backup guitar should be tonally as close to your main as possible. Smart move would be to get myself a Mexican Stratocaster for a backup. However, I sort of have my eye on the Telecasters.
Specifically, I like the the Teles with humbucker pickups. Don't ask me why. Especially since humbuckers drive the tubes in amps harder than single coil pickups. This means more natural distortion, less need for overdrive pedals. Tonally this is pretty far of my Sratocaster. Oh well.
My preference for rosewood fretboards limits my choices. There's the Chris Shiflett signature series, which comes only in white (boring), or the Blacktop series. Both are made in Mexico, so quality should be comparable. Two factors have me leaning toward the Blacktop. First is that the neck profile is the same as my Strat. This means I can set it up exactly the same. Switching guitars is a breeze. Also, the Shiflett axe uses an abnormal size humbucker pickup. I can't swap out pickups easily if I desire to.
I shopped patiently and eventually scored a smoking deal on a silver Blacktop Telecaster. Humbuckers and rosewood fretboard...perfect. I immediately swapped out the stamped metal saddles for brass ones which means better sustain and tone, and then had the volume and tone pots replaced so that I could have a more responsive tone knob. Eventually I'll probably swap out the pickups for Seymour Duncan antiquities, but that can wait.
With the different tonal capabilities of the guitars I can swap out which one I'm playing if a song requires a different tone for the rhythm guitar. And, of course, I've got a backup if one guitar fails and I can just deal with the tone being not quite what I had intended. Perfect tone only matters in the studio anyway.
Statistics: Posted by CosmicCowboy — Fri Jun 06, 2014 7:42 pm
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