Guitars (nerdy)

Please bear with me.

I don't know if anyone reading this gets into guitars, but there is and has been an ongoing debate between what I will, as shorthand, call the Les Paul crowd and the Strat crowd. I might even broaden it to the Humbuckers vs. the Strats.

On the humbucker side, we have all of the big Les Paul guitars that were ever made, by and large. We have most of the hollow-body and semi-hollow guitars, including the one and only Lucille (B.B. King). We also have the Flying V, Explorer, and Thunderbird. All of these are fine guitars with big, fat sounds. Such legends as Duane Allman, the aforementioned B.B. King, Warren Haynes, Jimmy Paige, Slash, Billy Gibbons, Ace Frehley, Angus Young, Albert King, Tony Iommi, Lonnie Mack, Randy Rhoads, the list goes on and on and on and on . . . they all played humbuckers, almost exclusively. It is perhaps one of the pinnacle achievements of man to listen to the sound of a good humbucker through a vintage tube amplifier with just the right amount of reverb and distortion (and maybe just a pinch of delay).

Then, there's the Strat.

As an initial matter, lets all agree that the Strat is not just the Stratocaster but instead is the world of tinny, single-coil, slappy, twangy guitars out there, particularly including the Telecaster. It also encompasses the world of wannabe single-coil Strat/Tele style guitars on the market. This is much more so than with humbuckers because the humbucker either achieves its end or it doesn't. One of the amazing things about the single-coil guitar is its ability to paper over other flaws in the guitar by virtue of its tone.

Strats tend to sound better clean than dirty also. As above, the sound that one can produce via some reverb and just the right amount of delay is a wonderful thing. Strat/Tele afficionados include such lightweights as Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jimi Hendrix, David Gilmore, Mark Knopfler, Buddy Holly, Keith Richards (Telecaster), Waylon Jennings (Telecaster), and on and on and on.

The electric guitar is something in which America can and should take great pride.