I may just be dense but can someone please explain the sound differences between these 3 main styles of guitars?? If I understand correctly, the right amp will make any guitar sound the way you want it to sound. Is it then just a ford vs Chevy personal preference kinda thing?? Or are there real differences that make certain styles of guitar preferable for certain types of music?? Thanks, Bill

Les Paul:  Heavy feeling guitar, Thick, Heavy, Chunky sound, , shorter scale...works will with heavy strings, and drop-tuning.

Strat:  Thinner, Lighter, less "tone", longer scale.....a little easier to play fast.

Tel:  Twangy country type sound...similar to a strat.


What kind of music do you play?    For Metal I would go with a Les Paul, for standard rock/blues go with the strat, for country...go with the Tel

OP, you are correct in your assumption, however, there are some specifics to understanding why they are the case that will help you on your purchase.



Anyway, what gives these guitars their unique sound is in the scale length of the guitar. You can test this by taking the same pickups and placing them in each style of guitar and hearing that they still sound like the guitar that they were put in. Of course, pickups matter a lot. They sculpt the frequencies that the scale length (and tone wood) of the guitar allows your strings to have. It's all an intricate dance that, ultimately doesn't matter a whole lot.


Because, at the end of the day, what guitar you choose matters very little. What's important is if you like the way the guitar plays. Even if others don't like the way your instrument plays, if you like how it feels, that's all that matters.


That isn't to say that tone comes from your fingers (you'll never get a fuzz to come out of the sound hole of an acoustic no matter what your hands do), but it is to say that, the most important thing is understanding how the instrument works and being familiar with it. That's far and above more important than what shape the guitar is.

Pickup type is very important to sound...everything is important.
With that being said good sound can only be had through the right amplifier .

A $100 guitar played through a $1000 tube amp is going to sound better

than a $1000 guitar played through most $100 amps. Humbucker pickups

are not going to have the chime and sparkle that single coils have. I liken

playing a good Stratocaster to working with a scalpel and playing a Les Paul

with humbuckers as a chain saw. Chainsaws are great at what they do but if

want the touch and sense of your playing to come out only single coils will do.

IMHO, with the pickups available these days, most of the differences can be blurred quite a bit.

great thread, d@mn good responses

 
That is very true. Pickup designers have really don't a good job of tone sculpting in the last ten years. If you pair the right pickups with the right scale length and tone wood you get some great results.

Les paul

I am currently having a custom guitar made for me that basically blends all three types of guitars into one.  

It has a single stacked humbucker in the bridge, but there is an elaborate wiring/switching setup that gives me 5 different options with a 5 way blade switch.

The first position gives me classic single coil tone similar to a strat,

The second position is modded to have a little more twang and sort of wah like sound similar to a telecaster.  The tone pot is out of the circuit to give the sound a little more pop when I want it.  The volume pot still really shapes the sound.  

The third position is basically a classic Eldred Esquire mod.

The fourth position is both coils together as a humbucker.  However, the pickup is wired straight to the output jack.  The tone and volume pots are out of the circuit.  The guitar really screams in this setting without any load from the pots.  It has more attitude than my Gibson Raw Power did.  

The last position is also both coils humbucking with the tone and volume controls left in.  This gives more of the Gibson Les Paul sound.  

Mine isn't done yet, but I heard another one demo'd and was blown away by the different sounds that one guitar can make.  I can't wait to get it.   It is also about a third of the cost a new Gibson MSRP.  

I have had several Gibson electrics and an acoustic, and I haven't been really happy with any of them.  I have run into more manufacturing, finish, and setup hiccups with them.  I just can't justify spending the money on them.  

I have also had a few fender's that were ok.  I never really liked any of the American standards I tried at GC.  I found a MIM that I like, but I shouldn't have bought it because I didn't love the sound right away.  I sold it about a year later.  

I have a Japanese strat that sounds amazing with swapped out pickups.  That is my favorite guitar right now.  

Anyway, instead of continuing to spend a lot of money, and have several guitars sitting around,  I decided to have a luthier build me a guitar with the options and sound I want without any compromise.  So if you were to force me to pick between the three I would say none of them and go custom.  

I'm pretty sure my strat and my custom with handle just about anything I want to play.   I just wish I had a little talent...  

This - even back in the day, you can find quite a few guitars with humbuckers (Gretsch Filtertrons, for example) that have just as much twang as any single-coil out there.  This is even more so today, where the layout, output levels, and design of pickups are so divergent and plentiful that you can find *anything* that sounds like *anything else* in *any* form factor.  It's pretty amazing!

Well, my point is, wood choices and scale length don't matter as much as they used to. Sure neck throughs tend to be darker, bolt ons tend to be brighter, shorter scales focus the mid tones more towards where the pickups are, longer scale lengths tend to have a tighter bottom end and are better suited for down tuning, ect, ect.....



But






Much of that can be negated with the right pickups.




 

Of the types you asked each is best suited as follows....



Gibson Les Paul: All types of music.



Fender any-caster: Country music and/or canoe paddles.

Just good for country music, eh???

ETA: John 5 in case Teles are only good for country:

Yeah, that kind of made me go for a second too.   There are plenty of videos of John 5 sitting around with an unmodded vintage tele sounding like however he wants.  

SRV, Hendrix, David Gilmour, Eric Clapton, and John Frusciante might disagree as well.

You don't get out much do you?

I think I want one of these for my next guitar......after all of these years, I still don't' own a Les Paul

You're gonna have to find a used or NOS one because Zakk has parted company with Gibson along with Marshall and MXR, and has started his own company, Wylde Audio.

 

Jimmy Page.

Your not really missing out on much..I sold my first one after 10 years of trying to love it.. I bought the one I have now only because I bought it new for a stupid cheap price from Sweetwater. I must say the one I have now is sweet..but it is not the sound I need. If I still played Rock it would be my go to ax.

 

I prefer a Telecaster
Leo Fender was a genius

I have 2 Les Pauls, 1 nice Stratocaster and 3 Telecasters
never play the LPs much but I love them.
a Tele just feels right to me

Hard to believe Jimmy got such "hard" tones out of a Tele.

Yeah I do.

Never ever heard...in 20+ years of playing... any Fender produce the low end area of the frequency spectrum without lots of customizing and pedals/effects to get it there.

Fenders are bright/chimey which is great for cleans or acoustic, and they seem to have that natural country twang.



Can Rock and metal be played on a Fender...sure. You can use a harpsichord and a kazoo if you like.

Do they sound as good and as well suited as other brands comparing apples to apples? No. Not without a lot of help. Unless you are looking for 1 of the guitars to stand out higher in the mix than the others...which is a valid technique.



We can debate the merits of tone being subjective forever...and it is...but certain styles of music have a tone that is unmistakable to the genre.



Comparing what you hear at a live show or on a recording is definitely not accurate. The house eq's to what they think it should sound like and so does a recording engineer, so it's all processed another time. It isn't even close to the tone that is originally created.
 

My American deluxe HSS can get the lows out. It isn't muddy like a

Les Paul though.

 

Don't forget Gretsch, Rock-a-billy and quite a bit of true rock.  U2 (Bono and Edge)

I don't own a Strat, but have played a few. They are nice if you like the feel.

My Les Paul with coil splits doesn't go full strat, but does nice single coil tones. My Tele Deluxe Reissue with TV Jones Filtertron-style pickups can go from twang to crunch with ease. My skinny Ibanez H-S-H super-strats are nicely generic but workable in basswood and mahogany. As many have said before, the amps and pickups make a tremendous difference. I can make the Tele sound great doing the opening bits of "Operation Mindcrime," "Still of the Night," or "Crazy Train" through an expensive tube amp, for example.

For me personally, I've just never clicked with Fenders. I like the long scale length in my Ibanezes, the 60s neck on the LP, and humbucker tone. The best overall combo I've used that felt just right was a PRS Custom 22 wide/flat that a business partner let me borrow. I just don't play well enough to justify spending that on yet another guitar, unless I go through the PITA selling a few other guitars.

If I go that route, the Tele will be first on the chopping block. It's a good guitar, but doesn't move me. Next out the door will be harder to say good-bye, an Ibanez S540LTD with Japanese parts assembled at the H&S custom shop in LA. I've had it for almost 20 years, currently with a mix of SD and Dimarzio pickups. The body is almost too skinny to comfortably play sitting down.

The Paul will never get sold, as it was my 10th anniversary gift. My most beat-up Ibanez will stay for sentimental reasons. I obviously favor chainsaw instead of scalpel, which fits my rhino-like grace & dexterity on the guitar.

I prefer a strat. They just feel right to me. I have a '73 Les Paul Delux that I rarely play.  My go to guitar was an emerald green Hamer Daytona routed out to have a humbucker in the bridge and neck positions.  That thing has drank damn near as much as I did on stage! Lol

Sorry, couldn't help It:





(The joke of course is that this guy's Tele is nothing at all like an original Telecaster)

ETA: Telecasters are awesome, but I'm still a Strat guy. I bought an American Telecaster last year and sold it after a month because I didn't fall in love with it like I thought I would. At least now I know what it's like to have a Telecaster.