TALES FROM NERDVILLE by Joe Bonamassa
TOOLS OF THE TRADE, PART 4
For the last few columns, Joe Bonamassa has been demoing a variety of his favorite vintage guitars and discussing each instrument’s unique attributes. He began with a 1954 Gibson Les Paul goldtop with P90s, followed by a 1961 Gibson dot-neck ES-335 and a 1952 Fender Esquire.
#JoeBonamassa #FenderStratocaster
TOOLS OF THE TRADE, PART 4
For the last few columns, Joe Bonamassa has been demoing a variety of his favorite vintage guitars and discussing each instrument’s unique attributes. He began with a 1954 Gibson Les Paul goldtop with P90s, followed by a 1961 Gibson dot-neck ES-335 and a 1952 Fender Esquire.
#JoeBonamassa #FenderStratocaster
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MusicTranscript
00:00Hey guys, Joe Bonamassa here from his apartment in New York City on a blustery afternoon in
00:15January.
00:16We're talking about how Leo got it right the first time.
00:19We already did the Telecaster, Esquire, and now we're on to the Stratocaster.
00:24Why the Stratocaster?
00:25Well, you know, these are sonic staples of life, you know, as far as a guitar player
00:31is concerned.
00:32It's like a Les Paul, a 335, an SG, a Firebird, Stratocaster, Telecaster.
00:38These are all the benchmarks of which guitar tone is measured from.
00:44And you know, you can argue which ones you like better, a Rosewood Strat, which is more
00:49kind of like a Stevie Ray thing, or like, I always call these like a Buddy Holly guitar,
00:54Eric Johnson used an early Strat like this, this is from 1954.
00:59And you know, there was a lot of great sounds, Eric Clapton used a Maple Nick Strat.
01:04So we're going to demonstrate some of the cooler sounds that you can get from a Fender
01:10Stratocaster just by plugging it in.
01:12Again, all these videos in the last few months have been plugged into the exact same amp with
01:16the exact same settings, so you really get to hear the tonal nuances of each guitar without
01:22any filter.
01:23There's no special device, it's just a Fender Deluxe Reverb set on stun, and it's tempered
01:29down a little bit, tempered down a little bit for the apartment, so I don't get kicked
01:34out.
01:35Although I own this place.
01:36Can they kick me out?
01:37Nah.
01:53That's that classic front pickup.
02:07These old ones do rattle around a little bit, which is always fun on the gig, watching them
02:13move around.
02:14You can wedge the switch, three-way switch, but you can also wedge a Tele as well.
02:19Check that out.
02:24When they cooperate.
02:44That's the front two pickups.
02:56Now we have the middle setting, which is great for that kind of Ronnie Earl, classic Texas
03:01blues, you know, Ronnie from Boston, you know what I mean.
03:14Now you can wedge it again, you get the middle pickup and the lead pickup, and that's that
03:35kind of, you know it, you know it from many Eric Clapton records, you know, it's fantastic
03:42and it's a great sound.
03:44And then, finally, the treble pickup, which if you have a, you know, if you've got a
04:15so inclined, you can modify this so where the tone pot works for the treble pickup,
04:19but this guitar is unmodified.
04:21I call this guitar Little Wayne because I bought it from a small guy who was about 80
04:25years old.
04:26His name is Wayne in El Paso, Texas, original owner, so I call it Little Wayne.
04:44And there you have it.
05:03So you know, a lot of people are in one of two camps, Rosewood, Maple.
05:11I am a maple board fan, I've always enjoyed maple board strats, they just, the notes jump
05:18off the fingerboard in a different way.
05:21This is a maple neck with an ash body, and coupled with the lower output pickups from
05:26the mid 50s, it really does something special.
05:29But you can go buy a Squier Strat that has a maple board, and those sound great too.
05:35They do have certain characteristics to them that the Rosewood guitars don't have.
05:43But similarly, the Rosewood guitars have certain characteristics the maple boards don't have.
05:48So you know, there's no right or wrong, and it's just one of those things.
05:53It's how you hear it, and how you play it, and what makes you happy inside.
05:58You want to pursue happiness.