Quote:
Originally Posted by Commander Wallace
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With regards to to playing left or right, it hardly matters as long as the lower and upper E strings and everything in between are in the right place. I have a number of Fender Stratocaster's. One in particular has been a test mule of sorts. It has had a variety of pickups in it including single and dual coil and combinations.
It has also had a number of custom wound and potted pickups and run through a variety of amps as well. It currently has 2 humbuckers / dual coils in the neck and bridge position separated by a single coil in the middle position. It has custom push / pull pots and wiring to control phase and cutting out one or both humbuckers to go to a single coil " Strat " sound. These are known as " Coil Taps " in guitar playing circles. With a nice tube amp, muted, warm tones can be coaxed from the guitar for Jazz numbers. It also does well for hard hitting Blues numbers as well.
With the humbucking coils engaged, Harder hitting songs are a breeze. All in all, a very satisfying electric guitar.
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Well, both Dick Dale and Albert King, and probably some others, played with the strings in the reverse order, with the bass strings closest to the floor and the treble string closer to the player, which make their ability to play as weel as they did even more impressive. Just take a left-hand strung guitar, turn it over, and try to play it as if it was a right strung guitar; the mental gymnastics to 'transpose' the chord shapes and scales is daunting if you've not started out playing that way. Long ago, I knew a young lady who could play ambidextrously and it never ceased to amaze me; when I asked her if she had a method to her playing, she just shrugged and said, "That's just the way I taught myself"; it kind of falls into the same category as Wes Montgomery when he was asked how he developed his style: "Nobody told me I was playing the wrong way"...
I try not to do a lot of mods to my guitars. Experience has taught me there will be situations where someone will ask you to play and be expecting a certain sound they'd heard you play before, and your usual guitar isn't available; if your sound is heavily dependent on major mods (on-board or active electronics, particular pickups, etc.), then you've got a problem; I much more prefer to find ways to achieve specific sounds mainly through the use of fingers, muting, attack, etc.; look back at players like Hendrix, Beck, etc., whose guitars really weren't all that modded yet they were able to achieve sounds even when they weren't using amp rigs with pedals; someone once remarked that you could give Keith Richards any guitar, from cheap copy to high-end, high-tech axe and, in a couple of minutes, it would sound like Keith Richards; the sound and feel is all in the fingers...
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