As the title says, voice your opinion on why you dont like strats or any other guitar for that matter. Heres mine, Why are all fenders the same? Same neck, same finish, same colours, same sound. Cant they give us something new, did evolution stop with the Strat?

I prefer the OLD esp 400 series strats to fenders any day of the week

the price points on Fender is just too vast - the top of ht eline fenders strat are not all that different than the mexi squires...

still...Id take any strat over any les paul

I aint keen on les pauls at all, they dont balance when you sit down with em, and the necks are the width of a small country.

are you serious? not every strat has the same neck shape, color, finish, pickups, electronics etc.... There are lots of different fender neck shapes, colors they have done literally 1000s, finishes range from polys, laquers, to varnish. Pickups I can name at least 7 off the top of my head they make.

if your gonna bash fenders mys well say all RGs are the same.

this thread is stupid and no offense to you Ibanez2005. But to make claims like this really shows the lack of intelligence on guitars.

Its OK to say you dont like them, but to make claims which are obviously untrue and not founded is idiotic.

my 2 cents

I agree with him i mean honestly. to me i hear I a difference in strats, the SRV sounds different from the Yngwie strat.

Ok even though I just opened an opposition thread to this one, im gonna defend Ibanez2005, lol.

I don't think he deserves to get jumped on for this. He made it clear that what he said was his opinion, and even though it's wrong its still an opinion. I think he was just trying to do something fun, since this site is sure to have it's fender naysayers, and thats fine. So if he wants to allow people to come here and present their conflicts with other guitars, then thats cool, its what forums are for. I defend this thread b/c ive seen countless others just like it here on jemsite.

So he has his thread and now I have mine, it's all for everyones benefit. Let opinions be, erm, opinions, cause no ones tried to offend anyone, YET. :P

\00/

I just don't like old tech, and Fender is old tech. A tremolo that goes incredibly out of tune, single coil pups on most strats that aren't suited to gain of any type, and the design? While influential - we wouldn't have Jems today without it - it's just had it's day.

My local guitar shop (Who I don't use due to ridiculous prices, etc) is finishing stocking Fenders soon, he says young players just don't want fenders anymore.

So the Strat has had its day.......... hmmmm

I guess I'd better tell our local store to stop selling the guitar they sell ten of to every other sale they do then........

Last time I looked, there must have been at least six or seven different BASIC pickup configurations available on Strats stock from Fender, at least three radically different bridge designs, several different body contours, two distinctly different headstock shapes, at least four choices of body wood, and over the entire range a choice of about fifty different colours - I'm probably wrong here, but I think there may have been a Floyd equipped strat before Ibanez came up with the Edge......

Guitars aren't really "tech" anyway, they are a couple of bits of wood bolted/glued together with a couple of very large bobbins wrapped around some magnets, and a ouple of coats of finish to stop the wood getting grubby. The level of "tech" in an RG is about identical to a modern Strat - in fact given that there are a couple of trem systems which don't lock, yet are pretty much as useable as an Edge, you could probably argue that the RG is heading into "old tech" land too (as a point, even Ibanez's own ZR system?). If you want to talk about "tech" as applied to guitars, then Parker or maybe Steinberger should be getting the guernsey?

Good thread topic BTW - should get some pretty heated discussion going!

Cheers

David

+1

This brings me to thinking...I wonder if they bash Ibanez at the Fender Forum?

I disagree. I think guitars are definately "tech" or "NUskool and Old skool" and I think your breakdown of "a couple of bits of wood bolted/glued together with a couple of very large bobbins wrapped around some magnets" is a bit wooly.
The model T Ford and the Ferrari Enzo are after all just a chasis with a wheel on each corner, powered by the internal combustion engine.
The Fender Strat to me is like the Model T ford. It is a very important historical figure, but a historical figure at best. For my driving experience I prefer the agility of the Ferrari Enzo. The ibanez Jem of the car world.

£0.02 (two peneth)

Ben

If you don't like 'em why do you care?

My US Strat is the best guitar i have, in almost every aspect except the trem, and i own a Jem, LP Custom, ESP Eclipse II, Ibanez Prestige and some others.

Just to be the devil's advocate....
Saying that Fender has the same neck shape, same pick ups and finishes etc etc isn't a matter of opinion. It can be proven that Fender has many different neck shapes, finishes and so on. Therefore Ibanez 2005 is misrepresenting facts and not just voicing his opinion.

x2

opinion "I dont like Fenders, there not for me"

untrue facts he said "same neck, same pickups, same colors"

opinions I can handle but blatent bashing when obviously not doing ones homework is just silly.

A Jem's no Ferrari. It's a hopped up "normal" car; maybe a Mustang Fastback.

A graphite Steinberger or a Parker Fly Deluxe- THAT's a Ferrari.

I knew this one was going to be fun! I'll stick to my earlier low-tech opinion regarding the vast majority of guitars (Strats, JEMs, Les Pauls etc) - they are an artifact which is in a high stress, reactive situation, yet are made of an intrinsically unstable material (ie: wood) - given that "tone" as we guitarists define it is largely a product of low mass and high stiffness, then looking at guitars made out of composite fibres such as Carbon graphite, or the Parker approach of a relatively soft, low mass innard with a high stiffness exterior (which just coincidentally is pretty much the same physics as a steel beam, truss girder or for that matter a surfboard) is actually an example of the very few genuinely high tech innovations seen in recent guitar making history.

There is, unsurprisingly, a lot more innovation in modern acoustic guitar design than there has been in solid body electrics.

I play a strat 80% of the time FWIW!!!

Cheers

David