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Matt, over the years, too many to remember, I have had guys order guitars with all kind of exotic switching arangements. The main reason, “it’s just so cool to get all those “tone” settings.” A rather lame reason to most professional guitarists.
Almost every one of them, after a few months send ‘em back to have the switching changed over to something more traditional.
If you play professionally, and have a guitar with too many “selections” its easy go get “lost” while playing. Let’s say you’re playing a Hendrix tune, then follow it up with Frampton….you can spend 10 minutes figuring out the settings. On a Tele you have 3 choices and a twist of the tone knob. Life is good when simplified.
Also, the more electronics you have in the signal path, the more “veiled” the final sound will be. All that “stuff” puts its sonic “rubber stamp” on the “message” as it’s flowing through the wire.
The Tele is a uniquely simple guitar, for a reason. And the resulting sound is deceptively un-polluted. To me, putting a lotta “junk” in the circuit is rather like putting tattoos and hardware on a beautiful woman. I’ve never seen a pretty girl and though, “Dammmm she would be a stunner if she just had a tattoo above her butt, a ring in her lip, a rivet in her nose and a couple of carabineers in her ear lobes.”
There is much to be said for classic simplicity, and if you study”trends” through the epoch, you will see Homo sapiens always returns to the simple things.
Ron Kirn
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