getting a $200 strat to sound like a les paul

  • Thread starter Thread starter WEBCYAN
  • Start date Start date
WEBCYAN

WEBCYAN

New member
impossible you say?

maybe not...

I have a cheap $200 Strat with just your standard .009 strings single coils, etc...
The amp I use is just a pathetic practice amp.

Im in college, so money is quite tight when it comes to music.
But I'm not about to let that stop me from getting a great guitar sound.

Too many people just assume you can't get a full rich tone with a strat. Well, you can.

I was doing some tweaking on the guitar knobs, the amp, the mixer, my mic, and a "few" effects on CEPro and the end result is somthing that sounds just like a les paul.

In fact I played 3 Libras by APC on my configuration and then did the same thing while borrowing my friends real les paul.

I then let him listen and asked him to pick out the real les paul. He got it right but confessed that he only had guessed. The two of them sounded 100% similar.

So, to all of you who are on a tight budget just experiment. People dont have to now how you got a certain tone. Its the end result that matters, not the steps taken to get there.
 
Maybe neither of you know what a guitar is supposed to sound like?

Whoever said that you can't get a full tone out of a strat? I think strats sound pretty darn big, personally.

You can get an arbitrary overprocessed overeq'd APC guitar sound with any guitar.

You can't get a "les paul tone" out of a fender using a practice amp and some DX effects. You can make both a les paul and a fender sound so overprocessed or just plain shitty that they'll sound similar and everyone will be 'fooled', but that doesn't really mean anything. I could record a les paul and a harmonica in such a way as you'd never guess which is which.

It's like the POD vs Real Tube Amp threads where some dude will post sound clips that sound like they were recorded in a truck stop bathroom with a radioshack mic and we're supposed to be shocked that we can't tell the POD apart from the real amp.

I do agree with you completely that you should do whatever it takes to get the sound you want...and never let your budget get in the way of your recordings. But then you went and ruined it all by saying that you were going for some arbitrary les paul sound. I don't know about you, but none of my guitars make any particular sound unless I'm playing them.

Slackmaster 2000
 
I could record a les paul and a harmonica in such a way as you'd never guess which is which.
Click to expand...

do that, slacky! :D

that would be cool, huhu... huhuhuhuhu.


by the way: there's that intro on a zz-top song (album "rhythmeen") where I still can't say if it's bluesharp or guitar & talk-box...
 
Web,

im a big cheapskate and im on a tight budget and my main guitar is a $149 Yamaha Pacifica....I played many many Pacificas side by side with many many $200 Fenders....even a Pacifica smacks the cheapy Fender in sound and playability.......to say that your recorded sound of the Fender and the Les Paul cant be distinguished may say more about your recording skills than the tones that can be produced by these guitars...the Strat and the Les Paul are just 2 different animals and produce totally different great tones......yes you can get a fuller rich tone with a strat, especially with the pickup selector between the bridge and middle.....but the Strat is more identifyable by the thin neck pickup sound.....

id be curious to hear a mp3 of this Fender.....
 
Gidge,

My experience with my strat has been quite different from what you're describing. My neck pup gives me the warmest, fullest sound of any selection. It gets thinner as you click the switch downward. I've thought for years about putting a replacement in my bridge position because I so infrequently find positions 1&2 useable.

Obviously, this is neither here nor there. I wonder if that's a difference between the yamaha and fender.


BTW--I used to think I wanted an LP or an SG for overdrive and distortion--until I got a tele. Single coils rule!
 
My Les Paul sounds miles different from my Strat. Not only are the pickups light years apart, but the woods are completely different, the scale lengths are different, the necks use different fingerboard woods, and the bridges are different types. And I also play it differently.

My Les Paul sounds so much like a Les Paul that it can be annoying. My Strat will always sound like a Strat. But what's that sound? Hard to say... Hendrix's tone was light years away from Clapton's, and they were both playing essentially the same guitar.
 
Blind taste tests don't mean much to those who can see.......

I totally love four electric guitars that I have......

Two of the electrics are LPs, the other two are Fenders....

Played clean, or even unplugged, all four are so different it ain't funny......

Different wood, different hardware, different weights, different frets....all those differences add up.....

I can use a distortion pedal on my sears silvertone that might approximate the effect used by any number of guitarists.....but played clean, let's face it...the silvertone is not a good sounding guitar nekkid......any distorted guitar sounds like, uhhhh...a distorted guitar......


My strat, my tele, my LP standard and my 1957 LP re-issue all sound great (and nothing like each other) clean........or even with judicious use of 'verb.....

All alone with no effects, and just a pignose or some other no frills amp, trust me, you would know what guitars really sound like....pretty much all different....

No snob shit from me....I've played and had fun with any guitar I've ever owned....and I've had some stinkers that served their purpose....but there is a big difference between whipped cream and cool whip from a spray can......additives, get it?

I've got some DeArmonds too, and I like them, but they don't sound like my fenders/gibsons....and why should they?........

make yer way with what ya got................but don't pull that old coke/pepsi style bullshit.....:D .......gibs
 
Refreshing to see Slack's immediate post. It expressed my sentiments exactly and nulled my urge for a lengthy post.

Time to go see if I can make a Les Paul sound like a Strat... :eek: :rolleyes: :D
 
Let's see...Make a Strat sound like a Les Paul...should be a piece of cake...

First remove all the hardware and electronics from the Strat.

Remove the neck from the Strat body.

Replace all the hardware and electronics with original Gibson.

Replace the neck with a Gibson Neck.

Replace the Strat body with a Gibson Les Paul body... and there you have it....simple!

:D :D :D
 
Sonic Misfit said:
Let's see...Make a Strat sound like a Les Paul...should be a piece of cake...

First remove all the hardware and electronics from the Strat.

Remove the neck from the Strat body.

Replace all the hardware and electronics with original Gibson.

Replace the neck with a Gibson Neck.

Replace the Strat body with a Gibson Les Paul body... and there you have it....simple!

:D :D :D
Click to expand...

Heh. That's pretty much it. Either that, or:

Use humbuckers on a mahogany body with a LP scale neck.
 
screw that...buy more guitars

Quit dicking around and just buy more Guitars..

More guitars is God's way of punishing your wife/significant other for buying too many darned shoes. (but honey, I know I can only use one at a time, but this guitar doesn't go with my black slacks.)

:D :D
 
I have some really noisy sneakers. They sound more like boots. I am looking for a good flip-flop / thong tone out of em'. Can you help?

Fangar
 
Wow! With my new Digitech GN-X2 super algorythemic generating hyper-transducer, I can make my LP sound like my dirty strat, and my strat can take on the thick creamy characteristics of a Les Paul!

Now, if I could just find parts to make my '69 Chevelle's 454 sound like one of those "big muffler" cars the kids are drivng these days! :D
 
The only way to make a $200 Strat sound like a Les Paul is with some really bad (and I mean bad, not good) acid!

foo
 
When I bought my first axe, a Sears Silvertone back in the fall of 63, I swear it sounded like a Fender Strat. I run it through a no name one tube amp with an eight inch speaker.
It sounded like angels singing from the feathery clouds above.
Luckely, I had enough sense mind to record my Fender Strat sounding Sears Silvertone, with those little sausage like pickups, and that partical board looking body.
A few years ago I was at my old drummers house down in Florida. He had the tape we recorded when we were kids and was the hottest band in the neighborhood.
He played it while we sat around, doing what old hippies do when old hippies sit around.
The tape had been copied several times over the years, so the quality had diminished somewhat, but it still sounded like I remembered it.
As I listened to that old tape I had to chuckle at how crude we were. My Fender Strat sounding Sears Silvertone sounded out of tune, and dull. I then remembered why I never bought a Fender guitar. Howard, the drummer, remarked at how he remembered me swearing up and down that my Silvertone sounded like a Strat, and he laughed again, just like he and the others did way back in the mid 60s.
My main guitars since have always been Gibson. Oh, I've played a friends Fender now and then over the years, but have never owned one. When I have played one I'm aways taken back by the quality of the Fender guit and sound. A truely fine instrument, Fender.

All I can say to WebCam is don't try to emulate something that can be replicated by something that isn't anywhere near what you think you hear.
Record that Les Paul sounding $200 Fender Strat of yours, and listen to it later on down the road of your life. In the mean time, trot down to the guit shop and play a Les Paul. You'll see what everyone here has ment in their posts.

Sorry everyone has burst your bubble. But it's better us, here, than you having it burst around people you know IRL and never being able to live it down.
I know, cuz I did the same damn thing your doing now.
Keep on Rock'n, WebCam.
 
I bought my friends old PAF pick-up, which came out of an Samick 'LP' and put it in my Fender branded Sunn Mustang strat and that really added some bottom to my sound. Because I didn't know what I was doing (hell, the guitar wasn't even $200) I accidentally reversed the phase of my new PAF and my old single coils. When I now choose the bridge-middle position my guitar gives a really thin reagae sound. COOL!

EZP
 
Last edited:
i'll have to agree with ruebarb!

buy more guitars! :cool:

i really can't even believe what i'm reading here! if 2 lp's or 2 strats or 2 guilds or 2 sg's don't sound the same, how can a strat sound like a les paul?
i have played 2 virtually identical guitars in a music store and found numerous differences in nuance, tone, harmonics, feel...
that is why i would never buy a guitar thru a discount catalog no matter HOW good the deal was! i think you can make similarities between different guitars, but that is only through masking the true sound of the guitar with effects and eq. that is not the same- that is imitation. i love the sound of a les paul, but i own a strat and an old ibanez cn100. when i bought my strat i played a dozen guitars- almost all strats, but i only picked 1. it had the sound i was looking for.
now what if i told you i could make my takamine acoustic/ electric sound like my guild acoustic/ electric?
bogus, dude :rolleyes:
 
I can make my drums sound like my singer.

Honest.

I use the same mic on each.

Then I run the signal through a SansAmp PSA-1, then through my Mesa Boogie Quad, then through my ART SUX2000 with flanger, reverb, delay, chorus, +5 pitch shifting, and envelope filter all selected, then through a mic modeler in my VS880, then through a pitch shifter in the VS880 with formants set for gender changing, then through a BBE Sonic Maximizer, then through an Art PhatBoy bass processor with compression and effects at max.

I swear you can't tell the difference when you listen to the final signal!

;)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top