typical "country music-twang?"

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threshhold2

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i know it'll take a TELECASTER in order to achieve the genuine "TWANG", but still, could anyone recommend a certain effect pedal/chain of pedals that can get me closer?

i play a FRAMUS CAMARILLO CUSTOM guitar with seymour duncan p/u
 

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Not with humbuckers. They just don't do it. It is a physics problem, you see. Humbuckers start to phase cancel at much lower frequencies than single coils, so the stuff that makes a Tele sound like a Tele just ain't there. Even coil tapping won't do it, because you STILL will be missing the angle of the Tele bridge pickup, and a LOT of the twang is in the angle of that pickup.

You want twang, you get a Tele into a Twin.

Now, SD Phat Cats MIGHT get you a little closer (P-90s were a common country music pickup, back in the day), or else you could go with some TV Jones Filtertron replacements (they make them to fit in a humbucker rout), which are also fairly twangy, but if you want the Tele, you need a Tele.


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like i thought--

only a TELE can do what a TELE normally does...... :) :) :)
 
You can get cloce with a strat, note I said cloce not exact. A lot of country has been played on strats. Push the treble and add just a touch of chorus and of course plenty of reverb. It is largely the single coil pickup, set at an angle (and something in the body design) that gives teles their charecteristic sound. Like I said, you can get cloce but you just can't get anything else to sound exactly like a tele, not even the tele copies without putting tele pups in them.
 
There are alot of country guys (old school ones anyway) that use guitars with humbuckers. The tele sound is the generic modern country sound, but Roy Clark plays a guitar with humbuckers.
 
The Variax Tele settings is pretty close, but that's a different guitar.

Ed
 
Ditto what Dani said - you can get very close with a Strat using the bridge pickup. I don't think you can get there with humbuckers - I never have, anyway.
 
hu? I got some twangy sounds in a strats combination-positions - for country I once used middle/bridge.

but with a guitar that is "more like a gibson than a fender" ;) - forget it.
 
Ya - the strat with the pickup selected to the bridge, the next one up, the middle - all sound pretty twangy. About the only one that doesn't is the neck pick up.

I want a Tele - I'm thru with Strats.
 
hehehe

i'm on the desperate search for a new guitar. i like fender tone a lot, so I checked out some strats, but their tremolos suck so much... so what is there a strat can do that a tele cannot?? I even started to prefer the tele's look.
 
cephus said:
There are alot of country guys (old school ones anyway) that use guitars with humbuckers. The tele sound is the generic modern country sound, but Roy Clark plays a guitar with humbuckers.
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Well, yeah. Country and western has been around for many decades, and there are many schools of C&W guitar. It was Buck Owens and his "Bakersfield Sound" that put the Telecaster into C&W. But Gibson and Gretsch ruled, at least east of the Mississippi, before that.
 
If you are thinking about tele's and strats - I would highly reccomend (from lots of personal experience) G&L guitars. It's Leo Fenders latest (and last) company. www.glguitars.com

If you like the tele - check out all the ASAT models. I have an ASAT classic with Soapbars and I love the thing.

Hope that helps,
Todd
 
all of the above is true.

To answer your question: the closest you can hope for with your current guitar is a coil-tapped position on the bridge pickup. As far as pedals go, a compressor is the most important component....and MXR DynaComp or Boss CS2 or CS3 are some common Nashville choices.

A
 
My Squier '51 in the coil tap mode is quite close I'd say. I actually used it on a country gig last weekend, as well as my Squier Tele and both sounded just great.
 
Bah humbug! You don't need a tele. Duane Eddy is the godfather of twang and he plays a Gretsch.
 
Another "old school" twang player to consider...Carl Perkins, and most of his stuff was on a strat. And that Buck Owens sound was created by Don Rich, also on a strat. In fact, now that I think about it a lot of pre 90s country guitarists seemed to prefer strats, of course Merill Haggard and Waylon Jennings used teles since way back. For what it's worth, Jimmy Paige used a tele in his early days, Yardbirds and early Led Zepplin. The tele was originaly produced to compete with the Les Paul, but the sound is so different that there is really no competetion in my opinion.
 
Dani Pace said:
Another "old school" twang player to consider...Carl Perkins, and most of his stuff was on a strat. And that Buck Owens sound was created by Don Rich, also on a strat. In fact, now that I think about it a lot of pre 90s country guitarists seemed to prefer strats, of course Merill Haggard and Waylon Jennings used teles since way back. For what it's worth, Jimmy Paige used a tele in his early days, Yardbirds and early Led Zepplin. The tele was originaly produced to compete with the Les Paul, but the sound is so different that there is really no competetion in my opinion.
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Before Buck Owens was a star, he was a session guitarist. Both he and Don Rich played Telecasters.

Merle Haggard's longtime lead guitarist, Roy Nichols, also played a Telecaster.

Carl Perkins played most on Strats, but also used other guitars like the Les Paul. In the right hands, a Les Paul can certainly twang.
 
Guitar lust in the movies

Wanna see a Telecaster up close and personal in the movies? Check out I Walk the Line about Johnny Cash. Some nice looking instruments in that movie, and some nice photography, too.

I don't know, but it sounds like a guitarist named Luther Perkins played guitar in Cash's early sessions and performances.

http://www.rockabillyhall.com/rarerockabilly01.html
 
I work in the Country genre quite a bit and while there are many ways to go about it, I've come to the personal conclusion that a Fender Tele, through a good compression/sustain pedal, into a Fender combo (can't go wrong with a Twin) provides about as accurate, authentic and effective "chickin pickn" sound as you can get.
 
Dani Pace said:
The tele was originaly produced to compete with the Les Paul, but the sound is so different that there is really no competetion in my opinion.
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Well.......no.


The Tele first came out in 1949, and the Les Paul didn't come out until 1953-54 or there about. When the Tele first came out, Gibson had turned Les Paul (the guy) down several times saying something to the effect of "no one wants a solid body guitar." The Les Paul was, without question, a reaction to the popularity of the Tele. Hell, the Fender Musical Instrument Company didn't even exist until after the Tele had been put out, so it is unlikely that Fender was reacting to anything Gibson had done.


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