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10-09-2022 05:15 PM
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Nice! The first time I've seen him play anything other than a big old archtop.
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Yeah, my first time seeing him with a plank. I just stumbled across it. Strange things show up in my recommendations.
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Chris Flory would sound great playing anything. He sounds great here!
(Though in truth I do prefer him on that old L7. Just my opinion.)Last edited by Flat; 12-01-2022 at 07:45 PM.
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Chris got the strat a while ago and has been playing it out more often lately. It kills with an organ trio. FYI that backyard clip doesn't do any justice to how good Chris sounds on this ax. Check this out instead.
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See also Lorne Lofsky. Studied with Ed Bickert and also made a record with him. Here's Lorne playing his Ibanez Strat copy:
Round Midnight:
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No one said you can't play jazz on a strat!
I always like Chris Crocco's playing:
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Are Strats the new Telecasters?
Watching Lorne play, it always looks like he's barely even touching the guitar because his technique is so light.
There are a lot of examples on YouTube of people using the Strat for jazz; there are other threads in which many of those videos have been posted. I like playing mine a lot for jazz, although it is what I call a "Stratishcaster" as there are no actual Fender parts in it, it has a Warmoth conversion neck, a Strat neck pick up and two humbuckers in the middle and the bridge position (all Bill 'n' Becky- L280N and L90s)- so not a glassy Stratty tone.
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Yotam Silberstein sounds good on a Stratish copy here: I don't know what he's using for an amp, but that is great tone for any jazz guitar, not just a Strat. At least IMO.
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Strats are great jazz guitars:
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It depends on how bothered you are about the tone being 'authentic jazz',
Watch this:
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Quentin Warren used one on Jimmy Smith's '64 European tour. He had just gotten a custom L-5 in '62 so I'm guessing he didn't want to risk bringing it overseas.
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Strats were not usually the choice for jazz back in the day because single coils. Single coils typically aren't the best for a jazz tone. Now that "super strat" variants are common, with a humbucker in the neck position, anything is possible.
You've got to remember that back before the 1990s, it was rare to find a Strotocaster in a store with anything other than 3 single coils. I can remember hearing more than one idiot salesman in music stores telling people that it would ruin a Start if you put a humbucker in it. That's why EVH had to make his own "Super Start" with a PAF humbucker in the bridge, to prove them wrong.
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Back in the day, a jazz guitarist who played an instrument associated with Buddy Holly would have been mocked mercilessly. Apart from its googie design and autoshop colours, the Stratocaster had a bolt-on neck and a device for creating vibrato (which its manufacturer called tremolo). It was played by pop stars and men who wore cowboy hats. By the middle of the sixties it was hopelessly out of date. If it had not been for Hendrix, it would have been forgotten.
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6 bars of anything Lorne Lofsky ever played would be proof enough for me. Maybe less.
Not every jazz tone is like Wes'. Although, I bet there are guys who can get pretty close with a Strat.
Same argument for a Tele, with Ted Greene as my example.
In fact, what guitar wouldn't work for this argument?
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Nah this ain't true, it was getting used by lots of people including the Beatles b4 Hendrix hit the scene I believe.
Originally Posted by Litterick
Its the ultimate piece of design, perfection in a guitar. Unsurpassable. The minute I picked mine up in the shop when trying out a range of similarly priced 6 strings it was immediately obvious to me that this was as good as it gets. I would take my cheap and battered mexican stratocaster over literally any other guitar worth any amount of money ( save for a nicer strat).
But the damn tone for jazz, you cannot escape that flaw. If someone could make a pedal to convert it into a warm mellow jazz tone they would sell thousands....
I mean on the original poster's vid its a stratocaster, you can tell blindfolded, the dude even busts out some Hendrix licks over summertime, he can't help it!
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Not really. It was pretty common for people to install humbuckers in strats as far back as the late 70s (when I started playing electric guitar). People in the NYC session scene who played a mix of styles did it all the time. In the 80s, Sadowsky, Pensa-Suhr, Ibanez, and Schecter were all making humbucker equipped strats. Even Fender sort of did with the Lead Series. Originally Posted by James Haze
As far as tone goes, I think single coils are great for jazz tone (as evidenced by every jazz guitar recording made before 1957, and many others since). The main problem with them is that they buzz, which can be a problem with jazz because jazz has lots of space and quiet parts where the buzz can be intrusive. I've been playing jazz on a strat since '89. For a time it was all I used. I wound up getting humbucker equipped guitars, but still use the strat quite a bit. I'd say amp choice matters more than with my humbucker guitars, but with the right one it's a great sound. Overall, I think this whole "guitar X is no good for music Y" thing is given way more weight in internet discussions than in real world playing situations.
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Twiddle the knobs on the guitar and on the amp, put some flat wound strings on it, pick over the end of the fretboard, play with a light touch. The recipe for the classic wooly jazz tone on a Strat is not that different than the recipe for that tone on anything else. My 17" carved archtop with a floating humbucker can get every bit as bright and jangly as a Strat, except that it sounds much harsher than my Strat does at its brightest. Yes, the single coil tone going to be just a little thinner sounding, in all likelihood, but it will often sit much better in the mix with the rest of the band than a fatter, darker archtop. You won't be creating as much mud with the bassist (which will make that individual much happier; bassists seem to hate mud).
It's easy to thicken the Strat sound up with just a touch of overdrive, if you want, but I think mine sounds pretty darn good through my AI Clarus 2r and RE 12" cab with the amp EQ set flat. It's even better with a SansAmp Para Driver DI in front of the amp, providing a bit of a mid boost and a touch of hair.
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I got my Strat almost 35 years ago (about twelve thousand stage performance hours ago) and I have never had a thought of even looking at another guitar since then. I have used it exclusively for jazz the last twenty years... see below my advice on how to get a jazz tone on a Strat. Originally Posted by KingKong
In Sandra Sherman's video comparing the solid body guitars for jazz she does some good things:
- uses the neck pickup and sets the knobs full up to start
- plays lightly
- has noiseless pickups on her Strat copy
- demonstrates playing each in quick succession (at the end)
What would have been nice is to know the amp and its settings. Most people do not know how the typical tone circuits in guitar amps operate. To get an authentic jazz tone with a Strat you need to either know how the tone controls work on the amp or just have faith in using the jazz tone setting of treble at minimum, bass at minimum, and middle at full up, in conjunction with the guitar controls all full up, amp volume up a little extra and picking lightly.
Apart from specialized jazz amps that use an entirely different tone circuit, virtually all ordinary popular guitar amps have used the same circuit for over fifty years. The thing to know is that the labels indicating what the knobs do are misleading. That does not matter for most people because the labels correspond to the resulting change in sound, but if you are looking for a Strat to sound like a big jazz box you must look closer.
The treble knob does not increase treble frequencies as it is turned from 1 to 10, nor does the bass knob increase bass frequencies as you turn it from 1 to 10. The treble knob is a high pass filter that reduces bass, and the bass knob is a low pass filter that reduces treble. These tone circuits cannot add frequencies but can only attenuate them (reduce them).
Of course it certainly sounds like things are being increased or added as labeled, but that is because the resulting curve that has been shaped only by reducing frequencies is then amplified by a gain stage dedicated to the tone circuit to displace the whole curve shape so the new low points in the curve are positioned back up to where they were before trimming. That compensating gain stage (insertion recovery) is controlled by the middle tone control (or fixed by a resistor if there is no middle control). There really is no "middle tone control"; what you have is an inverse insertion loss recovery control labeled as "Middle".
This tone setting is sometimes referred to a 1-10-1 because of the Fender knobs going from 1 to 10. Give it a try.
Set your volume and tones on the Strat full up
Set the amp's treble and bass controls full down, middle control full up
(What this does to the amp is maximally flatten the frequency response)
Set the amp's volume a little higher than you think you need, and pick lightly
A lot of the jazz box tone comes from its strings being fairly fat, high, and tight. Even picking firmly, the strings "win" against the pick and so they are not very subject to tone anomalies. If you pick too firmly on light strings on a Strat (let the pick "win" over the strings), there will be tone anomalies - twang, spank, plink, shine, etc., some of those tones are highly regarded for various styles of music but not in jazz. Soft picking a Strat is how you get the jazz box sound of letting the strings "win" over the pick - the sound of no tone anomalies.
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I like single coil for comping. The thinness is a feature, not a bug, to my ear. Sits nicely in the mix, typically, and doesn't make mud with the bass.
I like the solo tone when I hear it on records -- usually smooth jazz, which I like more than I'm supposed to, apparently. Also, Lorne Lofsky sounds incredibly good to me. Toninho Horta often plays a Strat style and sounds incredible.
Strats can sound fabulous and strike me as perfectly useful for jazz. I don't think all jazz guitar needs to sound like Wes, although if I had to pick one tone as an all time favorite, it would be his.
I often think we limit ourselves when we utilize the concept of "jazz guitar tone" to mean only Wes or Kenny Burrell, or similar.
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Starting to agree with this, on the op's vid it sounds great, almost punky and more modern. I like the bends he uses as well, which u rarely hear in jazz. Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
To hell with it,just play the strat and if anyone complains then tell them that they're stuck in the past.
Let's make the fender Stratocaster the guitar of choice for the next generation of jazz players!
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No one. That is the correct answer
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With my poor experience I tried various guitars, I can tell that for a traditional jazz comping (kind of Freddie Green style) they are not the best choice, I tried on nylon, solid bodies... and it didn't sound good, strange dynamics.
I conclude that archtop and what you call steel flattop guitars were easier for that.
I might be wrong, I'm sure I'm wrong.
I wonder if a stratocaster can sound good for that.
For everything else, any kind of solid body sounds great, sometimes greater than a "jazz" guitar.
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Some pickups might be more suitable than others.
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There are guitars that sound good because they are well made and others that sound good because you make them sound good.
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