Not feeling the funk with a Les Paul style guitar - why?

[darkandrew]

7 hours ago, Kiwi said:

The tele tends to be fat and sweet with both pickups on and it carries a nice bite.  Prince used one as a main guitar for this reason.  But the strat gets a look in as well, with Nile Rodgers and pretty much anyone playing in the 4th position (Cory Wong, I'm looking at you).

BUT...don't write the LP off.  I'm not a fan of the LP body shape so I have a couple of Yammie MSG's instead and in one I replaced the stock pickups with jazzier/archtop type PAF by Aaron Armstrong.  So on the neck pickup I can get some mellow stuff and on the bridge pickup I can still get some decent chunk with distortion on. 

For clean LP - Long Train Running, Play That Funky Music,  most of the Brothers Johnson stuff, Brick House, a lot of Bobby Womack stuff, Tower of Power stuff, one of James Brown's guitarists used an LP...even the intro to the Theme from Shaft.

You could even swap out the humbuckers for P90's for a fat sound with more single coil bite and be set up for the solo to Another Brick In The Wall (Gilmour played it on a LP with P90's)
 

Do you know, I've never ever looked at the MSG line. Having looked now though, they look really good - and just when I thought I was going to have a GAS free 2020 - Damn you!

 

[Kiwi]

4 hours ago, darkandrew said:

Do you know, I've never ever looked at the MSG line. Having looked now though, they look really good - and just when I thought I was going to have a GAS free 2020 - Damn you!

 

Ha hah!  They're great instruments, highly underrated and very smooth sounding.  They do a very, very convincing LP sound with a nice set of PAFs in.  Whole Lotta Love is an  absolute hoot to play.  I guess you could even throw a set of SD P Rails in and have everything.

I used to have three but one was a little brighter than the others so I sold it.  The only thing that might top them for me would be a PRS Custom 22, but at nearly three times the price it would be hard to justify and possibly wouldn't sound as close.

[Witters]

String length makes a difference.  The longer length allows the harmonics to ring better (I read it somewhere so it must be true!) which means the Fenders will feel that bit brighter.