Why did Pete stop using a strat ?

[Sweeps]

In around the 1967 era Pete was clearly using a strat and at Monterey also but then after that it appears he abandoned them and went to the SG (?) Is it because of Hendrix ? Also , regarding why he stopped using the SG is it because it went badly out of tune during the Voorburg Concert in '73 ? As it's pretty hard to find a video of him with an SG post '73.

[whoireland]

I think the les Paul's were too heavy

With the strat I remember reading he liked the whammy bar in later years
Doesn't sound like a full reason though

[Sweeps]

It sounds as if apart from the strat he's never gone back to a guitar which is interesting. Like for example, after the les pauls he went to teles but he could have easily gone back to strats or SGs at that. His strats of later years seem odd though. The pick-ups look different and one of the volume/tone dials is in a weird place on the body of the guitar.

[tommycharles]

Aug 31, 2014 21:59:43 GMT Sweeps said:

It sounds as if apart from the strat he's never gone back to a guitar which is interesting. Like for example, after the les pauls he went to teles but he could have easily gone back to strats or SGs at that. His strats of later years seem odd though. The pick-ups look different and one of the volume/tone dials is in a weird place on the body of the guitar.

The "weird dial" is the volume on the acoustic pickup within the guitar - and as far as I know, that functionality (the piezo pickup) is the main reason he went to the Strats in 96. Prior to that he'd been using Teles for a few years.

The reason for the disappearance of the SGs after 73 was due to a shortage of the model he liked (and pt did tend to require more than 1 or 2 on the road with him....

[whosnext71]

In my opinion, his SG Tone from 68-73 was the best. His Les Paul tone was a bit too atmospheric, and the Strat tone of the past decade and a half sounds too refined for my liking.

[Yellow Printer]

Hes a rhythm guitarist so he would be better sticking to teles or even going back to SGs

Strats are great if you're a noodley blues lead guitar player

[Sweeps]

Surely a guitar is a guitar though. Unless the pick-ups on a strat are better for lead.

[oates]

I remember Pete saying quite recently that he thought Fender Teles and Strats only sounded good played through a fuzz box, and without the fuzz they sounded too clean. The change came in 1968 because Pete started using the Hi-Watt amps, and the amps themselves now gave the level of gain / distortion he wanted but only with the Gibson SG's P90 pick ups (though this continued to some extent through the the Les Paul era). With P90 pickups you can control the clean / distorted balance of the sound entirely with the volume knob, without the overall volume reducing. His fuzz box was only used to boost solos etc from this point on. Les Paul's are very heavy guitars for leaping around a stage with, but then so are Telecasters. For many of us, the abandonment of the Gibson / Hiwatt combination around 1979-1980 was a great loss to The Who live sound.

Gibson seems to have dropped the classic cherry SG Special with P90s from its line a year or so back as well, which echoed what must have happened in the in the 1970s when Pete's supply initially ran out.