SAME GUITAR, 4 BUDGETS! (Can you hear the difference?)

foreign [Music] guitar a very rare 1962 Fender Strat all original in the beautiful color of fiesta red and if you think this guitar sounds great well I just saved you 59 600 because what you heard of actually his choir classic Vibe which comes in at four hundred dollars okay and let's not milk it I'm sure we all want to hear how does that 62 sound playing the same move well oh [Music] hi friends today is an exciting day I'm launching my new guitar course electric elevation but more on that at the end of this video so it's not often that you have four exactly the same guitars in studio and they really are all the same it's an early 60s Fiesta red Stratocaster but only one of these actually from that period and the others well they try to get as close as possible but then on different budgets so how close do they get to that original let's find out so guitar one it's the Squire it's coming in at 400 and it's definitely not a bad guitar I've used this particular one for the giant guitar string shootout we did so yes indeed I have another one identical to this so if you haven't seen that shootout make sure to check it out and it's a bit painful to say but there are some issues with this instrument especially if you compare it directly to the other ones on the phone [Music] all right for example this new Fender American Vintage two we're making a big leap right now all the way up to two thousand dollars but it is a small staff compared to sixty thousand dollars so according to Fender this presents a remarkably accurate take on the 61 Fender Strat and meticulously voiced year-specific pickups and please remember this because this is an interesting take [Music] thank you and then there's this guitar so if at any point in the past six years you've seen any of my videos I'm absolutely sure you've seen this guitar it wasn't in particularly good condition when I bought it it really needed a refread and a lot of tender loving care and I paid around 2500 for it my life savings at the time but now you're lucky to find one under five thousand dollars it's crazy and I just keep coming back to this instrument I love strats and it's hard to imagine that almost 70 years ago Leo Fenner designed the perfect well almost perfect guitar [Music] so each of the each of the three guitars tries to get close to that mythical Holy Grail pre-cbs era Strat and today I'm lucky enough to have in my studio this fully original 1962 pre-cbs Fiesta Reds Stratocaster foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] PBS marks the Golden Age of Thunder before the company was sold to CBS and strats built between 1954 and 1965 are considered to be so good that to the date we still see it as the epitome of Guitar Building and there is indeed a mythical error on these instruments I remember when I played one of the very first time at Norman's rare guitars and it was it was very cool supposedly the guitars have the best tones superb playability and tons of Mojo it's just the best of the best Stratocaster it can be right so it's playing back to back [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] so before we discuss any tonal differences that are actually way bigger than I expected what is it in these early 60s strats that that is so special well some say the 62 is the best year of the Strat like the perfect Evolution that moment in time where everything came together to this one instrument and I have no idea myself because you would have to play a lot of guitars from that period and compare them all back to back to come to such a conclusion but maybe it is because the strats are some significant design changes especially in the first few years so it started in 1954 with a maple neck and an ash body with a two-tone Sunburst and a single ply Big Art and two years later in 1956 they introduced the older bodies the wood was easier to work with and more readily available years later again the lacquer turned to the three-tone Sunburst and a year later in 1959 they added the Rosewood slap board on the necks this was a thicker piece of Rosewood glued on the neck this was also the year the single-ply bigger that was prone to warping over time got replaced by the three-ply Picard and they introduced different colors like this Fiesta red so all these little design changes resulted into this particular model the early 62 Stratocaster then going forward halfway 62 they swapped that thicker piece of Rosewood on the neck for a thinner piece of veneer probably to save casts there were also a lot of solid changes here and there that a lot of experts know everything about but I'm not an expert but I think it's like different parts different pickups during the years but always led to 1965 the Year Leo Fender sold the company to CBS after which Mass Productions and bigger margins became priority and according to many the quality of the instruments declined so let's hear the 62 in always glory is it really so special [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] it's just unreal how much body this guitar has unreal it's like it's incredibly creamy full and thick and let's make the biggest jump possible let's compare it directly with the squire [Music] [Applause] [Music] so maybe you don't agree with me right now I'm just giving my opinion and if you don't agree with me please feel free to let me know in the comments but I ruled it for them to be similar or close but it's just hard to come to that conclusion so Squire is where a fender houses the more affordable range of guitars and you feel it immediately they use more affordable woods and the Plastics like the nuts and more affordable budget friendly Hardware like the bridge the tuners the pickups and I actually think that that makes the most difference here somehow you feel the notes sound a bit more wonky and less balance and tight also it's hard to ignore that the more affordable the instrument the more work it needs straight out of the box to make it play great it just doesn't get the same attention the others get in the factory [Music] so let's bounce back massively here is the two thousand dollar Fender American Vintage to 1961 Stratocaster so one year earlier than the 62. so we see an all their body check we see a Rosewood fingerboard check we see only go three pickups check even down to the Vintage radius of the neck of 7.2 inch that isn't even present on the other two guitars but it is on the 62. so check again so in terms of specs this is remarkably accurate so let's see how it Compares in terms of tone [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so this guitar it plays very well it feels super solid a bit more chunky neck than the 62 but it really feels pretty much like any true vintage guitar but also weird because it is so new and that's also a good thing you know it's in perfect condition and if nothing weird happens you can shred on it for the coming six years without any issues I mean I've played some terrible pre-serious threats so it's definitely not a rule that all of them are awesome so please know that but now here's an interesting bit because to me at least this guitar does not necessarily have that vintage tone or vintage sound that I associate with vintage threats I'm not saying that is a bad thing actually it sounds lovely and bright with a lot of spark [Music] right but I'm not necessarily getting an early 60s vibe from these pickups but maybe it all depends on what specific guitar you compare it with but how I remember most of the pre-cbs threats I played they usually have this really thick fat bottom end sometimes even leaning towards the muddy with slightly scooped mids and pretty glassy Heights without being overly bright and well this has to brightness but not really that super thick bottom ends [Music] but it sounds great nonetheless so let's move on to my Fender Custom Shop kunado Relic the custom shop started in 1987 so remember up till 85 the company had been under the reign of CBS but now this new Custom Shop had to build instruments in line of the philosophy of Leo Fender and the original strats that rolled off the shelf in the 50s and the early 60s so why did we hear that before right anyway they also made custom guitars and started doing signature models I think Eric Clapton not the first one I'm not sure don't quote me on that this guitar is one of the earlier relics Fender ever made so apparently they just sent over a bunch of parts to Vince cuneto who ran a small Workshop erratic Parts send them back to Fender who then further assembled the guitar into the instruments they are today so the logo is embossed in the headstock instead of stand as you can see over here so what I love about the stone is that it's sort of it's the perfect balance between everything it's fat it's not muddy it's bright but it's not too sharp it's basically perfectly in the middle of me [Music] so I think it's really fascinating playing these guitars back to back and before I reach my final conclusion sort of about these guitars I want to say that I love these specific guitars so much is Fiesta red body that it became the model for my brand new intermediate guitar chords electric elevation so in this new course we bring together all the elements that make the guitar so awesome we combine everything like skills arpeggios Triad double stops and even from finger picking to vibrato basically anything you can think of we bring it together so you can be more free on the entire neck than ever before we're looking at different progressions from multiple viewpoints like a rhythm guitar what can we do with the chords how can we make them as beautiful as we can we go to lead guitar how can we play the coolest solos on top of these same chord progression how can we stop our skills from sounding like scales playing up and down to something that actually sounds amazing with things like phrasing go and response Target notes or videos and so much more and then finally we also blur the lines between playing Rhythm and lead guitar we merge everything together or you play chords embellishments and solos all at the same time on one guitar truly making the guitar sound amazing so the course is designed to help you elevate your guitar playing so you can confidently play by feel develop your ear and play more explicitly than ever before so more information can be found at electric elevation.com will be amazing if you could check it out but now let's go to the final word about these guitars because I think it's super interesting I don't think there is such a thing as a bad tone but there are guitars that can have issues resulting into unwanted quirks that negatively impact tone and unfortunately I think that's what we saw on the Squire the notes are just less stable and although they are really really bright somehow there is less Clarity less string separation and less definition at first I thought it would be the pickups but I actually think it's everything Hardware related like the inferior plastic nut the cheaper bridge and I wonder what exactly it would take to turn that guitar more towards the liking of the 62. so that might be a fun video so let me know if you want to see that in the comments anything else here is just I mean it's fantastic and I guess it's just a matter of days from that point I think once you reached a certain level of Guitar Building when the guitar is built to last it just comes down to whatever you think sounds great and the important thing is that just like this 62 guitar if someone else picks it up in 60 years from now it should just be as awesome as it is today or possibly even better what I do think is that there is a certain quality in these pre-cbs stress or just old instruments that is hard to replicate there's something in it that you just don't easily see in new instruments so my cuneto Relic has just a little bit of that in it but still it's not the same and the question is do you even want it because I've also played old strats and I would never ever trade in my life for this very guitar and this is something you do not always hear but often these old guitars have some imperfections some weird quirks and it's sometimes hard to get used to them because they are just different I think you shouldn't be held back by the guitar that you play any guitar can be turned into something that's useful that's playable and that can get you anywhere in life I'd love to hear from you which guitar do you think sounded best I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments and yeah have a lovely day and of course feel free to check out electric elevation all the links are below I spent so much time on it and it would be an honor if you can check it out have a lovely day goodbye cheers

Channel: Paul Davids

Views: 1,153,378

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Id: r2vpU3hgbRs

Length: 17min 58sec (1078 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 16 2023