The REAL Difference Between Fender And Gibson Guitars

so have you ever thought about the differences between two guitars like the fender stratocaster and the gibson les paul they're both solid body electric guitars but that's sort of where the similarities end this is a bolt neck this is a set neck this is mahogany and maple this particular strat is alder this has three single coil pickups this has two humbuckers and if you've ever played or you own two of these guitars you know how different they feel to play and a huge part of that difference is down to something called scale length so in today's video we're going to head over to righteous guitars where we're going to meet up with my friend ben calhoun the co-founder of righteous and we're going to learn all about scale length and try and figure out does it really matter which is better a longer scale guitar or a shorter scale guitar and how do you find out which is better for you so i'm going to put these back on the rack we're going to pack up and head over to righteous and see what we can find out [Music] then yes what is scale length it's the distance between the nut and the saddle of a guitar it's the length of the string all right cool video is done thanks man that was good see you next week all right no but for real we're going to get in depth on scale length today because it actually has a pretty big impact on the feel of the guitar the way it plays the way it handles and some people think it affects the sound but yeah we'll get into that well scale length affects a lot of things including like you mentioned the feel the guitar it affects it does affect the sound to some extent but the idea of it is the longer your scale is the more tension that you will need in order to be at the same pitch a lot of times when i talk about this with people to kind of describe it if i you know hit a nail into the wall over there and i take a string or a piece of cord or something and i pull it tight right here and try to make a note with that it's like you know whatever pitch the amount of effort i have to put in to to do that from this distance if i walk really close and do the same thing i barely have to do anything to get that same result so because of that if you take a guitar with a longer scale length it will feel stiff er compared to one of the shorter scale lengths which may be easier to bend on and and uh feel a little slinkier so and i know that that's been the thing for most guitar players have gone into a shop and you go hey what's this thing got on at nines or something and it doesn't it has tens on it but it just feels slinky shorter scale length more likely conversely if you've ever played a fender or like a tele i know that used to be people would say telly sometimes feels stiff or if they fight you a little bit and largely that is a scale length the most common talking about electrics which is primarily what we're talking about here you've got your fender style guitar bolt-on guitar which is 25 and a half inch scale so it's 25 inches and a half inches from here to here the 12th fret being the midpoint the halfway point which is why intonation everything is set around there so when you look at a fender that's that's what you've got going on if you look at a gibson it's 20 again typically 24 and three quarters of an inch from here to here on the gibson so shorter scale less tension so just do the math wrong but basically the the main difference between your typical fender strat and a typical les paul for example is just three quarters of an inch scale wise yeah that's it that doesn't sound like that much it doesn't but it's huge it makes a difference for sure if you look at another builder uh paul reed smith so if you look actually we look at fender gibson and paula smith i think there's a three of the larger electric guitar manufacturers out there and paul rude smith went with a 25 inch scale and a big part of that was because a 25 inch scale just has a bit more tension than 24 and three quarter it actually can help when you're using a lighter gauge string to try to get the intonation right but if you have a les paul with tens on it and you have a strat with nines on it they're probably not gonna feel that far apart when you bend and that's because the tension is different so now we're actually gonna do is grab three different guitars we're gonna grab a telecaster the typical fender scale length we're going to grab a les paul with the typical gibson scale length and we're going to grab a hard tail prs with the 25 inch scale length and actually just play the three of them back to back now keep in mind this is not going to be a sound difference comparison because we're comparing three completely different instruments but what we're going to try and do is describe for you and show you the differences in the feel and the playability of the guitars that have the same gauge strings on them uh the primary difference that we're gonna be focusing on being the difference in scale length they're all gonna be hard tail guitars no tremolos plug up into an amp over here and have some fun yeah i don't really oh yeah that that i almost feel like yeah this is gonna be an interesting comparison to make like we've got three completely different guitars and in almost every way but uh three different types of bridges yep okay three different scale lengths three very different guitars but this one's cool dude i mean check out it's got the robson tuners on it this was the introduction of the the uh paul's guitar pickups it comes with a ton of paperwork it's like all like joe walsh and all these other people saying how awesome this guitar pickups are that's cool it's a new guitar wait what year is this thing 2011. oh okay oh 10 years old yeah pretty sweet little guitar and then we've got 58 reissue uh really sweet guitar just came in nice dark fingerboard custom shop yes custom shop bourbon burst really pretty guitar that fingerboard's outrageous normally aren't that dark you kind of have to ask for that that's nice great and then this iconic is a one-off super cool it's a perfect weight like seven seven a little over seven pounds aluminum guard ash raw it's just grain filled feels really nice and it's a great sounding guitar quarter-sawn maple neck oh nice yeah it's just a really really cool guitar from an independent builder out in california so i will start with the longest scale length first the typical fender scale and i'm just plugged straight into the front of this morgan uh js40 so yeah here we go [Music] it does it does fight you a little bit on on the bins the double stop ends these are all tins on these guitars right yes they're all in my xl yeah i mean it feels like a tele if you've never played a tele with these bins you do sort of have to manhandle a telecaster a little bit you got to kind of really really dig in but that i think is part of the telly's charm because you play it a little bit differently than a less ball well like you're doing the open open string type of thing it seems to be for me easier to do on a longer scale guitar so any of the kind of like slide pedal still type of things seem to be easier for me to achieve for me on that kind of guitar yeah all right let's fall here we go [Music] oh [Music] [Music] so we've gone from two ends of the spectrum here the long fender scale straight to the short gibson scale and when you do that back to back the differences are pretty uh pretty noticeable i agree i mean this like immediately at least for me makes me want to go straight to more of the long bends higher bins i feel like too with shorter scale and this isn't on the extreme suction short scale these are just common it's on the shorter side of common scales but i do a lot more hammer-on pull-off runs on shorter scale guitars like that like gibson scale guitars right i feel like i can fly a little faster on those than i can on the on the uh 25 and a half right right [Music] [Music] hmm comparing the three back to back like that has actually shown me something i've never done this before i've never gone fender gibson prs right in the middle and this is clueing me into something about prs guitars but they do sit in terms of feel and playability and string tension it sits right between the gibson offender yeah it really does and that was part of the the design paul was going after and i can't speak for paul but i can a little bit here that he was taking key ingredients from leo and ted mccarty taking the things really great about the early gibson offenders but also trying to improve on issues they have and the 24 and three-quarter scale on les paul does inherently make it a little more difficult to get the information right when you're using lighter gauge strings going to a 25-inch scale was just enough to pull out of that range where yeah they'll internet just finally dies there's really no question all prs as well you know probably with eights i don't know yeah haven't tried that on a pros so why why is that why does scale length affect the guitar's ability to intonate with strings well there's two things with that uh the first one is that when you have more tension on the string you're less likely to pull it sharp less balls tend to have bigger frets right than say like a vintage fender you know so you have a bigger fret less tension you put nines on it and if you have the hand of a blacksmith right or the hand of me yeah we tend to push down a little bit too hard and it makes it go out of tune easier so if you have a bigger gauge string you don't notice that as much nines on the less pulse barrier like a string shorter scaling much more sensitive and the other part of it is a physical limitation on the guitar itself so the saddles only have so much travel and the bridge isn't always exactly in the right place right so you may run into actual physical limitations of the guitar being able to intonate and you'll see people and this goes both ways but you'll see people actually flip saddles over to try to correct that problem i think some of the issue of people complaining about les paul's being out of tune all the time is if you're a heavy-handed player and if the intonation is not quite right with the shorter scaling and if it even happens on tens but especially if you're playing nines you're going to knock that guitar at a tune really easily especially down here in the first position like this e major you start to get that g sharp a little sharp and now it sounds like the guitar is out of tune when really if this guitar had smaller frets on it like not as high frets it may not have some of those issues when you played it or when i played it necessarily or same thing with a fender if it had huge frets on it i mean scalloping a fender is something you see yeah when you see scalp gibson never right i mean it's ridiculous it's ridiculous anyway but hey if you like it you like it all right so your opinion does scale ink matter no it matters in a lot of ways because it changes the feel of the guitar it changes the tone subjectively but the reason it doesn't matter is because if you are inherently stuck that you need 24 and three-quarter scale length and that's where your brain is at you'll never try guitars that fall outside of that spec and you'll miss some opportunities to play guitar that might be perfect for you so no it doesn't matter and i completely agree it does not matter in my experience of playing guitars and owning guitars for years the scale length does have an appreciable difference in the feel and playability of the guitar but that's not what makes the guitar good or bad to play and that's not what affects the overall tone and response of the guitar what it does do at least for me is change how i play the guitar it changes what licks i choose to play how i choose to play those licks if a guitar is easier to bend on i'm going to do more bends versus something that's less easy i'm going to approach the guitar differently but in the grand scheme of things does the scale length prevent me or encourage me to buy a guitar no doesn't matter so i want to know what your preferred scale length is in the comment section down below are you more of a fender scale person longer scale or gibson scale which is shorter or are you more like me which is doesn't really matter you can kind of switch between them and play to that guitar let me know in the comments section down below if you'd like to learn more about guitars and tone and feel and how to get the sound out of your head and through your speakers i made a video course on that last year called the tone course which is available via the link down below you can also find my nashville number system course and a new video course that i'm working on right now that will be available very soon so check that out retroguitarcourses.com don't forget to follow me on instagram rhettshull and subscribe here to the youtube channel if you haven't done so already and click that bell icon to be notified when i'm posting new videos so that's going to do it for today's video my name is rhett shaw thank you so much for watching and remember there is no plan b

Channel: Rhett Shull

Views: 262,827

Rating: 4.9218912 out of 5

Keywords: electric guitar, scale length, what is scale length?, how to buy a guitar, what guitar should I buy, Rhett Shull, Righteous Guitars, scale length comparison, guitar strings, scale length explained, music gear, scale length tone, guitar scale length differences, guitar scale length, scale length guitar, guitar scale length comparison, guitar (musical instrument)

Id: 1lfDKYD0Aik

Length: 15min 10sec (910 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 11 2021