I had a cheap Squier Tele that I kept at work so I could squeeze in a bit more guitar practice during lunch. It was fine for my uses, just playing through GarageBand on my iPhone quietly, and the fretwork felt a bit rough, but I kept on pushing off fixing it. Then I cut myself on the fritz, and realized that a bunch of the Fretz were lifted off the fretboard. That was a lot more work than I was willing to put into $150 guitar so I sold it on eBay and found a really nice PRS silver sky SE at a local guitar shop. I’d always dismissed Stats for stupid reasons, namely Clapton played one and I never liked him after Derek and the Dominoes (MTV unplugged being the exception). Always gravitated to Tele sounds and there are lots of Strat sounds I found lame.
But they had been growing on me. Gridgingly really got into John Mayer 10 years after everyone else did, and always liked Hendrix. Then my boys got me a tabletop book about the history of the Strat and Tele and been listening to guys like Rory Gallagher and Robin Trower. Actually been listening to some stuff by Hank Marvin, both later stuff and his earlier stuff with The Shadows. This PRS spoke to me. Keep at work during the week but it’s so good I bring it home on the weekends.
I’m a convert, and I have been underestimating them all along. Pickups sounded nice but were a bit too round and warm and smooth so I replaced them with some Lollar 64’s for some more sparkle and snap. Really nice. Floated the trem (they come decked), fretwork was great, electronics work really well too. Off course bridge pickup is connected to a volume pot. One day I may put the bridge on a master tone and use the 3rd pot for a neck pickup blender to get the inbetween tele sound.
Biggest difference I can tell is the Tele has a deeper low end, but they’re fairly interchangeable IMO. Still figuring out the #2 and #4 positions beyond some random John Mayer licks but I find myself really liking the middle pickup. Depending on where I pick I can get it to sound either like the middle position of a Gibson or a pseudo #2 or #4 position sound. It’s a surprisingly good sound for Allman Brothers stuff.
I cannot figure out how to post pics anymore and I don’t use a photo sharing site anymore and iCloud links donn’t seem to work so I’ll post a link to this guitar, it’s the one I have.
https://www.sweetwater.com/c590--Sol...B&gclsrc=aw.ds