[Lee Bob]

Hey guys,

I've always loved the look and sound of teles. I currently play in a rock/hard rock band. Les Pauls are my guit of choice at the moment. In the very limited experience I have with single coil guitars (I owned a USA Strat for several months last summer) I found them to be too thin for my needs and thus my question. Is it possible to turn a tele into a really good hard rock guitar? I would like to mix the spank of a tele with the thickness of a humbucker guitar such as a LP (without putting a HB in a tele, I really don't like those cosmetics). Do the hotrails, '59 jr, JB jr etc really reproduce the tones of a humbucker well?

Tell me which tele you would buy ($400-600) and what pickups you would put in it to make it that perfect ROCK TELE.

 

[Jeff Flowerday]

IMO, a tele is better suited for hard rock than a strat.

So yes!

 

[hoser]

"Can a Tele be used for Hard Rock?"

absolutely! Thats all I use my tele for basically, even a bit of metal sometimes.

mine is an 89 MIJ with a duncan lil 59er in the bridge and vintage in the neck. the tone is VERY close to my p90 equipped les paul, lots of output and nice mid rock tone from it.

so, I'd suggest an 80s MIJ with a lil 59er in the bridge and vintage in the neck.

 

[Devon8822]

Really the only thing that would make a guitar bad for specfic genre is the pickups... if you get a tele for metal you might want to replace the pickups. But woods, electronics and hardware are purly personal preference. So basically, I wouldn't use tele pickups for metal unless of course you like them.:rockon2:

 

[Ripper]

one of the guitarists in a band around here uses a tele. He's got a JBjr in the bridge and a lil59 in the neck and it sounds killer. They play everything from old rock, hard rock into metal like Priest and Motorhead. His back is a tele with those new Mighty Mite rail pickups in it and I have to admit they sound great too.

So much so I've been actually thinking of getting a tele for this purpose as well. I use either flying v's or LPs right now but a change is always good.

The band I heard last night was using a Godin LG P-90 and I was really impressed with that as well.

 

[bobb]

Is the solo from Stairway to Heaven hard enough?

 

[Baconator]

Is the solo from Stairway to Heaven hard enough?

I was wondering how long it would be before somebody mentioned Page :tongue:

The tele is almost like a mutated cousin of the Les Paul in an offbeat kinda way. If you put humbuckers in it it'll cover a lot of sonic territory.

 

[bobb]

I was wondering how long it would be before somebody mentioned Page :tongue:

It's a dirty job, but somebody had to do it. :wink:

 

[Jim Jones]

The Led Zeppelin performance of "Dazed & Confused" from Supershow is the only reason I bought a Tele. :smile:

Jim

 

[bobb]

The Led Zeppelin performance of "Dazed & Confused" from Supershow is the only reason I bought a Tele. :smile:

The Yardbirds version was pretty interesting also. You could see the seeds of Led Zeppelin starting to grow in Jimmy Page's playing. Yardbirds from 1967

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Tele's can definitely be used for hard rock. Glad someone mentioned Page. I remember seeing the guitarists from Tesla and Izzy from Guns N' Roses playing tele's as well.

 

[chesterb]

the lil'59 works great in my Tele. The 59 is my fav pup

 

[Jim Jones]

The Yardbirds version was pretty interesting also. You could see the seeds of Led Zeppelin starting to grow in Jimmy Page's playing. Yardbirds from 1967

Yeah, I have mixed feelings about the Page-era Yardbirds... The seeds of Zep were obviously being sewn but they never could have done it with that lineup. Poor Keith Relf just wasn't a great singer. That said I quite love the Beck-era Yardbirds - that was their peak in my opinion.

Jim