Hardtail Strat like playing a Tele?

ChrisCox1994

love a hardtail strat, definitely feels more tele-ish under the fingers.

lovestrat74

DrBob said:

PhilKing said:

I have a couple of hardtail strats.  One is a Bravewood copy of my 57 Strat, but with a hardtail.  It has BK Veneer Board pickups (even though it has a maple neck), as Tim suggested they would work well in a hardtail.  The other is this Tele/Strat Hybrid:


It has string through the body and a tele neck.  Both of them have a different attack and tone to a trem Strat, but neither of them sounds like a Tele.  They also feel like Strats when you play them, partly due to how they sit (just like a strat), and the string tension is different in the one with the hardtail Strat bridge.

See I am understand why a hardtail Strat wouldn’t sound like a Tele. Bridge is different, pickup is different, method of mounting pickup is different etc etc.
But it does surprise me that this one doesn’t sound like a Tele because other than the silhouette and the neck & middle pickups it is essentially a Tele in terms of construction, pickups etc. Does the body shape really change the sound that much ? 
I get it more with say a V where the wood around the bridge area is radically different but on this one other than the edge contouring it’s fundamentally the same 

Yeah that was my train of thought too @DrBob - same bridge, same string spacing and a Tele neck. My question was more about feel than sound..

Voxman

I have a 1969 hardtail Strat, maple neck, maple capped board, and a 1988 USA standard telecaster, maple neck, rosewood board. Both are stock and both are alder bodies.  The Strat sounds and feels like a Strat and sounds and feels nothing whatsoever like a Telecaster. 

I also have a 2010 limited edition usa strat with trem, rosewood board, alder body, delta tone. And that sounds like a Strat too albeit with a tad more 'air' than the 69. But with the slightly hotter bridge pick up it sounds closer to the Telecaster than my hardtail '69. The 69 is warm and smooth but kind of snappy at the same time, the 2010 is a little brighter but also a bit more brash. 

Each of these three have their own distinctive feel and tone, and are very different.

PhilKing

I think that there are a couple of reasons, one that is probably subjective and the other may have some science!  The subjective one is that the way the guitar sits probably makes me play it slightly differently to a Tele, and so I probably get a slightly different sound and feel from that, which affects my interpretation of the tone.  The other is that the 3 pickups have a different string pull to 2 pickups, but not having a 3 pickup Tele, I can't say if this makes a difference.

ICBM

PhilKing said:

The other is that the 3 pickups have a different string pull to 2 pickups, but not having a 3 pickup Tele, I can't say if this makes a difference.

I’ve never played a 3-pickup Tele I’ve liked. They just don’t sound right, whatever the combination of Strat and Tele pickups in the front positions.

Two-pickup Strats seem OK though...