Strat-tele hybrid

martin1914

DrBob said:

martin1914 said:

I have LSL Mongrel, which is a strat shape, tele bridge, strat middle and neck pickup, tele control panel with 5-way switch. One of the best guitars I have ever played. Bridge pickup is a 100% tele, the remaining positions sound like strat, positions 2 and 4 are perfect. Definitely a keeper.

Oohhh that’s cool, can I see a pic ? I’ve been bang into this design ever since DAG/Chad Underwood debuted it as the Telstar which @andy_k posted a pic of above. In fact I built my own bitsa based on it !

LSL Mongrel below. I have actually also built a mongrel copy with Guitarandbasebuild body, sounds great but the LSL original is much better.

crunchman

Lewy said:

I'm not anti the hybrid idea at all but if the only difference is the shape of the body and the hybridising doesn't cross over into how the guitar functions or sounds it seems fairly pointless. I prefer Reverend's take on the strat tele hybrid:

 

That's dreadful.

It doesn't have the forearm contour, and it still has the cramped Tele control plate.  They have taken a Strat and added the worst bits of a Tele to it.

The main point of a Tele is the proper Tele bridge with the pickup mounted in the bridge.  That's what gives the Tele its sound.

DrBob

martin1914 said:

DrBob said:

martin1914 said:

I have LSL Mongrel, which is a strat shape, tele bridge, strat middle and neck pickup, tele control panel with 5-way switch. One of the best guitars I have ever played. Bridge pickup is a 100% tele, the remaining positions sound like strat, positions 2 and 4 are perfect. Definitely a keeper.

Oohhh that’s cool, can I see a pic ? I’ve been bang into this design ever since DAG/Chad Underwood debuted it as the Telstar which @andy_k posted a pic of above. In fact I built my own bitsa based on it !

LSL Mongrel below. I have actually also built a mongrel copy with Guitarandbasebuild body, sounds great but the LSL original is much better.

Yeah that’s a beautiful looking guitar man ! I’ve only tried the more standard Strat OR Tele LSL’s but they were really great 

UncleBiff

suspiciousminds said:

UncleBiff said:

I had a custom shop version that I wish I never sold as it was excellent. Strat sounds in a Tele body is win/win!

So still very strat sounding then?
Whats the difference with the custom shop version to the standard one?

Yes, very, maybe a slightly thicker overall tone but amazing. I prefer a tele shape to a Strat, and i had all the contours and sounds, so for me it was the perfect start!

Here's the pics of my old one:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/o638aekus8dor0d/AABCigI5uv8-6JhyJBBiCQIja?dl=0

The story goes that 2 were made, one with a maple board and one with a maple. John Mayer had first refusal an due took the rosewood one and somehow the other one ended up in Chadlers and I bought it. There are pics/vids of Mayer playing his one.

I sold it, due to needing some cash to move house, to a collector in America. 6 months after sending it he got in touch and said he never got it and wanted his money back. I traced it through the courier and they tried to deliver it 3 times and then tried to get in touch with him for the next 30 days and he never got back to them. So they incinerated it!

Philly_Q

UncleBiff said:
I sold it, due to needing some cash to move house, to a collector in America. 6 months after sending it he got in touch and said he never got it and wanted his money back. I traced it through the courier and they tried to deliver it 3 times and then tried to get in touch with him for the next 30 days and he never got back to them. So they incinerated it!

If anything ever merited a Wow, that's it!

UncleBiff

Philly_Q said:

UncleBiff said:
I sold it, due to needing some cash to move house, to a collector in America. 6 months after sending it he got in touch and said he never got it and wanted his money back. I traced it through the courier and they tried to deliver it 3 times and then tried to get in touch with him for the next 30 days and he never got back to them. So they incinerated it!

If anything ever merited a Wow, that's it!

I asked why they didn’t send it back to me and apparently they did try to ring me once and didn’t get through, as you have to agree to pay the return shipping costs in advance. But they say they aren’t a storage company and it states in their contract anything not claimed or returned after a month gets incinerated. Crazy! They’d be better off auctioning off everything and giving the money to charity! This was UPS.

Philly_Q

I've got a guitar which was shipped over from the States, the couriers couldn't be arsed to attempt to deliver it to me (or so it seemed) so they sent it back to the US, then it came all the way back to the UK again.  It wasn't really worth the wait, but now I've heard your story I suppose I should be grateful they didn't incinerate it!

UncleBiff

PayPal took the money out of my account but I proved that I did everything I was supposed to and then he stopped communicating again and PayPal paid it back to me, so he lost out not me. I’d of rather kept it though and not had the money, rather than it be destroyed.

Fishboy7

Sounds like the worst of both worlds - the uncomfortableness of a tele with the sonic limpness of a strat

UncleBiff

Fishboy7 said:

Sounds like the worst of both worlds - the uncomfortableness of a tele with the sonic limpness of a strat

It was comfy as it had the belly and forearm carves.

suspiciousminds

UncleBiff said:

suspiciousminds said:

UncleBiff said:

I had a custom shop version that I wish I never sold as it was excellent. Strat sounds in a Tele body is win/win!

So still very strat sounding then?
Whats the difference with the custom shop version to the standard one?

Yes, very, maybe a slightly thicker overall tone but amazing. I prefer a tele shape to a Strat, and i had all the contours and sounds, so for me it was the perfect start!

Here's the pics of my old one:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/o638aekus8dor0d/AABCigI5uv8-6JhyJBBiCQIja?dl=0

The story goes that 2 were made, one with a maple board and one with a maple. John Mayer had first refusal an due took the rosewood one and somehow the other one ended up in Chadlers and I bought it. There are pics/vids of Mayer playing his one.

I sold it, due to needing some cash to move house, to a collector in America. 6 months after sending it he got in touch and said he never got it and wanted his money back. I traced it through the courier and they tried to deliver it 3 times and then tried to get in touch with him for the next 30 days and he never got back to them. So they incinerated it!

Thats way nicer than the standard one!

martin1914

UncleBiff said:

Fishboy7 said:

Sounds like the worst of both worlds - the uncomfortableness of a tele with the sonic limpness of a strat

It was comfy as it had the belly and forearm carves.

For me the main point of a hybrid is to combine tele bridge sound with strat ergonomics and strat positions 2 and 4.

crunchman

martin1914 said:

UncleBiff said:

Fishboy7 said:

Sounds like the worst of both worlds - the uncomfortableness of a tele with the sonic limpness of a strat

It was comfy as it had the belly and forearm carves.

For me the main point of a hybrid is to combine tele bridge sound with strat ergonomics and strat positions 2 and 4.

Agree.  Strat with a Tele bridge pickup is the only hybrid version that sort of makes sense.  Even then, positions 2 and 4 won't sound quite like a Strat as you have a fixed bridge and don't get that reverb type effect that the trem springs give you.

If I was going that route, I'd probably just go for 2 pickups.  Reduced magnetic pull on the strings from not having the extra pickup would probably help the tone.

Philly_Q

I always quite liked the look of Lowell George's Strat with a Tele bridge pickup.  Then there was the Jerry Donahue Strat where he had a steel plate surrounding the bridge pickup, hidden under the scratchplate, to mimic the effect of the Tele bridge's baseplate.

But I do like the Tele body with Strat-style contours and more-Strat-than-Tele features.  I quite like the way a Tele balances, without the Strat's extended upper horn.