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Do you use a Rock guitar to play Jazz?


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Do you find it appropriate to do this? I have played rock my whole life, but just started getting into jazz. My guitars are Fender Stratocasters and a Peavey Wolfgang, and I am pretty happy with them. I would hate to buy a jazz guitar because 1.) I do not care for the way they look 2.) Right now, I don't have the money for one.

 

Discuss.

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I'm happy to play any style with any of my guitars...it's not what it looks like that matters, it's what you do with it. I'll play rock, metal, jazz, blues, and maybe even a few country licks on any of my guitars, which include a Les Paul, a PRS Custom 24, and a Carvin DC127.

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Do you find it appropriate to do this? I have played rock my whole life, but just started getting into jazz. My guitars are Fender Stratocasters and a Peavey Wolfgang, and I am pretty happy with them. I would hate to buy a jazz guitar because 1.) I do not care for the way they look 2.) Right now, I don't have the money for one.


Discuss.

 

 

use what you have. many favor a tele.I have a strat and it can be used but mostly I use my Tele or carvin. both solid bodies.

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A strat is good enough for Wayne Krantz, Leni Stern, Scott Henderson and Oz Noy.

 

Play whatever you want on whatever you please, it's the painting not the brush.

if you wan't to play more traditional styles, be aware though, that some purists musicians may find a strat inappropriately looking

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There is no such thing as a rock guitar or a jazz guitar. There are electric guitars and acoustic guitars.

 

Chuck Berry, Scotty Moore, T-Bone Walker, BB King, and hundreds of others played on what we now call 'jazz boxes', but they aren't jazz cats.

 

One of the most popular rock guitars is the Les Paul, in part designed by Les Paul himself, and Les is definitely a jazz player.

 

Put Jimmy Page and Les Paul on the same model guitar and you have extremely high quality Rock and Jazz.

 

You've got volume and tone controls, plus a plethora of fx pedals. Your choice of these make more of a difference than the shape of your guitar.

 

After all, we have strings and 3 kinds of pickups (humbuckers, P90 family and single coils). The wood and shape of your guitar probably contributes about 1% to the tone and the pickups, strings and your fingers the other 99%.

 

And don't give me that tonewood argument. I have a 1970 Gibson ES-330 and a 2001 Epiphone Casino. Both are nearly identical hollow body archtop electrics. If the wood makes a difference in any guitar, it should in those two guitars.

 

The Gibson has stock pickups, the Epi has Duncans.

 

Unplugged the Gibson sounds much better. It's the wood mostly.

 

Plugged in the Epiphone sounds better than the Gibson - it's the pickups.

 

The conclusion is the wood may have an effect on the guitar's tone unplugged, but when you plug it in, you aren't playing the wood, you're playing the pickups and that is where your tone is.

 

GuitarCousins3.JPG

 

Insights and incites by Notes

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I saw a video of Carol Kaye giving jazz lessons using an Ibanez or Jackson or one of the pointy guitars.If you don't know who that is, Carol Kaye played on just about every hit song to come out in the sixties on either bass or guitar.

 

Carol Kaye (born March 24, 1935) is an American musician, best known as one of the most prolific and widely heard bass guitarists in history, playing on an estimated 10,000 recording sessions.[1]

 

As a session musician Kaye was the bassist on several Phil Spector and Brian Wilson productions in the '1960s and '70s. She played guitar on Ritchie Valens' "La Bamba" and is credited with the bass tracks on several Simon and Garfunkel hits. Among her most often cited work Kaye anchored the Beach Boys' album Pet Sounds.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Kaye

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A jazz band leader reprimanded me once for bringing a classy strat to practice. Despite sounding fine - good, if you want to ignore my actual playing - he insisted that I'd never get good jazz tone out of that guitar. To jab at him a little bit, I brought a surf blue jazzmaster copy to the next practice.

 

I'm not with that band any more.

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Most serious Jazzers like Archtops for the tone, some do it on a LP or something like that, Mose Jazz guitars have HB's or P-90's in them. A few play Tele's, some with HB's in the neck which is good if you use the same guitar for Rock or Country. Strats seldom are used but sound good for some High Octaine Jazz, and nothing wrong with putting a HB in the neck for Jazz, kind of the samething as a Tele. Your Wolfgang should do Jazz real well, just adjust the controls for a smooth clean sound.

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