[BluesDuke]

The Strat quality is...Strat only. You either hear it or you don't.

Believe me, I heard it. And it still doesn't hold a candle to a Les Paul.

That said, Johnny Winter said, "I love Strats but can't play 'em." They are tricky. I'm forever knocking myself off my neck pickup by bumping the switch. Learning to shift it back in time is something I have had to practice."

I remember seeing that quote. I was surprised to learn he'd had that problem with the switch, since he wasn't exactly one of those players who was pounding their hands over and down the strings whenever I saw him play. When I had my MIM Strat, I never worried about the switch. Never touched it unless I wanted to. Mine had the so-called H-S-S pickup configuration. Good combination for what it was. When it was stolen, though, I swore I'd return to Gibson by hook or by crook and never look back. I just missed the richer, deeper tone you could get from a Gibson.

Some of my favourite bluesmen have played Fenders. (Magic Sam, Otis Rush once upon a time, Buddy Guy, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Robert Cray.) But more of them have played Gibsons in general and Les Pauls in particular. (In Gibson general: B.B. King, Albert King, Otis Rush, Robert Johnson, Buddy Guy [he played a Les Paul SG Custom for awhile in the 1960s; he's pictured with it on the cover of I Was Walking Through the Woods], John Lee Hooker---who veered between Gibsons and Epiphones---T-Bone Walker, Lowell Fulson, Johnny Winter, Kim Simmonds. In Les Paul particular: Mike Bloomfield, Freddie King [his early King-Federal sides, arguably the man's best music, were played on a '54 goldtop], the Eric Clapton of Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton and Fresh Cream, Luther Allison, Guitar Slim, Peter Green, John Lee Hooker [who played a '52 goldtop for a time in the 1950s], Billy Ray Charles, Duane Allman, Alan Wilson, Hubert Sumlin.)

One Gibson I'd be afraid to ask the value of: Big Bill Broonzy's near-mandolin-shaped six-string acoustic. I forget the model name now, but I saw him sitting with that guitar on the booklet cover of his entry in Columbia Legacy's "Roots 'n' Blues" series, Good Time Tonight, and I wonder if any of this model still exist . . .:

[Scoutmaster]

I guess if I had to pick only one guitar I would, but I've never been put in that position. Paul McCartney says that if he could have only one electric guitar, it would be his 1965 Epiphone Casino.

Les Pauls are great. I personally think the SG is the best guitar Gibson's ever made (and Gibson had sold more SGs than Les Pauls). I love Telecasters. And Stratocasters. There are certain sounds I can only get from a Country Gentleman (actually, I have an English Gentleman), or a Rickenbacker 360/6. Or how can you play 'Ventures' sound without a Mosrite? And I have a '65 Casino. It's great. But it's not an ES-339 . . . And we haven't gotten out of the 1960s yet.

To me, respectfully, saying one guitar is best is like saying hammers, screwdrivers, drills, and socket wrenches don't hold a candle to hacksaws. They're tools - artistic, beautiful tools. But each has a purpose and a specialty. And God love 'em all.

[the invisib1e hand]

conspicuously absent from that list of "also Gibson players" is SRV. There is a video of him playing a double-necked something, can't remember what, doing "Everybody's Everything" with pretty much everyone.

However, SRV is Strat and vice versa and in my book, that is the only endorsement that matters.