The Bright Side

‘My strat is too bright,’ said a forumite. But compared to what? Dave Burrluck offers some basic advice about listening before you mod

Let’s be honest. In today’s online world the first thing most of us do when faced with a gear problem is get in touch with the online community. ‘Help needed,’ we type. ‘My guitar is too loud, quiet, heavy, light, won’t stay in tune, etc.’ And then there follow plenty of words of wisdom and advice peppered with the usual negative put-downs. Burn it!

Recently, a thread caught my eye: ‘My Strat Is Too Bright.’ There were all the usual ‘fixes’ – strings, tuners, nut, pickups, tone capacitors, pot values, saddles, bridge block, body and neck replacement, the amp, pick… But nowhere did I spot the obvious first question, which is: ‘Compared to what?’ As one fellow poster rightly observed, Strats are bright, especially in their original specification, but one player’s too bright might well be another player’s perfect or – it can happen – too dark. It’s all about context and comparison.

Testing guitars, or even listening to them, isn’t a simple plug in, play for a couple of minutes, form an opinion, then post it. Well, not here it isn’t. Let’s say we’re testing a new Strat. We can all plug in, play it and pass comment, but we’re listening in isolation. Now say that you pull out a Strat that you know, have played for some time, gigged, recorded and even modded – then you have a comparison. You know your guitar and have probably had feedback from other guitar players who might have played it and certainly heard it with you at the helm.