Do you use the 'right' guitars for covers?

slacker

As title. Is it important to play a Les Paul for alright now, a Strat for Sultans of swing, or do you use a Telecaster for everything?

And a bonus question do you get the right guitar and colour for tribute bands?

sev112

I’m not sure the original acts use the right guitars all the time 

personally no, but I’m not a tribute act.
but if you are playing Sultans it benefits from the twang, and whether you get that from an ear specific strat or a LP on coil split with minimal distortion probably doesn’t matter to 98.35% of the audience 

Musicwolf

One guitar for the lot.  Well, two because I play in two covers bands.  Band #1 I use an HSS Strat, Band #2 I'm using a PRS Studio 22 as the other guitarist is using a Strat and I just find that the PRS works better in combination.

In actual fact I've got half a dozen guitars and any one of them could be used to cover the whole set list in either band and the only person who would know the difference is me.

Rowby1

No. Two guitars at any given covers gig. A number 1 and a spare in case of string breakages.

I rotate all my guitars so the guitar that’s number 1 for one gig becomes the spare for the next.

Danny1969

Generally I find that in a band that covers a wide range of material, from soul to heavy rock, a guitar fitted with tappable humbuckers is a good versatile solution. 
I do use an actual double neck 12 and 6 string guitar for songs like Hotel California and Dead or Alive but in general my superstrat type guitar is pretty good. 

In the brit pop type band I'm in I find a Telecaster does everything i want it to do. 

In the Kate Bush trib I'm in I use an old Ibanez, again with splittable humbuckers to sound like a Strat or thicker Gibson sound. 

Roland

Rowby1 said:

No. Two guitars at any given covers gig. A number 1 and a spare in case of string breakages.

This. One of my reasons for building partscasters was to get a range of sounds from one guitar. 

Once you start changing guitars you get gaps between songs. Your ears, the bands’ ears, and the audiences’ ears have to adjust, and if you haven’t got a soundman there’s a chance of the overall balance going to pot.

paulmapp8306

Agree to some extent.

Not playing guitar in bands at present but used to take a strat and a prs cu22.  Mainly because I hadn't found a has I liked.  That did mean changing at times, though the prs could do most of it.

If I was doing so now, my 3 p90 loaded superstar would cover pretty much everything with the prs as a backup.

Still looking for the has though lol

koneguitarist

Used a Tele for everything. Audience have no idea what guitar was used anyway. Played All Right Now on a Tele loads of times. 

Gulliver

I don't think it really matters too much, but I might end up taking 3 guitars to gigs in future (Strat, Tele, LP)  

Les Paul as a main guitar
Tele as a backup (and we've got a couple of songs that rely on a fuzz so I want Single Coils with that, one of which is drop D so a tele is perfect) 
Strat so I can use the trem (can't use the floating trem as a backup because of the occasional drop D) 

monquixote

Any tiny advantage you gain from having a slightly more authentic guitar sound is lost a hundred times over by the loss of momentum from changing guitars mid set.

Unless you have a road crew don't do it.

EricTheWeary

Alright Now has a double tracked thing going on so pretty much nobody plays it right anyway which would get you closer to the original than owning a Les Paul. Kossoff used strats in the studio and some say Alright Now is that. 

Oasis apparently used mostly strats for their first album and then help sell Epiphones on the back of it. Lots of telecaster on Def Leppard albums. Etc,etc. 

In a high end tribute band mostly you do want to look right. I always remember the story about a top US Beatles tribute act who had different amps for different periods of the band, but all empty boxes whilst they actually played through Line 6 gear. At more humble levels it becomes less and less of an issue.

If you watch that Eagles concert on Sky Arts the amount of guitars they use is phenomenal but you’d have to have bionic hearing to notice most of the differences. The most guitar changes I ever saw anyone do was, I think, Colin James who changed strat every song but just because he hit them so hard they were always out of tune and a roadie passing him a new one was quicker than tuning up. 

ICBM

No.

Keefy

I normally take two guitars that are quite different. Some songs will demand one particular guitar, others don’t feel so specific. I go through the set list and program in a maximum of 2 changes per set and can change guitar in seconds.

At my last two gigs I took my Jazzmaster (Footloose, Come Together, Proud Mary) and Tele Deluxe (Oasis numbers, Sympathy for the Devil, Rebel Rebel).

For tribute bands it depends. For the Stones tribute we dressed the part and I played a blackguard Tele and a LP Junior. For others I just used whatever worked.

guitarmangler

I'm too lazy to have different guitars for different songs. I bring two to a gig just incase I break a string. I also mainly just play on one pickup (which one depends on the gig). 

I did have, once, one of the first generation of Line 6 Varian's. I spent ages working out Gretch model for this song, Les Paul for that one etc. No one cared. In fact, the only person who did care was the singer who would give me grief because I was looking at the guitar and switching sounds between songs , rather than smiling and looking/interacting with the audience. I sold it pretty quick.

Nicholas

For me, unless you have the luxury of being able to set up multiple guitars each with it's own dedicated amp, a strat plus a spare strat for string breakages will cover most situations most of the time. The inconvenience of setting up your rig to deal with different guitars between songs just isn't worth it. Once in the mix, the individual guitar sound is less discernible, especially to the untrained ear of most gig goers.  A good player will shine through no matter what guitar he/she is using. If you must have say a Les Paul and a Tele, some of the old fender amps and similar have both low and high impedance inputs on the same channel. You could also have different effects programmes for the different set ups, or an AB pedal with different effects going through each side. Try your ideas out at rehearsal and see how it goes, you might come up with the perfect solution.

Neill

We used to do a fair few covers that were not in concert tuning, eg Brown Sugar, Honky Tonk Women, Nutbush City Limits are open G and others that you need to retune to Eb or F and often we'd change the key to suit the sax player...  I ended up going with a Variax which can also give you a passable imitation of a Strat, LP etc. But it was really the facility to change the tuning without holding up the set - if you've managed to get people dancing you don't want them sitting back down while you change guitars.  

Roland

For Eb I use a detune pedal. I ran out of space in my AxeFX, so added a Digitech Drop. If a song is in an altered tuning then I find a set of chord shapes which work in standard. Once you start using a guitar in another tuning then you need another backup.

Lestratcaster

Not so much as a live band thing but for teaching I generally match the guitar to the tune we are doing that particular week. Live it'd depend on the tuning of the song and usually I take 2, 1 main one to play and 1 backup.

slacker

monquixote said:

Any tiny advantage you gain from having a slightly more authentic guitar sound is lost a hundred times over by the loss of momentum from changing guitars mid set.

Unless you have a road crew don't do it.

 I used to play two guitars if I knew there was a break in sets etc to facilitate a change.

I've seen a lot of covers band players with a PRS. 

fastonebaz

I just use a gibson sg.  Covers most grounds well. 

p90fool

We have around 130 songs, I play them all on this, using one core amp tone and four pedals;