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Comments
Bolt on
24 frets
Good quality Floyd (is it really a superstrat without a Floyd?)
24 frets preferably - always annoying when you can’t play a shreddy solo that uses the 24th fret.
And anything but a Floyd, fooking hateful things, hate tuning and restringing them.
24 frets forces the neck pickup to be moved towards the bridge to make room for the extra frets and that makes a big difference to the sound (much bigger than most things guitar geeks care about IMO). It surprises me that a lot of people aren't bothered by that. I suppose a lot of people are mainly focused on the bridge pickup anyway. For me, the main reason I like separate HH and SSS guitars (as opposed to compromising with an SSH) is the deep liquid sound of a neck pickup but that sound I love is totally diminished by the pickup placement on a 24 fret guitar. I actually got rid of my only 24 fret guitar for that sole reason.
I've never actually played a Floyd but I'd take a normal trem over hardtail purely because I have the option of using the trem bar once in a blue moon. I'm assuming people would only prefer a hardtail for tonal reasons - I'm not really interested in that kind of subtlety, I just don't buy that at that level it can make a real world difference to the music.
I suppose for that reason too, I'd take the bolt-on neck for the practical advantages, under the assumption that the tonal difference will be too subtle to care about.
P.S. I'm open to the possibility that I could be wrong about how subtle the difference hardtail/bolt-on things make to the tone, I'm basing it on only having put a small amount of time in to investigating the differences. Maybe one day I can be convinced there is enough of a difference to care.
But for the 24 fret thing I'm completely convinced I'm correct, I've done extensive comparison and blind tested myself (as geeky as that sounds, I had a 24 fret guitar and borrowed a 22 fret one and finding the truth was the difference between sticking with what I already had or selling it and buying a 22 fret one, so it wasn't academic).
If the pickups are opposite ends of the market then sure but, let's say you created an ABX test between any two "vintage humbuckers" on the market, I wouldn't be at all confident I could pass.
But think how huge the difference between neck and bridge pickup is (night and day) and they're only a few inches apart, maybe about 4 inches. So moving the neck pickup down even 1 inch to accommodate the extra frets and you're getting a quarter of that massive difference - putting it like that should make it hardly surprising that it sounds so different.
Edit: not to mention moving your picking hand towards the bridge or neck will also massively change the sound
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Defo recommend that to anyone thinking about getting a hard tail Strat if it's only for tuning stability/ease.
And you can always set them flat if they get in the way.
But I much prefer a hardtail. Really dislike trems of any variety.
My most recent purchase is a Schecter with 24 frets, two humbuckers, bolt on neck, and a hardtail bridge with string through. It's fabulous. Haven't been anywhere near fret 24 though.