Frisell always tends toward a transparent, spacious sound, and his various Fender guitars are good for that, with the clear single-coil pickup tone and the long ringing sustain. I tried to emulate that in my
Shenandoah, inspired by Frisell.
In my early guitar days, I tried to sound like the players whose songs I was playing, which led to certain equipment choices (Fender). But when our band's repertoire needed an extra fret (22 instead of Fender's 21) and hum-cancelling pickups (bad club wiring) I switched to Gibson. From then on, I was finding the sound that worked for the music I was playing, trying Les Paul Deluxe (mini-humbuckers), Travis Bean, and eventually Yamaha (Santana model).
More recently, when I chose a 5-string emando maker, I went with Ryder because he had a Fender-type construction on his solid body model, and he had humbucking single-coil pickups, thus giving me the features I preferred. I could specify pickup location to emulate the Stratocaster layout.
I can achieve a wide range of tone, and I choose according to the music I am playing--dark and fat for jazz, open and twangy for country, hard-edged for rock. For now, though, I am enjoying the Ryder magnetic pickup I use on my 10-string, which gives a fat, big-box tone useful for jazz and other styles for my school-show trio.
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