[LAU] price vs. sound - was - What is the best MP3 encoder?

[Tim Goetze]

[david]
> My church band's lead guitarist has one of the new Fender Strats (they're made
> in Mexico). He also has an ES-335. The ES-335 sounds a lot better and is much
> more versatile (according to him). The 335 cost about $2500, IIRC. He also has
> a Gibson Les Paul (the solid heavy model). That's the guitar I always wanted
> decades ago.

I happen to like the sound of the Strat more than any other electric
I've played so I'm a little biased there.  I don't really care about
versatility, I want only one sound, and this guitar has it. 

> My Garcia Concert Model 3 has beautiful tone, even now, many decades after I
> bought it. It cost around $200 back then.
>
> Another guitar I thought had great tone back then was a Yamaha FG-250 12-string
> I found in a small music shop in a very small town in northern California.
> (Couldn't convince my parents to buy it for me!). I wonder how its tone has
> held up over the decades?

I have an old ragged and stained children-size classical guitar that I
used to play for thirty years, and as long as I played it regularly I
thought it sounds wonderful.  Such familiarity, I think, can often let
you do things with ease on one instrument that are out of reach with
another instrument you are not as intimate with.  And I think that
whatever you play, when you play it well, it will always sound good.

Tim