According to Joe Satriani, electric guitars with all-maple necks, like the classic Fender Stratocasters and Fender Telecasters, just aren’t the perfect option in his eyes.
We just need to note that Satch does use guitars with maple necks. It’s just that his instruments usually have rosewood fingerboards. Nonetheless, this may seem like an odd preference, especially knowing how plenty of guitar greats prefer all-maple necks.
While appearing in a recent episode of the Talking Shred podcast, Joe pointed out that he doesn’t prefer these types of necks and explained why, offering (transcript via Ultimate Guitar):
“I find it’s really hard to get consistent maple neck. So, let’s say you bring eight guitars on tour, getting all the maple-neck guitars… It is just a piece of wood. I mean, when you think about it, it grows out of the ground. Mother Nature decides what’s it gonna sound, nothing that you can do about. [Laughs]”
Of course, it’s not like he doesn’t use them at all. After all, Satch does own some classic Fender models. And he admits that he put these into action in the studio. But it’s just not his thing in general.
“So, it’s a bit of a crapshoot when it comes to maple necks,” he continued. “I do like them, and I do use them on albums from time to time. They can be a bit bright. And again, prior to my solo career, I owned a ’54 Strat, and I loved it.”
“It had a maple neck, and I thought it was the greatest guitar, but I did not have a job then where I had to play melodies and solos nonstop for two and a half hours. And so, this job of being a solo artist has changed my needs as a guitar player. I need different pedals, amps, speakers, and guitars than perhaps the average guitarist.”
This isn’t the first time Joe expressed his opinion on old-school-style electric guitar models. For instance, in an interview from just some months ago, he pointed out that he just doesn’t prefer Gibson Les Pauls. Satch said:
“I did a couple of shows for Les Paul for his birthday party. There’s a good YouTube clip of me playing a ’58 Les Paul Special, ‘Satch Boogie.’ That was really hard, actually. That’s because Les Pauls go out of tune, like instantly, when you play that kind of aggressive style of guitar playing.”
During that same interview, he also discussed some of the vintage gear that he used back in the day with one of his old bands, revealing:
“I love playing the newer stuff because it solves a lot of the issues that the old stuff didn’t have. I’m not trying to recreate anything, actually. I’m just trying to move forward. I don’t know if you remember seeing me in The Squares. I used to use two Echoplexes and two Marshall half-stacks. It was a crazy idea.”
Interestingly enough, he also said that he grew up playing a Telecaster and added:
“It’s something that I always go back to, and it feels normal to me. But it is the thing that teaches me whether or not I’m any good on any given day. You really have to make yourself sound good on a Telecaster. It does not offer you anything. No boost.”
Going back to the issue of maple fretboards, Bonamassa also had an interesting take on this. But as opposed to Satch, he prefers maple over other alternatives. In 2023, he said:
“Strats were first offered with maple fingerboards, and, starting in 1959, the guitars were available with rosewood fingerboards. One can argue that a rosewood ’board results in more of a Stevie Ray Vaughan-type sound.
“I always refer to maple-neck Strats as the ‘Buddy Holly’ guitar, and great players such as Eric Johnson, Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix are also well known for playing maple neck Strats.
“Personally, I’m more of a maple-fretboard Strat player. To my ears, the notes jump off it in a different way, as compared to a rosewood ‘board.”
Photo: Eduardo Peña Dolhun
