Well I bought my stat last year, and have been playing it mostly, except for a couple of occasions. So yesterday I broke out the ESP and plugged into the half stack. All I can say is WOW, I forgot what I was missing. Now, I don't play metal on my strat, so I had an itch to thrash, and the ESP did not disappoint. While the strat has some tones that the ESP is not capable of, the same can be said for the ESP when I comes to metal and hard rock tones. My strat is just not capable of the low end chunk and responsiveness. I still love the strat, and play it mostly...but its not the be all end all guitar....which probably doesn't exist in any guitar. Proof that you still need the right tool for the job at hand.

I think the ESP is the exact opposite of the Strat, he ESP excells at extreme distortion tones and does ok for everything else. The strat excells at clean tones and does ok for everything else. There is some common ground in the middle like mid gain classic rock tones, where they are slightly different

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Guitars:
1. mid 70's Ventura MIJ Gibson l6-s clone (Pre-lawsuit) in Black with Rosewood FB and EMG 81 BR/ 85 Neck
2. ESP KH2 Neck Thru
3. 2008 Am Std Strat in 3 tone sunburst

yep, the emg's are the right aggregates for metal.

have fun and cheers

Firststrat why do you sound almost apologetic in saying that. There is no one guitar that can do it all and as far as metal I would think the strat is totaly wrong for the job. I had just put up a post asking what other brand guitars guys use on the forum that a lot of us never played and there are many guys who have other brand guitars.I am a Fender guy first as strats and teles are my favorite guitars but as I stated in my post right now I am looking for something differant and wanted to hear some input from the guys.So when you have that metal itch bust out that ESP without guilt, as a matter of fact you are the 3rd person who raved about an ESP so maybe I will check one out myself.

Not sure why I seem apologetic...I didn't mean to, but I did want to be sensative to the Strat or nothing crowd

However, I just watched Iron Maiden: Flight 666 on VH1 classic and they were all weilding strats. The tone was fantastic. I am not sure why, but my strat just does not sound right to me when I get into those high gain tones. I started looking at the bridge and pickups and they appeared like normal strat bridges and the pickups still seem like singles, but maybe they are stcked HB's???

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Guitars:
1. mid 70's Ventura MIJ Gibson l6-s clone (Pre-lawsuit) in Black with Rosewood FB and EMG 81 BR/ 85 Neck
2. ESP KH2 Neck Thru
3. 2008 Am Std Strat in 3 tone sunburst

Stacked HB's will do the trick. I put a Hot Rails in the bridge of my Am. Std. and I couldn't be happier. I never really like that high's that came out of my stock bridge pick up, so I put in the Hot Rails and that thing shreads, but I still get classic strat tone out of my mid and neck pups.

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2005 Fender American Stratocaster W/Seymour Duncan Hot Rails in bridge and Seymour Duncan SSL-5 in neck.
1995 Fender American Standard Stratocaster
Line 6 Spider II 150 watt head W/Ampeg 4x12 Cab
Laney Pro-Linebacker PL65R

In this opinion, not only does a varied stable of guitars give one the glorious, blessed opportunity to explore different sounds of the same music on different guitars, but different music on any given...or different guitars.

"No apologies necessary." And be happy you are spreading the cash around to keep a few different manufacturers alive.

Be grateful and dig it!

Others may have touched on this already, but it's all in the pickups. I watched that show too. It looked like Seymour Duncan JB's and some Hot Rails. I just switched out my bridge pu to a Dimarzzio DP 416 Virtual Heavy Blues, and the Neck to a Dimarzzio Area 61. It's made a big difference in the sounds the guitar will make. Not better just different. The Eric Johnson pickups I had were good as well. The new pickups give me more of that hard rock bluesy sound I like....

I have two guitars that do metal great, and the strat that doesn't. I bought the strat for its tones, I am very hesitant to change the pu's out. It just seems to me that the strat is trying to twang and the high gain preamp distorts the twang into something unmusical instead of the chunky tight bottom end that my other guitars give me.

I think I would be making a huge mistake by making my strat sound more like my other guitars, as I would lose the tones I bought the strat for, and gain nothing but another metal guitar.

I do wish there was a guitar that could do it all great, with no sacrifices....they try but it just is not possible.

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Guitars:
1. mid 70's Ventura MIJ Gibson l6-s clone (Pre-lawsuit) in Black with Rosewood FB and EMG 81 BR/ 85 Neck
2. ESP KH2 Neck Thru
3. 2008 Am Std Strat in 3 tone sunburst

I just bought a Charvel San Dimas last month. Very strat-like guitar, but screams with the seymore duncans (JB and 59). And the neck is awesome! No guilt here.

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2007 American Series Strat (Black/Maple) SCNs
Charvel San Dimas (Polar White) SD 59 & JB
Hot Rod Deluxe
Marshall JCM 2000 50 watt
Taylor 410 CE
Epiphone Les Paul
1983 Kramer Pacer

I just made a comment in the VG thread about that guitar making me go out and buy a guitar with real Humbuckers... Nothing wrong with spreading the wealth....

Throw a picture up. Those San Dimas are super nice guitars.

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I'm not an expert, but I play one on the internet.

If God didn't intend for man to have lots of guitars, he wouldn't have created jobs and divorce court!