PRS - Fender Transition

[Cesar656]

In these times of boredom, watching live videos of LP and Mike Shinoda, and knowing Astats site (congrats on that btw), i noticed a transition of the band from PRS to Fender, and i was curious to know if anybody knows why that happened.

We could say its because of the poppier sound of OML, but according to Astat THP was also mostly recorded on strats. I also remember a recent interview of Mike saying he prefers Strats overall, but that is weird considering he mainly has PRS's in his gear

Probably a random question but can be an interesting topic

[Diaux]

The Strats have a more versatile sound and a lot of people find them better for a lead sound or a clean sound, thats why in a live performance of a song like Bleed It Out Brad use a Strat and Mike use a Gibson (Brad having the role of the lead guitar and Mike the role of the rhythm guitar) i don't know if Brad or Mike really talked about why they changed to strats.

Also PRS guitars are associated with a more chunkier sound more in the realm of metal or a sound with heavy gain and they have a stigma of beign a guitar for nu metal players because in the early 2000 every band was using the Dual Rectifier/JCM800 with a PRS guitar combo (which sounds killer), maybe the band don't wanna be pointed out like that.

Astat can help you a lot more in this topic

Edited March 18, 2020 by Diaux

[JamesMaloy]

Mike did most of the guitar work and stuff like that on THP and OML (except for some of the solos on THP, but he wrote them) so it makes sense. The guitars on LT and ATS I think he may have done too but the guitar on those albums mostly just kind of was a background for the songs since they were more electronic driven.

[Astat]

Three main reasons:

 

1. Mike started collecting guitars (beyond the ones he typically used on stage up to that point) towards the end of the Meteora cycle. This was when he first acquired a couple Strats, a Telecaster, and a Les Paul. He ended up using Strats for some of the Fort Minor guitar work, and that carried over into some of the early Minutes to Midnight demos (Basquiat, Homecoming, Clarity, Debris, etc.). This happened to coincide with a period where Brad went a few months writing demos on piano and rarely picking up a guitar, so lots of Mike guitar work on demos = lots of Mike's guitar collection used for guitar parts. That sort of established the general tone of a lot of songs that ended up on the album, so they stuck with those kinds of guitars on some of the stuff that made the album too.

 

2. Ethan Mates, and to a lesser extent, Rick Rubin's involvement with the band starting with Minutes to Midnight. Ethan is a HUGE vintage guitar collector, and stuff from his collection has been used extensively on all of the LP records he's worked on. The orange Strat Brad started using on The Hunting Party was originally Ethan's, for example. Rick also had a bunch of gear that he either owned or rented at the mansion where they recorded Minutes to Midnight, so it put them in a situation where they didn't really need to bring a lot of their touring gear out of storage at Third Encore to use in the studio. If you look at studio photos from more recent years, you might see one of Brad's red soldier PRS's or one of the Rory Gallagher Strats hanging around, but the majority of the guitars they use on albums aren't actually theirs.

 

3. Strats have a much more upper mid-focused tone to them compared to guitars with humbuckers (particularly more modern-voiced stuff like PRS's). By the time the band got to A Thousand Suns, they were using a LOT more sub bass/808/low end synth-type stuff than they used on their earlier material. With so much more going on in the low end, it made sense to use guitars that naturally occupied a different frequency range.

[JamesMaloy]

27 minutes ago, Astat said:

Three main reasons:

 

1. Mike started collecting guitars (beyond the ones he typically used on stage up to that point) towards the end of the Meteora cycle. This was when he first acquired a couple Strats, a Telecaster, and a Les Paul. He ended up using Strats for some of the Fort Minor guitar work, and that carried over into some of the early Minutes to Midnight demos (Basquiat, Homecoming, Clarity, Debris, etc.). This happened to coincide with a period where Brad went a few months writing demos on piano and rarely picking up a guitar, so lots of Mike guitar work on demos = lots of Mike's guitar collection used for guitar parts. That sort of established the general tone of a lot of songs that ended up on the album, so they stuck with those kinds of guitars on some of the stuff that made the album too.

 

2. Ethan Mates, and to a lesser extent, Rick Rubin's involvement with the band starting with Minutes to Midnight. Ethan is a HUGE vintage guitar collector, and stuff from his collection has been used extensively on all of the LP records he's worked on. The orange Strat Brad started using on The Hunting Party was originally Ethan's, for example. Rick also had a bunch of gear that he either owned or rented at the mansion where they recorded Minutes to Midnight, so it put them in a situation where they didn't really need to bring a lot of their touring gear out of storage at Third Encore to use in the studio. If you look at studio photos from more recent years, you might see one of Brad's red soldier PRS's or one of the Rory Gallagher Strats hanging around, but the majority of the guitars they use on albums aren't actually theirs.

 

3. Strats have a much more upper mid-focused tone to them compared to guitars with humbuckers (particularly more modern-voiced stuff like PRS's). By the time the band got to A Thousand Suns, they were using a LOT more sub bass/808/low end synth-type stuff than they used on their earlier material. With so much more going on in the low end, it made sense to use guitars that naturally occupied a different frequency range.

Epic post here. Learned stuff I didn't know, too.

[Cesar656]

18 hours ago, Astat said:

Three main reasons:

 

1. Mike started collecting guitars (beyond the ones he typically used on stage up to that point) towards the end of the Meteora cycle. This was when he first acquired a couple Strats, a Telecaster, and a Les Paul. He ended up using Strats for some of the Fort Minor guitar work, and that carried over into some of the early Minutes to Midnight demos (Basquiat, Homecoming, Clarity, Debris, etc.). This happened to coincide with a period where Brad went a few months writing demos on piano and rarely picking up a guitar, so lots of Mike guitar work on demos = lots of Mike's guitar collection used for guitar parts. That sort of established the general tone of a lot of songs that ended up on the album, so they stuck with those kinds of guitars on some of the stuff that made the album too.

 

2. Ethan Mates, and to a lesser extent, Rick Rubin's involvement with the band starting with Minutes to Midnight. Ethan is a HUGE vintage guitar collector, and stuff from his collection has been used extensively on all of the LP records he's worked on. The orange Strat Brad started using on The Hunting Party was originally Ethan's, for example. Rick also had a bunch of gear that he either owned or rented at the mansion where they recorded Minutes to Midnight, so it put them in a situation where they didn't really need to bring a lot of their touring gear out of storage at Third Encore to use in the studio. If you look at studio photos from more recent years, you might see one of Brad's red soldier PRS's or one of the Rory Gallagher Strats hanging around, but the majority of the guitars they use on albums aren't actually theirs.

 

3. Strats have a much more upper mid-focused tone to them compared to guitars with humbuckers (particularly more modern-voiced stuff like PRS's). By the time the band got to A Thousand Suns, they were using a LOT more sub bass/808/low end synth-type stuff than they used on their earlier material. With so much more going on in the low end, it made sense to use guitars that naturally occupied a different frequency range.

I knew you were gonna give a good answer but man this is even better than expected. Dont know how you managed to get so much info about the guitars of lp but im glad and thankful you share it with us

 

One has to believe he reads us, he went on to talk about this topic on the instalive today