Les Paul or Tele – which is the ultimate workhorse electric?

00:00 Intro 00:23 Overview 02:21 Demo Jam 03:06 Round 1 – Clean Tones 03:49 Tele Clean Tones demo 18:00 Les Paul Clean Tones demo 26:34 Round 2 - Drive Tones 27:34 Tele Crunch Tones 31:10 Les Paul Crunch Tones 36:41 More Tele Crunch Tones 41:09 Tele Hot Gain Tones 47:44 Les Paul Hot Gain Tones 54:17 Real world considerations Fender's Telecaster and Gibson's Les Paul might almost be two sides of the same coin - many players describe a good Les Paul as sounding like 'a big Tele' and while the Tele is wiry where the Les Paul is warm and vocal, there's a lot of overlap in the Venn diagram of the two models. So which is the better all-round workhorse for rock, blues and pop? Richard Barrett and Jamie Dickson put two examples of these classic designs through clean, crunch and lead tone tests and give their verdict.