How to choose an Electric Guitar

What matters when choosing an electric guitar? It's largely player and setup dependant if you consider the following:

1) What amp do you use and what volume do you play at?
2) What music you do play?
3) What pedals do you use along with it
4) What kind of neck profile do you like?

Let's elaborate on the points one by one:

1) An amp with good clean headroom tends to sound great with almost any guitar. A mesa rectifier can turn any telecaster into a death metal beast. For gain, it's mostly from the amp and pedals. Guitar and pickup type do influence the desired 'tone' but for all out gain, it's from the pedals and amp, trying to get more gain from passive pickups can be a futile project.

2) Of course certain guitars are more suited for certain genres of music. I think most players would unanimously agree that a strat/tele is more suited for funk than a les paul. A good player with the right setup - amps, pedals can make almost any guitar work though.

3) Like in point 1), it's also a big part of the 'tone'. Too big a topic to be covered here and I'm not an expert on pedals either.

4) This is the most important for me. A killer sounding guitar is useless if the 'feel' of the guitar is not right. I've got to want to play it for hours and that will be the right guitar for me. GAS impairs judgement the same way alchohol makes everything beautiful :)

Alright, hope this helps in you next buying decision, till the next post.

KC