The Stratocaster is amazing in 2024, but just imagine going back seventy years to 1954… and this is after the Telecaster and P-Bass! Here is some history.
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mate where were you when I had to do a collage essay on this LOL, I bullshitted my way around the les paul, Still struggled.
The Les Paul is pretty amazing as well, it has humbucking pickups, and the control knobs are pretty clever, including enabling one to have a heavy-metal stutter effect! But the Gibson that I love the most is certainly the Flying V, that was pure brilliance, and the Explorer is also incredible. I have a Warmoth parts guitar that I hope to assemble at some point, it would be my first Explorer… except with a scalloped neck, of course. This one is interesting, as I’ll put in—by accident, really—Fishman Fluence Modern pickups and the kit version of the BOSS GK5 pickup.
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It’s a common issue when transitioning from a standard SSS configuration to an HSH. The humbucker’s height and the positioning of the single-coil can make it challenging to maintain the “over-the-middle” technique without inadvertently hitting the pickup.
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I wonder if its a natrual thing or just some people struggle with it. I know if you pick really shallow its ok, but it sounds to me most of us have this issue?
Anyone here not at all? I personally have always had to lower or remove the middle.
Well yeah, that’s the name of the whole game, and you find that in almost everything. It has to have appeal so you can sell it. Sure from a functional perspective you could mass produce a square piece of wood and place a pickup on it if you were only concerned about the costs of production, but then you have to try to sell it - many people would have to have the desire to buy it. Which leads me to this:
At the time most people did not think it was brilliant, and both models were financial flops for the company. They both only lasted a short production run before being discontinued. The look of both essentially were their downfall. They were a bit too out there for the time, although fit well with 50’s UFO pulp.
Keep this in mind: Guitar players notoriously tend to be a traditionalist bunch. Most new designs since these iconic models from both companies, ones that have focused primarily on innovation in terms of materials, ergonomics etc. tend to flop and flop hard. Even when Gibson tried to add more innovative designs into the market in the 80’s, and tried to break into the metal market, they all lived short painful lives. Their audience only wanted the “old” sticky nitro finished planks. The guitars and companies that tended to have survived all based their designs around these old ones with small improvements and haven’t changed them much. Is it because they can’t do any better than these designs because they were perfection to begin with? Hardly. It’s because at the end of the day they have to sell them, and most guitar players like those traditional guitars.
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Preach! 
! And there are things that I just cannot understand like those fake “distressed” guitars, people believing that older guitars sound better, etc.
But Leo succeeded in that environment, it’s part of the reason I admire him so much. (Or did that thinking start later, say in the 1970s?)
Nah, it’s all good, there are endless guitars to choose from, and you can go custom at Warmoth. What option is missing?