Uploaded September 2025 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago

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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.