All Guitars Are Stratocasters: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

When a author/artist/filmmaker/game designer/etc. tries to create a work featuring musical instruments and they are not an experienced musician themselves, they will usually lack the knowledge necessary to correctly depict that instrument or how that instrument functions. Electric guitars are the biggest offender here, because of their popularity, association with recent popular media, and the amount of hardware that is used to make and play an electric guitar.

 

{{examples}}

== General ==

* Any depiction of a character destroying a musical instrument. Many bands/performers do take to destroying their instruments on stage as part of their act, but if you see a character in a TV show or movie destroy an instrument with hardly any exertion, it's a prop. In reality, even cheap instruments take a lot of effort to break.

** In fact some cheap guitars are famous for the fact that they are more useful as clubs than as actual instruments. For example the Soviet ''Ural'', which weighed half a ton and couldn't sound worth a damn, but was exceptionally cheap and exceptionally sturdy.

 

* Both averted and played straight by ''[[K-On!]]''. All of the girls play real instruments with real model names made by real companies. However there are some errors:

** A guitar amp will not produce feedback if you unplug it from the amp (unless maybe you unplug it while it's producing sound). Feedback is much more likely to occur if you plug it in while it is on.

** Some of the music does not match up to what type of instrument is played.

* As with most animated violin-playing, the movement of the bow in the 'Devil's Trill' arc of ''[[Yami no Matsuei]]'', which centers around a particularly speedy and hard-to-play piece of music, does not begin to match the sound, to the point where it's actively distracting from the scene. It's not just ''really, really slow'', it's completely off the general rhythm. He's also holding the thing wrong, and...gah.

 

== [[Fan Works]] ==

* Applies all the time to [[Fan Art]].

 

== [[Film]] ==

* Averted in ''[[Wayne's World]]''. As in ''[[Stranger Than Fiction]]'', non-Strats are (presumably) visible in the guitar shop. Cassandra identifies the Stratocaster Wayne covets (and soon acquires) as a 1964 model, then, curiously, lists attributes almost all of which are common to all standard Stratocasters and appear in the trope description. Still, she knows her stuff. Wayne displays his knowledge by stating that the guitar is "pre CBS Fender corporate buyout" - CBS bought Fender in 1965 and held onto for 20 years, after which Fender's employees bought it back. No way would the writers go into such detail only to fall into this trope.

 

* In ''The Last Days'' by [[Scott Westerfeld]], Moz and Pearl catch a Stratocaster that is thrown out a window by a crazy woman. {{spoiler|Moz smashes it when he is infected with [[Our Vampires Are Different|the parasite]] because he can't stand to see it. }}

 

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

** ''Beatles [[Rock Band]]'' has peripherals modeled after instruments the band members used: [[John Lennon]]'s Rickenbacker 325, [[George Harrison]]'s Gretsch Duo Jet, and [[Paul McCartney]]'s Hofner violin bass.

** One of the new Rockband Pro Guitars? A slightly Modified Stratocaster, made by a Fender sub-company, Squier.

 

== [[Real Life]] ==