Chords for Clapton's Strat Is NOT a Normal Stratocaster!

The secret weapon to Eric Clapton's Stratocaster
lies right here in this knob. _ _ _ _
_ _ _ [Am] _ _ [D] _ _ _
[A] _ _ [Dm] _ _ [A] _ _ _ _
[D] _ _ _ [A] _ _ [D] _ _ [C] _
_ [A] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ [F#m] _ _ [G] _ _ [D] _ _ _
_ [A] _ _ _ _ _ _
[N] Now this is not an Eric Clapton signature Stratocaster.
This is actually my _ 1990s made in Japan Fender
that I kind of Frankenstein.
This is no longer the original neck.
It's got locking tuners and these electronics
are not the originals that came in this guitar.
These electronics were taken right out
of an Eric Clapton signature model guitar
from the early 90s.
So it has the sound that I can demonstrate
exactly what his guitars do,
even though this isn't exactly the guitar that he plays.
Pretty close though.
So like I mentioned, this knob right here
on a normal Strat is a tone knob
and so is this one here.
But on this guitar and on Clapton's guitar,
they do two very, very different things
from your typical Stratocaster.
The volume is still your typical volume knob, right?
And your five-way selector switch
works the same on the Clapton model.
So a Strat, if you're not a guitar player,
and I hope that you're watching this
if you're not a guitar player
because I think this might be interesting to you.
A Strat generally [G] sounds something like,
you know, [D] _ _
you kind of hear that [G#] sound.
You've heard it before.
You're familiar with it.
You know, it's [C#m] that _ _ _ _ _ [G] sound.
It can be this [Dm] sound. _ _ _ _
[D] _ _ Now admittedly, this is not your typical Stratocaster,
even when I haven't engaged the Clapton secret weapon,
but it sounds pretty close to what you would find
from a Stratocaster.
But here is where things get interesting. _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ [C#] _ _ _ [E] _ _
_ _ _ _ [Em] _ Now that's no [D] pedals.
That's nothing.
That's just the guitar into the amplifier.
And you'll notice it cleans up, _ right?
If I crank this. _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ What I'm not doing right now is just turning up the volume.
What's actually happening on that lower tone knob
is I'm engaging a 25 decibel mid-range boost.
[G#m] Now this is what Fender came up [D] with
when Eric Clapton said,
hey, can you make this thing sound like a Les Paul?
They really dug in and they found out what frequency
kind of made the Les Paul that much different
than the Fender Stratocaster.
And they found that it was this mid-range frequency
and they boosted it originally 14 decibels,
but that wasn't enough.
So they went to 25.
_ And inevitably what this does
is it breaks up a tube amplifier.
It gives you _ that _ great warm saturation. _ _
_ _ _ _ _ It sounds awesome.
Now I've got that on the bridge pickup right now
and that's generally where I would use this.
[B] _ _ It's actually [F#]
so freeing to just be able to take this
and plug it into a tube amp.
And you can get that [C#] overdrive _ _
_ _ _ without having a bunch of pedals in front of you.
And that's what Clapton does.
There's a great Joe Bonamassa interview out there
where he talks about inviting Eric Clapton
to a gig at Royal Albert Hall that he was playing.
Clapton showed up with literally a Fender amp.
I think it was a twin from a store.
It still had the [E] tags on it.
Showed up with one of his _ signature strats,
presumably from the shelf,
and just plugged into the amp and played.
And I looked up the video and his tone is incredible.
So all you people out there who are chasing pedals
and cables and different amplifiers and speakers,
it's awesome and it makes a difference.
It does, but there's a lot you can do
with just a guitar and an amp,
particularly a guitar like this.
So that's the secret weapon.
If you watch videos of Clapton,
you're gonna see him reaching for this tone knob
and [D] it does something major to the sound.
You can hear this _ _ versus this. _ _
You know, it does it in all the pickup positions.
You can hear this _ versus. _ _ _ _ _
Pretty cool.
One other thing that they designed into this guitar
per Eric Clapton's request is that
when you [G] crank this mid boost down here,
the second tone knob here is actually a tone knob because sometimes,
[F#] _ _ [Fm]
depending on what you have your amp set to
and what pedals you might be playing through,
you might desire a little bit more high [B] end.
So if you crank that tone,
_ [D] _ _ _ it's subtle, _
_ [C#] _ _ [D] _ _ but it's there, [C] you can hear it.
_ [D] It's almost like more [E] HD.
This guitar to me is like a high definition guitar,
particularly with these lace sensor pickups.
If you roll it back the other way,
[Dm] _ _ _ _
_ get that [D] really muddy. _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ Really cool though.
Still really cool.
That's it.
That's really the trick.
And you know, I discovered this
when I was a young guitar player
and I would see Clapton reaching
for this tone knob down here
and I would do the same thing on my guitar
and nothing happened.
So I immediately realized,
hey, this guy's got something different going on,
but that's the secret weapon.
You can hear it.
It is a creamy, warm, overdriven sound
and it's all coming from this guitar.
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