The majority of my recording is with my Gibson Les Paul Goldtop. I used every last penny I had, and sold my other guitars, to buy this beauty a few decades ago, and I have never regretted it! It's an absolute gem! I'm definately a gibson guy not a fender freak, but that said I do also own a Telecaster. I find I'm at ease with the neck on a Tele but not on a Strat. The Tele has a special place when you want a cutting clean sound (that can go nice and dirty when you drive it) but nothing, for me at least when it comes to rock, beats the warmth and drive of a Les Paul through an all-valve amp. My recording do have parallel amp modelling running along side the mic recording; a sin some years back but technology has moved on very nicely in recent years and I'm a big fan of Native Instruments' Guitar rig 6, it really is very good. I'll post my favourite settings in a future blog.
The attachment on the guitar is a Roland guitar synth pickup GR-20. It's non destructive!! The reason for this was the band Littermouth I played in for a number of years. We wanted the depth of synth and keyboads on places but didn't need a full-time keyboard player and thus, live, this worked pretty well. I don't use it for recording, I play a proper synth and while the pickups are pretty good playing live they aren't perfect and aspects of the notes can often drop out (it really doesn't like dampened strings either! You had to really clean up your guitar playing technique when using this else some horrible bum notes come through!