The only thing I disagree with is that you absolutely couldn't get a particular sound from some guitar...these days, I'd say you can. Once you put the signal thru a POD or anything like that, all that matters really is the guitar is perfectly adjusted and has sufficient sustain, and you can get most any tone you want. Like a buddy of mine said 'After I put my signal thru my metal pedal and drive it thru my 5150 towards the face of a metal ogre in the audience at 120db, it don't matter the slightest what kind of a whip I use in my hands as long as it stays in tune' and that's very true, IMO.
Of course, some guitars do yield that certain sound more easily than others, no question about that. However, recently I've been really surprised that those expectations sometimes are all wrong. Just yesterday I was recording this clean, jangly guitar track, and naturally I reached for one of my strats because the classic strat soft chime was just what I wanted. But at some point I tried my SG with a single at neck, and was amazed that it gave a more 'classic strat' kind of sound than the strat did, and I ended up recording the track with it instead.
Now, the difference was small, and I don't know if I could detect the ready tracks apart if I A/B:d them blindly, but it did feel like a clear difference when I played it. But it could simply be due to the SG having fresher strings
Nevertheless; I can easily feel and use the differences between my strats with different necks for instance, the maple neck coaxes me to play in much more wild style and easily lends itself to wails and bends, hard-rock Van Halen kinda aggressive rhythm too, while the rosewood one makes me play much more calmly. These differences can make a world of difference to a player, despite they might be impossible to detect by a listener.
