This has been my experience...
Gibson Les Paul
Pros:
- Mahogany body gives you long sustain and heavy tone that is great for metal and enough mid range for AC/DC'ish hard rock.
- Easy to work with for loud or heavy music (punk, metal, hard rock), etc.
- Hard tail gives you stable tuning and more resonance from the body.
- Dual humbuckers gives near-noiseless output, even in high-gain situations
- Highly reliable, particularly in live situations where it counts. Even if it is setup wrong, it usually still sounds amazing.
Cons:
- Strikes me as lazy engineering that the volume tone knobs of the pickup that is not enabled don't do anything; on a Strat, the tone knobs always controls the pickups you've selected, and the volume knob controls everything.
- Pickup selector is too far from the "picking zone" - you can't do SRV/Malmsteen-esque pickup chances mid-solo without interrupting your runs, which--to me--is a dealbreaker. Makes the LP a great rhythm guitar, not as great of a lead instrument
- Single-coil tone isn't achievable and in order to come close, you have to be very good at finding the "sweet spot" blend. For me, I set the tone selector in the middle to turn on both pickups, and then back off the bridge pickup, dial up the neck pickup and then try to get a mix from both tone knobs until I get that nice, bluesy tone that just comes naturally out of the neck pickup of a Tele.
- If you need a trem bar, you'll need a specialty model.
Fender Stratocaster
Pros
- Highly versatile tone, especially on genuine American models that use Noiseless single-coil pickups and they Seymour-Duncan humbuckers at the bridge. 5-way pickup selector and the two tone knobs are intuitive in the way of dialing in a country, blues, rock, Tex-Mex or pop sound.
- Lightweight and with a maple neck, offers bright yet thick tone, especially on your "clean" channel
- If your work involves use of a trem bar, it comes stock, but...
Cons:
- Ibanez has made its living making imitation Strats with stock locking trems for the purpose of dealing with the legendary issue of Fenders going out of tune due to use--particularly the aggressive use--of the trem bar. Dive bombs? You better be in the recording studio overdubbing those, because if you do that mess live and that's not the last song of the set, your night is over. If you don't use your trem at all, just block it. Otherwise I leave mine generally untouched.
- A Strat has to be setup right, otherwise, your action will be too high or too low, and your intonation will be nasty.
- Buzz on single coil models; especially with "MexiStrats" and those ghastly Squier guitars.
My verdict? I record with Stratocasters (almost exclusively), I perform with Ibanez Japanese hard-tail, Alder wood, C-bodied guitars but have used Les Pauls when I wanted heavy rhythms or knew I would play solos with notes that needed crazy, long sustain. I'm not the only one. Legendary guitarist John Sykes (Whitesnake, Blue Murder, Thin Lizzy) will record with a Strat anytime he needs clean tone; his Les Paul is only for when all he's looking for is raw power. I'm more of a finesse player and I feel like my Strat gives me More definition. You can play dirty like Hendrix or SRV and still get Crystal Clear articulation from every note you play. It doesn't just wash out. But if all you're playing is power chords in punk--you can't go wrong with a Gibson SG, or a Les Paul.
At least, that's how I feel about it.