I found that ES-335 sound compressed and - how shall I put this? - "unmajestic", "Blackmore Sound" to me is this:
Try doing what he does at 3:48 with an ES-335!
Maybe it's my imagination, but I can actually hear the higher string tension, extra rebound and twang of the Strat and I like that better.
Or here
and here the solo at 2:19 to 3:09, that is classic Blackmore sound to me:
Of course I'm totally partial because I was reared on that Strat sound in the 70ies ... Blackmore, Gallagher, Gilmour, Clapton, Hendrix ... there was a time when I believed that playing a Strat made you automatically a lead guitarist.
![Mr. Green :mrgreen:](https://bassoutpost.com/Smileys/default/mrgreen.gif)
In fact I thought Alvin Lee outlandish because he obviously fitted the bracket "lead guitarist", yet did not play a Strat.
Strictly a matter of taste. I'm not saying that an ES-335 is not a decent guitar, but there must have been something revelatory to Blackmore when playing his first (hand-me-down from Clapton in fact) Strat with even a warped neck to give up on his beloved ES-335. Maybe he thought it was the more perfect "weapon of choice" against Jon Lord's avalanche of a Hammond sound which he has honing around the same time, doing away with Leslies and keyboard amps and playing his C-3 through 200 watt Marshall guitar amps in an effort to turn it into something between an organ and a second guitar, "the gorgan" as he nick-named it.