I've got a Fireburst Les Paul Studio, a Japanese Fender strat with a floyd rose, and an A and L dreadnaught acoustic. I plug them into a Mesa Boogie Mark IV 100W head through a 2/12 vintage Mesa cab with 2 Celestion 30 12 inch speakers. (I got excited to see a guitar thread on CP
)
To answer the question....(Fender or Gibson)........I'd say anything other than really heavy rhythym guitar go with the strat.
Some Pros and Cons
-Strats can get noisy with lots of distortion due to their "hot" single coil pickups.
-Les Pauls go out of tune much easier IMO.
-Nice bright tone with a strat.
-NIce full low-end with a Les Paul.
-Strats are MUCH MUCH lighter in almost all cases. The lighter Les Pauls sound like garbage most of the time. (At the end of a show, it feels like my les paul has drilled a hole in my shoulder)
-You can do volume swells with the volume control on a strat.
-You can do cool toggle switch-tremelo stuff on a Les Paul.
It's best to have both I suppose, but again.....other than high gain, low end rhythym stuff, a strat is preferable.