[ben7799]

This is completely true, and there's a good reason.

Almost everything anyone has tried to do to modernize electric guitars in a non-compatible way has had big downsides.

Almost any guitar with a pre-amp or whatever built into it that would allow it to use a cable like an XLR cable ends up needing batteries in the guitar, which then introduce a maintenance/failure point. And very often efforts to introduce this stuff haven't sounded great.

The only place this has kind of changed is super high gain guitars for metal. They are more likely to use active pickups, they'll have a battery, but they still use standard cabling for compatibility.

Anything that is modernized ends up being more expensive and harder to work on yourself. A basic guitar like a Strat or Tele has incredibly simple electronics and is super easy for any guitar player to learn to fix themselves, and most of the parts inside are super cheap. And it all just works really well.

And the audience never cares, they care about the notes you choose to play and the message the musician cares to get across.