I also want to mention that outside of the sheepcoat, it doesn't matter what coat your Airedale was born with, unless you strip the coat, you will most probably end up with a soft coated dale with somewhat faded colouring. However, a lot of the times you can still get the wire/colour to come in if you stripped the soft coat. Nothing will come in if you stripped the sheepcoat, and you probably wouldn't even be able to pull the haire out! I know if I were to clip my boy Jaffa, he would become a soft coat and his colours would fade. I witnessed it with his sister who was born with an even wirier coat than him. She was stripped at first which allowed her to maintained the gorgeous colouring and texture. Then we began clipping her, and she went soft and faded. There has been the rare exception where the dale was born with an extremely wiry coat where the leg/facial furnishing take forever to come in. Some of them never get full furnishing because the haire breaks off due to its extreme wiriness. Those dogs you could probably get away with clipping and still maintaining colour and texture.

My experience from grooming the dales has been that some have very little undercoat and is extremely wiry (20% undercoat, 80% wire coat etc.) while others have more soft undercoat and less wiry (60% undercoat, 40% wire coat etc.). The more undercoat a dog has, the softer and lighter colour the dog is. Undercoat also grows faster than the top coat, that's why a clipped dog needs grooming every 2-3 months and a stripped dog only needs a strip every 5-6 months. Of course, the sheepcoats, being all undercoat, grow coat in a blink of an eye. They require grooming every 4-5 weeks.
 ANOTHER INTERESTING POST FROM ELAINE HU