Fattening Your Tone

[super rad stuff]

Re: Fattening Your Tone

But because of that he had to tune down a half step.

i thought he just tuned down "cuz it sounds cooler?":scratchch

 

[Petrovsk Mizinski]

Re: Fattening Your Tone

:bsflag:

Just like every other muscle in the body, fingers can be strengthened.

I play on 12s in standard and bend when, where and as fara as I want to, including at the 1st fret where even most players with 9s wimp out.:friday:

And the wound Gs in most sets are equivalent in tension to the somewhat smaller but larger cored plain string that is more commonplace on today`s sets designed for players with inferior hand strength. The only reason that a plain g was introduced in the first place was because the technology wasn´t there to make the core small enough to use a wound string. Any assumption that a wound G is harder to bend than a plain string at the same tension has no root in reality or physics.

Sorry to put it that bluntly, but Les Paul, Django Reinhardt, Charlie Christian, Robert Johnson and MANY others had no problems with 11s, 12s or 13s, all with wound g strings, and it was all they had back then. There were no 10s, 9s or 8s. At all. Lighter gauges didn´t come into existence until the late 60s or so when people started wanting to play faster and faster while investing less time to practicing anfd finger strength.... The pinnacle of this evolution came about 15 years later with hair, shred and speed metal, and thankfully the whole "you need light strings to be able to bend and play fast" schtick has been steadily dying ever since.

Technology can make the symptoms of less practice less apparent, but only practice will remove the cause.

You probably should take into account people with wrist problems.
Not that I actually have any problems as such, but I used to get severe wrist pain throughout a lot of 2008.
When you're faced with something like that, there's not a chance I'm going to risk getting that pain again, so I stick with 9-56 for my guitars.
And what do you know, I actually prefer the sound of 9-56 anyway.

 

[Petrovsk Mizinski]

Re: Fattening Your Tone

Honestly, I think you could cop a fairly convincing SRV tone with 11s tuned down to E flat if you play with enough conviction. 9s would definitely be too thin, but I could see 11s working.

 

[blueman335]

Re: Fattening Your Tone

They didn't do much serious string bending though, by today's standards. I'm talking about deep bends with a wild, fast vibrato, ala Peter Green & Danny Kirwan. This goes beyond pushing a string up & giving it a little wiggle. Someone with very strong fingers could do this with 10's in standard tuning, but that's probably the cut off point. Yeah, you can bend 11's, but not frequent deep, fast vibrato bends.

 

[blueman335]

Re: Fattening Your Tone

Honestly, I think you could cop a fairly convincing SRV tone with 11s tuned down to E flat if you play with enough conviction. 9s would definitely be too thin, but I could see 11s working.

9's would be thin in a SSS Strat, but not an LP.

 

[dr. ad]

Re: Fattening Your Tone

i thought he just tuned down "cuz it sounds cooler?":scratchch

if he was tuning down on account of the string gauges he'd have been playing blues in G#
my guess is that it was to accomodate his vocal range.

 

[dr. ad]

Re: Fattening Your Tone

You probably should take into account people with wrist problems.
Not that I actually have any problems as such, but I used to get severe wrist pain throughout a lot of 2008.
When you're faced with something like that, there's not a chance I'm going to risk getting that pain again, so I stick with 9-56 for my guitars.
And what do you know, I actually prefer the sound of 9-56 anyway.

i'll avoid the obvious joke...
were you going from a cold start to playing 32nd notes on every string without warming up? might have had something to do with it

 

[dr. ad]

Re: Fattening Your Tone

seriously, was SRV's tone really that good? obviously he was a very talented and tasteful, if not innovative, blues player... is all the hype about his tone really justified?

play loud and rake the strings at least once every couple of beats - there's the secret to SRV's tone

 

[Petrovsk Mizinski]

Re: Fattening Your Tone

i'll avoid the obvious joke...
were you going from a cold start to playing 32nd notes on every string without warming up? might have had something to do with it

Nope. Always washed my hands in hot water before playing and started on slow exercises first off.
As I said though, the problem has pretty much gone away luckily, but I am indeed quite cautious of my wrists. I get comments on how high I wear my guitar and it looking dorky, but meh, better safe than sorry.

 

[Petrovsk Mizinski]

Re: Fattening Your Tone

seriously, was SRV's tone really that good? obviously he was a very talented and tasteful, if not innovative, blues player... is all the hype about his tone really justified?

play loud and rake the strings at least once every couple of beats - there's the secret to SRV's tone

Admittedly I'm a not huge fan of his tone anyway, but I do think you can get pretty much that tone with 11s.
But then again, I'm a metalhead, so Arch Enemy's Doomsday Machine, Soilwork's Stabbing the Drama and Nevermore's This Godless Endeavor are more up my alleyway of what I think good tone is anyway:laugh2:

 

[dr. ad]

Re: Fattening Your Tone

sorry to hear about that, it hurts like hell

 

[blueman335]

Re: Fattening Your Tone

seriously, was SRV's tone really that good? obviously he was a very talented and tasteful, if not innovative, blues player... is all the hype about his tone really justified?

play loud and rake the strings at least once every couple of beats - there's the secret to SRV's tone

It's a matter of taste. I'm a big blues fan and don't think SRV's tone or playing was anything above average for a national act. There are a lot of better blues guitarists. The public doesn't know much about blues, being rockers at heart; they latch on to a few names, and are content with that (SRV, BB King, & the Allman Brothers). When you talk about guitarists with a real blues fan, they think of dozens of players, who are lesser known, but are much better than SRV was.

 

[SirJackdeFuzz]

Re: Fattening Your Tone

But because of that he had to tune down a half step.

Great Idea to phatten up even more . . .


. . . use 13's and tune down, say to C-standard.

 

[SirJackdeFuzz]

Re: Fattening Your Tone

It's a matter of taste. I'm a big blues fan and don't think SRV's tone or playing was anything above average for a national act. There are a lot of better blues guitarists. The public doesn't know much about blues, being rockers at heart; they latch on to a few names, and are content with that (SRV, BB King, & the Allman Brothers). When you talk about guitarists with a real blues fan, they think of dozens of players, who are lesser known, but are much better than SRV was.

Is it just me who thinks SRV is NOT a blues player, but more of a main stream light-rocker with a blues vibe ?

 

[super rad stuff]

Re: Fattening Your Tone

if he was tuning down on account of the string gauges he'd have been playing blues in G#
my guess is that it was to accomodate his vocal range.

and if he couldn't sing to the tunes he was playin', he wouldn't sound as cool

 

[blueman335]

Re: Fattening Your Tone

Is it just me who thinks SRV is NOT a blues player, but more of a main stream light-rocker with a blues vibe ?

+1. He did some nice blues, but he seemed to prefer rock & Texas rock-a-billy. His bass player tended to pick one progression & stick with it for an entire song, whereas most blues bassists have a lot of variety to their runs throughout every song. I think SRV got way too much airplay considering his talent level, and a lot of deserving blues groups got overlooked in the process. But that's typical of commercial radio. They stick to corporate playlists and play heavily-promoted acts.

 

[blueman335]

Re: Fattening Your Tone

and if he couldn't sing to the tunes he was playin', he wouldn't sound as cool

It was cool at first, but I'm totally burned out on his voice. It's like nails on a chalkboard to me anymore.

 

[richard parker]

Re: Fattening Your Tone

I read that the reason SRV tuned to e flat was because a lot of bar owners had a couple of harps and would ask to jam with the band, this put a stop to it.