What about slide guitars?

[lex666]

Any guys here play slide guitar? I'm kinda new to it, but def wanna give it a try...

I'm thinking blues rock style like LZ, Eric Clapton, etc.

So my questions are:

1. what should I look for in a good acoustic guitar for slide? What types of wood and body styles? What about necks?

2. what should I look for in a good electric guitar for slide? just use one of my favorite axes, get something new, or mod one of my current axes?

3. any tips for the newbie learning slide?

Thanks!

 

[stuey222]

Re: What about slide guitars?

Get one of those slide extender nuts, they're totally reversible. Raise the action and have fun. If you're wanting to be able to fret notes and use the slide, raise your action a bit, but not a ton, and use a light touch on the slide, just enough to not buzz.

As far as what type of guitars and whatnot, it really doesn't matter, go with whatever sounds good.

 

[jeremy]

Re: What about slide guitars?

i play decent slide.

any guitar can work and once you get it down you dont need your action to be that high. in the begining you could try one of those nut extenders but once you have the basic technique down, id ditch it.

find a slide that suits you. i use a glass medicine bottle and wear it on my ring finger. this is probably not the best setup but thats how duane allman did it so thats how i do it. the pinky seems to work fine for sonny landreth and lots of others, some even use their middle finger. it is probably easiest to start with a metal slide that fits whatever finger you want to try. the metal ones are typically smaller in outside diameter and a little easier to control, i use glass cause i prefer the tone but i have at least a dozen slides around of all types.

if you know what you are doing you should be able to play slide on a set of 9's with low action but to start 11's with higher action is great.

open tunings make it easier to chord but also can be a little limiting unless you are derek trucks. its a good thing to learn and especially in the begining can help you get going. open E, D, and G are common slide tunings.

so now youve got your guitar setup with 11's, higher action, tuned to open e, and got a slide that feels good on your finger. now work on the two most important things in slide playing. intonation and muting. you want the slide parallel to the frets, any angle is going to make some notes ring sharp or flat. a good way to practice is to play the open strings (an e chord in this example) then play the octave with the slide. you should find the octave right over the 12th fret, not behind it as in normal playing but right over it. you may find that you are getting lots of weird noises, try laying your 1st finger gently on the strings behind the slide (nut side) this should stop that part of the string from vibrating

 

[lex666]

Re: What about slide guitars?

Thanks guys,

I'm not familiar with a nut extender (insert joke here) what is that?

Are there advantages to which finger you wear the slide on? Or is it whatever your comfortable with? I tried wearing a metal slide on my pinky cuz I use the other 3 for chords and stuff. But wearing it on the pinky felt like I had less (sloppy) control....

 

[firebirdV]

Re: What about slide guitars?

For acoustic, I also think that picking technique is important. For straight blues, I like using bare fingers or thumb picks as opposed to standard picks. It makes damping easier for me, but whatever works for you works, so just try stuff out. You're also going to have to determine what tunings you want to play in, I'm not sure which one's best for the type of stuff you mentioned, but sticking to one tuning with a lot of songs available is the easiest to begin with.

 

[firebirdV]

Re: What about slide guitars?

Thanks guys,

I'm not familiar with a nut extender (insert joke here) what is that?

Are there advantages to which finger you wear the slide on? Or is it whatever your comfortable with? I tried wearing a metal slide on my pinky cuz I use the other 3 for chords and stuff. But wearing it on the pinky felt like I had less (sloppy) control....

I use the pinky for that very reason. You can learn to control the slide no matter what finger it's on.

 

[Bludave]

Re: What about slide guitars?

https://forum.seymourduncan.com/showthread.php?t=120156

This is a link to a thread a while ago that goes through a lot of really good suggestions on playing slide and setting up guitars for slide.

 

[jeremy]

Re: What about slide guitars?

the nut extender is a (usually metal) gizmo you put over your nut to make the strings further from the fretboard. its like a padded bra for your nut.

you want a slide that is sorta tight on your finger so it doesnt wiggle around, sounds like the metal slide you tried was too big. the reasoning behind the slide on the pinky is so you can use the other three for fretting. as i said, i put the slide on my ring finger, i still use the other three for fretting but if you dont use your pinky much now itll take some practice before it does you much good

 

[shawnr]

Re: What about slide guitars?

You can start with whatever guitar you have, but be on the lookout for a cheapie yard sale job that you can leave setup with a higher action and tuned the way you like. Having a beater around is more conducive to just grabbing it and playing for a few minutes.

Slides can be whatever material you like--back when I did a lot of building repair, I'd bring home scraps of different kinds of tubing to try. Get used to using the slide on all your left hand fingers so you have options for different songs/tunings. Don't write off playing in standard tuning--that gives you one more option when soloing.

 

[jeremy]

Re: What about slide guitars?

i play almost exclusively in std tuning with or without slide on the same guitars. its just another technique you can learn and once you have it down you should be able to do it with with just about anything (bic lighter, shot glass, pint glass, half empty beer bottle) on any guitar. just dont slosh beer on some one elses guitar

 

[Pete Galati]

Re: What about slide guitars?

.

2. what should I look for in a good electric guitar for slide? just use one of my favorite axes, get something new, or mod one of my current axes?

I just use whatever guitar I'm currently using, and I don't do special tunings, so I never have to swap guitars. I'm currently playing this guitar the most. Humbucker Tele's are just good general purpose guitars.

3. any tips for the newbie learning slide?

Thanks!

It's all about muting. And hitting the notes.

I tend to mute with both hands. I mute after the slide with my left hand, and with my right hand, I (try to) only let the string that's being played ring. Which is a lot easier to do when you pick with your fingers, instead of a pick.

My 2 favorite slides are a steel slide that I've had for 20 or so years, and a Dunlop brass slide (that had to be polished with 0000 steelwool).

But those Coriciden bottle clones are pretty good too.

I have a straight glass slide that I have to use if I'm playing my Les Paul Standard, because the action is too close to get away with a steel slide.

If you spot an older Craftsman 11/16" deep socket at a garage sale, grab it. That's what Lowell George used

 

[FAC]

Re: What about slide guitars?

Thanks guys,

I'm not familiar with a nut extender (insert joke here) what is that?

There are some "nut risers" on sale on ebay right now**:

http://cgi.ebay.com/2-RISER-NUTS-fo...747304QQihZ010QQcategoryZ101976QQcmdZViewItem

They fit over your existing nut and raise the action from the nut side. You can install/uninstall it at will. I used to use one with a round neck dobro...on for slide, off for normal playing.

**edit: I am not the seller...I just did a search and found those...

 

[ImmortalSix]

Re: What about slide guitars?

get a Squier '51 and pimp it out

It will be cheap and really unique and awesome

http://www.instituteofnoise.com/squier51/forum/forum.asp?FORUM_ID=2

 

[Pete Galati]

Re: What about slide guitars?

get a Squier '51 and pimp it out

It will be cheap and really unique and awesome

http://www.instituteofnoise.com/squier51/forum/forum.asp?FORUM_ID=2

Didn't they discontinue that model?

This Vintage Modified SH Tele looks like they got a lot of things right on it, right out of the box: http://www.squierguitars.com/products/search.php?partno=0301235525

I'd love to try one, but I can see a whole list of things I'd have to change.

 

[ImmortalSix]

Re: What about slide guitars?

Didn't they discontinue that model?

The Squier '51 is discontinued, but very available.

http://search.ebay.com/squier-51_W0QQfnuZ1QQfsooZ1QQfsopZ3QQsatitleZsquierQ20Q2751

 

[idsnowdog]

Re: What about slide guitars?

If you are looking for a cheap delta blues guitar just get an old crappy acoustic and throw a pickup in the soundhole. When I was 17 I picked up a garage sale acoustic which had horrible action. I took a strat single coil and mounted it in the soundhole and ran a jack to the endpin. I will be ****ed if that guitar didn't just bleed the blues! It also wasn't bad for the crappy Nirvana acoustic sound too.