Talk:Stevie Ray Vaughan's musical instruments

Note on recent AfD

The drift of the discussion was leaning toward a merge of some sort. Please discuss that here. ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 05:55, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Article name?

What will it possibly take to rename this article to "Stevie Ray Vuaghan's Guitars?" Frankly, there is no particular need for it to even exist, let alone with the ridiculous title only Stevie's fans will recognize. 139.67.193.22 (talk) 02:57, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Vibratone or Leslie?

I'm almost 100% certain that Stevie didn't use a Leslie speaker. Cesar Diaz is incorrect when he says that he used a Leslie. Rene Martinez states that Stevie used a Vibratone, which is correct. You can clearly see this in many photos and videos. Check out these photos: [1] [2] (Vibratone is on the upper left in both). In this 1984 article from Guitar Player, Stevie even says himself that he uses a Fender Vibratone. Is that not enough proof that he used one, or are the sources just plain wrong? Can anybody put this issue to rest? Some people have no clue when it comes to guitar gear. Thanks. Alanbarrybush (talk) 07:52, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm coming to this late, having just stumbled on this appallingly-written entry- the fender vibratone & leslie model 18 are one & the same; fender stuck a badge on it, is all.

duncanrmi (talk) 03:01, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

Acoustics

Could someone with knowledge consider adding a section on Stevie Ray's acoustics? The only recordings I know of him playing acoustic are the song "Life By the Drop" and his appearance on MTV Unplugged, both of them using a 12-string. The insert for the album "The Sky Is Crying" quotes him as saying he was considering a National steel-body for "Life By the Drop" but he went with the 12-string and, to my knowledge, that is the only acoustic for which there exists any recording of him. Beetfarm Louie (talk) 02:56, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Strings

It's time for a lengthy, long-overdue discussion about the strings SRV used.

Everywhere I go that has info about SRV's tone, this legend about him playing 13s crops up. I can see why it's so confusing - a credible conclusion requires some digging and some experimentation, and there's some misleading implications which SEEM to support the 13s fact. However, I believe after said digging and experimentation that it's BEYOND obvious that he most certainly DIDN'T play 13s, at least for the majority of his career, including his earliest studio stuff and earliest recorded live shows.

First, let's compare the gauges listed in this article, which are also listed at http://www.stevieray.com/gear.htm , to some common nickel electric string sets in both the 11 and 13 range; pay notice to the inner four strings and how "different" they are from this supposed set SRV played:

Brand	High E	Gauges	Δ	Notes
Stevie's fictitious set	13	13-15-19-28-38-58	0-0-0-0-0-0	(the set being compared)
GHS (part #1300)	11	11-15-19-28-38-58	2-0-0-0-0-0	SRV himself promoted these
GHS Nickel Rockers	13	13-17-24-32-42-56	0-2-5-4-4-2	the 24 is wound
GHS Nickel Rockers	11	11-15-18-26-36-50	2-0-1-2-2-8
DR Pure Blues	13	13-17-26-36-46-56	0-2-7-8-8-2	the 26 is wound
DR Pure Blues	11	11-14-18-28-38-50	2-1-1-0-0-8
Ernie Ball Nickel	13	they don't make any
Ernie Ball Nickel	11	11-14-18-28-38-48	2-1-1-0-0-10

When you tell someone, "I play 13s", it says to them "I play big, giant, heavy strings". Although we use the high E gauge, 13, to reference the entire set, the actual gauge of the high E has little to do with the whole set; as you can see, the "fictitious" SRV set, although it has a 13 high E, is basically an ordinary pack of 11s but with a giant low E string and a 13 high E. You could still rightly say that you played 13s though, if such a set ever actually existed. On to that.

A GHS staff member confirmed on their forum once (although the forum is now gone) that SRV did advertising for GHS, and his signature set was the second in the list, part #1300. Stevie is always frequently associated with GHS Nickel Rockers. That particular set is EXACTLY the same gauges as the ones you see listed everywhere, except with an 11 high E instead of a 13. By contrast, no other pack of 11s from any other string maker I've ever seen has even remotely that big of a low E, and no set of 13s I've ever seen has those really skinny inner four strings that you'd expect to see in a pack of 11s.

So that #1300 set a pretty unique/eccentric set. It could be described as an otherwise ordinary pack of nickel 11s, but with the 58 / low E out of a pack of 13s.

There was never any set of Nickel Rockers like that with the 13 high E according to that staff member, and if there were it wouldn't really matter, as obviously his signature tone came from more than just that string.

Real Nickel Rocker 13s would be unmistakable:

A) they sound nothing like 11s; the notes don't bloom and quack, they plop and thud... when you play nickel 11s tuned down a half, especially on a Strat, it's spot on SRV - so are 10s tuned in standard for that matter

B) the wound G string isn't apparent from any footage or picture of SRV's electric guitars at any point in his career; yet pretty much any REAL pack of 13s or even 12s will have a huge, wound G string (edit - here's a bunch of links to such pictures: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9)

C) Stevie often did full step bends on the G string at the 2nd fret; when you play blues in E, that fret is the "IV" and bending a full step goes to the "V". That's the blues progression - "I-IV-V". So that's kind of an important bend to be able to make. No wound 24 is going to be so gracefully bent, even if you can muscle it out, which is dubious. At the end of the day, SRV was a not-particularly-ripped 5'8" human man.

There is a lot of "seemingly" credible evidence that SUPPORTS the idea of 13s. He talked often of playing really heavy strings, even mentioning specifically that he tried 18s once. Professionally written articles everywhere about him and his gear mention his enormous strings, sometimes mentioning 13s specifically, but not actually citing that information. If you were to pick his guitar up, surely the first thing you'd notice is how difficult to play it was - his action was huge (and this IS evident in photos and footage), and the first string you'd notice would be that beheamoth 58 low E.

There's probably more to it. Perhaps before he was famous he had Charley's put 13s on his Strat for a while. That would be a worthy story; guy walks into your guitar shop, plays what SRV plays, and wants his Strat strung up with 13s. Hence causing Renee Martinez and others to retell that story, truthfully, without really mentioning that he was playing these Nickel Rocker 11s by the time he got famous and recorded Texas Flood.

The 13s legend is perhaps so uniquitous that it deserves its own mention in the article (as a legend/myth/rumor, not as a fact). But that http://www.stevieray.com/gear.htm site is NOT a credible source - it's some SRV fan who ended up with one of SRV's amps, near as I can tell. It's the only page on the Internet that seems to specify those gauges - when I initially found that GHS staff member forum post, it was like "the other" page on the Internet that actually had those gauges somewhere on it, and it was someone asking where to find that set. That's what prompted the information about his signature set 1300 and all that.

Thoughts? Comments? Okay to edit the article?

Gameforge (talk) 00:07, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

He did play thick strings. Anyone who dares to watch videos of him playing live can notice it. And besides, people sometimes mix string sets. I have a set with .011 to .056 and it's a mixed set of GHS strings. TheKnowItAllJerk (talk) 23:51, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

I've watched many videos of him playing, and re-watched them over and over, many, many, many times. I don't know how you could objectively "see" how big his strings are. However anytime there's enough detail to see the strings up close, you can see that there's no wound G string, as I said before; can you find any pack of 12s or 13s which are nickel and which have no wound G string? I've never seen any.

I stand by what I said. Maybe he did switch the two E strings out of a pack of 11s with those from a pack of 13s... my point is that even if he did, or even if there was some bizarre pack of 13s that had bascially the gauges you'd expect from 11s for the inner four strings, it's not what people are led to believe by simply stating that he played 13s.

A REAL pack of 13s, the strings people think you mean when you say you play 13s, don't bend the way SRV bent them. Most people aren't going to make their guitar basically unplayable just to test this and see, but as someone who did, it's not unlike 13s on an acoustic - they're completely unplayable if you do anything more than the very occasional half step bend near the 12th fret.

Dick Dale plays super heavy strings; note that he doesn't do bending, basically ever.

I'm just saying there's some little known information that people don't seem to consider - his advertising work, the lack of SRV ever actually saying he played 13s, etc. - and if we're going to dedicate a whole article just to his gear, it would be useful to include that information, and make clear that statements about his actual string gauges are either unconfirmed, second hand or otherwise not directly credible. "I watched his videos and you can tell" is not empirical... I obviously understand that it's very believeable that he played heavier-than-11s-tuned-down strings, but that's hardly factual.

Thanks for reading and commenting!

Gameforge (talk) 02:00, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm a guitar player myself and I hate playing with 9's or 10's. My current set has 13-15-17-30-44-52 and it's completely "bendable."

On http://www.musicradar.com/news/guitars/interview-stevie-ray-vaughans-guitar-tech-rene-martinez-267030 this interview HIS GUITAR TECH RENE MARTINEZ confirmed that he played thick strings. "He started with a .013 and ended with a .060." Check it out if you don't believe my word.

TheKnowItAllJerk (talk) 19:20, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

I mentioned a full step bend at the 2nd fret on the G. SRV does this all over his first album, Texas Flood. Your guitar has a 17 G, which is what's in most sets of 10s.

But look at any set of 13s on the market - it has roughly a 24-26 G, and it's wound. "Harder" doesn't begin to describe that particular bend on such a string.

Now compare with the ones listed in the Wiki article. The G is a 19. The inner four are basically exactly what you see in pretty much every pack of 11s on the market.

That's all I'm saying. I think the gauges provided in the Wiki article are about right, but they're not cited (or it's unclear if the Guitar World/1997 citation applies to them).

Going off that quote in the Martinez interview, you'd think SRV played more like a 25 wound string in the G position, which is absurd - he certainly didn't on his first studio album, which is probably the best "reference" for his signature tone.

It's far more likely that for the majority of his career, as in by the time he started making albums, he played an otherwise ordinary, balanced set of 11s with a giant low E and, occasionally, a 13 high E. Hardly "barbed wire" or even heavy gauge when tuned down a half-step. They're basically medium gauge for that tuning, save for the outer two strings.

Martinez has his own signature series with GHS, called "Electric Big Core". It's advertised as being based on his experience as a tech for SRV, Santana, etc. The largest gauge set in that series is exactly like the GHS 1300 set, except the high E is an 11.5 instead of an 11. Like the GHS 1300 set, it's an otherwise balanced set of 11s which happens to have a giant low E.

I'm still trying to find some kind of citation from GHS about the 1300 set being SRV's signature set.

Gameforge (talk) 13:51, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Dumble or Vibroverb?

Hi!

Premier Guitar had an article about SRV's equipment. There was a very interesting line on this linked section: "The two Vibroverbs are often referred to as “sequentially numbered” 5 and 6, but the serial numbers were in fact 36 digits apart. 5 and 6 are references to the Dumble amps, which were numbers 005 and 006."

Doesn't this actually sound 100 times more logical? I mean, not too many Dumble Steel String Singers have been made. It's very likely SRV ordered those two at the same time and Mr. Alexander Dumble put those numbers on them. Saying that two Vibroverbs were sequentially numbered sounds very far fetched to me.

Here's another interesting article: click

TheKnowItAllJerk (talk) 23:21, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

This article

Whoever is reading this article, read this. This article is inaccurate and has only some facts. The list of amps he used is from '83, the stuff written about the guitars and effects is very inaccurate. Take Yellow for example: How did he play the guitar in '82 if he didn't get it until '83 or '84? This article is basically a bunch of stuff gathered from websites that don't have any sources theirselves. Don't waste your time, people.. TheKnowItAllJerk (talk) 16:23, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

agreed. this article is rubbish, & rather unnecessary; there's plenty of detail about his equipment tastes in the main SRV article without all this argumentative fan-cruft bollocks here too. also- why do neither this article nor the main SRV article mention his apparent endorsement of tokai strat replicas?

http://www.tokaiguitarsaustralia.com.au/tokai_galleries_stevie_ray_vaughan_contract.html

duncanrmi (talk) 03:03, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

Removal of first-person text

Just wanted to log why I removed a large section of text just now: it was written in first-person and was absolutely not wiki-level material. Some of the content may have been legit (although perhaps minutiae), particularly the details on Byron Barr, all of which I removed. If an interested person felt like going back through the text and adding select details (with sources) back to the article, that would be great. I just felt it could not stay as it was. Thanks. Jessicapierce (talk) 22:01, 30 October 2017 (UTC)