Sister Rosetta Tharp: I always refer to her as “the woman who invented rock n roll guitar.”
What’s your practice amp? You gotta Dr. Z or something?
Mines a hand-made replica of a Tweed Deluxe - 18 watts via 6v6 tubes, Celestion Alnico Blue speaker (yeah, baby!) and an NOS Mullard preamp tube (12ax7 I think - actually, I think it is NOS Telefunken). I use an attenuator to get the volume down to tolerable practice levels. And I do have a dirt box pedal - an original ProCo Rat, but the gain setting is about 2 or less - just enough to compress the tone and tighten the lows just that much…
Done geeking for now…
My rig, if you’re interested: this is my old stereo gigging rig (well, mostly). It’s really much too loud for my current basement space. I’m looking to downsize significantly pretty soon.
Guitars: G&L ASAT Special, Fender Strat w/ an SD Little '59 in the bridge, and Vintage Strats in the middle and neck, and a highly (HIGHLY) modified Ibanez AS50 semihollow.
Pedals/amps: guitar into A/B box:
Channel A: Vox volume pedal -> SitoriSonics Tidal Phase -> DOD PDS1002 delay -> 1996 Fender Prosonic 60-watt tube amp w/112 cab. As for tubes, I use =C= SED 6L6’s, and a mix of Sovtek, JJ, EHX, and Mullard 12AX7’s.
Channel B: SitoriSonics Tapeworm analog delay -> EHX Pulsar vibrato -> (sometimes) TS-9 OD -> 1973 SF Fender Bassman Ten 50-watt tube amp. Big bottle GT 6L6’s, and mostly JJ 12AX7’s to darken the massively bright amp a bit.
The Prosonic gives a lot of depth and bottom end punch, as well as a godly and versatile distortion channel. The Bassman gives tons of clean headroom, as well as really fantastic string definition. The ASAT especially sounds great in this setup.
Whoa - lots of horsepower! TWO different big-bottle Fender amps? Yowza. With those ASATs you get great clean Telecaster goodness, especially through a rig like that. I assume you put a little slapback using your delays and are in Tele heaven!
I used to have an '81 Ibanez AS-50 - great small-bodied semi-hollow. If the neck wasn’t such a thin, super-fast profile, I woulda kept it…
My gig rig is another “booteek” amp - a Cornford Hellcat. About 40 watts (4xEL84) with 2 channels through a 1x12 cab with a Celestion Vintage 30 - oh man, tone for days…
Hey, WordMan – do you really string with 12’s (.012 gauge high E) ? Someone in a previous guitar thread alluded that you do, I wasn’t sure if they were joking.
Nope - I use 11’s (typically Ernie Ball Slinky’s - .11 - .48 or .49; can’t recall). While I can’t pull an SRV and use 13’s ( :eek: ), I do subscribe to the adage that “thicker gauge = better tone*” and I really appreciate the feel and sense of control I get from using as heavy a gauge as I can. I tend to be from the heavy-handed, Pete Townshend school of rhythm guitar players and the heavier gauge helps.
*by the way, opinions vary hugely on this. Jimmy Page uses 9’s, as do many, many of the biggest guitar heroes. You have to use what works for you - I just have huge hands and a heavy-handed style…
I use 12’s on my acoustic - I can play loudly enough without needing 13’s (normal acoustic steel-string gauge) and the difference in feel between electric and acoustic is minimal…
Ok, thanks. Still…11’s ouch. You must have big hands to do decent bends.
I subscribe to the same theory, and also the Nietzsche-esque notion that “that which does not kill me makes me stronger”, i.e its good for my fingers. But my strings still only go to 10, not 11.
Actually I got burned out on playing guitar for a few years and was playing piano instead. Now I’m gone back to geetars, and I started with 10s and found my pinky was kinda weak for for 10s from disuse (and age, dammit), so I’m on 9’s for now. In my plinky practice setup, I can just barely tell the difference in tone. Bends with the ring finger are far too easy with 9s, though, and its tough to get used to.
Don’t you find E-B’s lose tone pretty quickly? That was my early complaint with them, and I was using Dean Markleys back when (but now they’ve gone all "Blue Steel :rolleyes: " on me, maybe I should try something else).
SRV? Steve Ray Vaughan?. I could likely pull an SUV with 13’s. 
Stevie played absolutely monster gauge strings, but since he tuned down so much the bends were probably much easier than if you tried to play something like that in standard tuning.
Rule #1 - use whatever makes you want to keep playing. If that means 9’s - go for it. If you play enough to get your pinky back to fighting strength, move up - but don’t sweat it - whatever works!
Losing tone - Dude, I sweat like a pig. :mad: my strings are dead after about 2 hours - at best. And I break strings, too - normally my D’s and/or A’s from pummeling them on down-stroke rhythm work like Green Day or our cover of Social Distortion’s cover of Ring of Fire (got that?). So my strings never last long enough for me to form an opinion of one brand over the other - I buy 'em by the box anyway…
And yeah, SRV played with 13’s tuned down a 1/2 step - classic trick; EVH tunes down to Eb, too. I prefer it, too, on my electrics - just a slinkier feel. You should try it with your 9’s or even 10’s and see if that helps you out…(btw, he often down-shifted to 12’s or 11’s when his hands got tired on long tours…)
Oh - and if you play a guitar with Gibson-style hardware - e.g., a tune-o-matic type bridge and stop tailpiece behind it - let me know; there’s another trick to increasing the slinky feel of the strings so you can get more comfortable with heavier gauges.
Oh, and by the way - back in Sister Rosetta’s day, strings were typically heavier gauge. When the Brit blues explosion happened in the 60’s one reason was they were mixing their own string sets, using lighter strings to get more bends…only when SRV came around and everyone wanted his tone (because it is pretty much one of the best tones ever, and I am not even a Strat guy any more) and it is so clearly driven by his use of heavier-gauge strings. What goes around…
Heh. Yeah, it’s a whole lotta earthquake for one little basement. And yes, I can get into tele heaven comfortably with the ASAT setup, but I tell ya, those P90-ish MFD’s on the ASAT Special are really incredibly hot. Hell, they do raw rock n roll better than any of my other guitars, including my humbuckers. Very rank and punky, if tweaked right. I love 'em.
I forgot to mention that I also bought a 5W Champ 600 for quiet time - but that one still needs some work. I need to replace the speaker, because instead of “natural overdrive” at higher volumes, I get “farty fart fart.” It’s a bit disappointing, actually.
I guess I really want to just retool the whole thing. I need far less power these days, and there are plenty of rockin’ low-watt amps out there from which to choose. I might even throw a powersoak in there just to tame the thing down for recording.
Oh - it’s got those “mini soapbars” with the hex-key pole-pieces? I haven’t played one of those for any length of time, but heard great things.
If you are serious about coming up with a smaller rig, you should hang out on The Gear Page’s Amps and Cabs Forum Page (link). Do a search on “Bedroom” and there are many, many top-quality, lower-wattage amps out there now. Everything from very pricey boutiques (like the Carr Mercury and dozens others) to project amps - where you can soup-up a small watt Tube Epiphone or build your own Tweed for real cheap if you are good at that stuff…
I hang out on the Gear Page’s guitar page to feed my guitar-geek beast. It is far, far better than Harmony Central, which I never go to anymore…
It also helped that SRV had giant hands and fingers like hot dogs. Someone with smaller hands is really going to struggle with 13’s unless you’re just playing heavy metal rhythm chords.
Hey Wordman, I’m curious about your Gibson bridge trick.
Okay - then I gotta run and cook dinner! 
It’s controversial in guitar-geek circles, but then again, what isn’t? It’s called top-wrapping - and if you go to the Gear Page or the Les Paul Forum, you will find many, many threads about it - most of which end in flames! The most recent Gear Page thread I could find is here.
Basically, you put the strings the wrong-way through the tailpiece then bend them up and over the TP and then string it up normally after that. A picture of my guitar, Gracie, top-wrapped is right here.
All you are doing is changing the string angle between the bridge and the TP - it doesn’t break as hard, so the strings have a slinkier feel. That part pretty much everyone agrees with - some love it and some hate it, but few argue that it changes the feel that way. **squeegee ** - if you have a Gibbie-style guitar, this, along with down-tuning a 1/2 step should get you up to 10’s easily.
However, when you top-wrap you also have the ability to screw down the TP so it is tight to the body - this should transfer more vibrations to the body. Many folks argue that this increases resonance and tone. I ain’t going there - too many moving parts in the equation. What I can tell you is that for some guitars it seems to only change the feel - the tone pretty much stays the same. For other guitars, however, it really can change the tone. One of my Les Paul’s was transformed into a great guitar - it just tighted up the lows and gave me that much more string separation to make that guitar go from good to great.
I try it on all my Gibson style guitars, but only keep doing it on ones where I notice and like the difference…
Oh - Duane Allman and Billy Gibbons did it - this is mentioned constantly in the geek-out threads on guitar pages…
Yah. Here she is:
There’s actually a local “booteek” amp builder here who I know pretty well. His stuff ain’t cheap, but the guy is brilliant, and the amps he makes are amazing. I’ve played probably 25 of them, and they are uniformly outstanding. Everything is true PTP, and he uses an ingenious circuit setup where he actually bleeds power by using light bulbs (!), so that, for instance, his VAC23 amp can be set for 3W, 5W, 11W, 18W, or 23W. He also uses dual tone stacks, controlled with a push/pull (or foot) switch, so that you can instantly switch between Fender-y, Vox-y, or Marshall-y voicings.
Truly great, versatile amps that can go from stage volumes to bedroom volumes with no external units, and no fuss. I really want one of the 23’s, and I think it’d pretty much be one of the last amps I’d ever buy.
And while it’s not cheap ($1300 for a VAC23 combo with a 15" speaker, up to $2200 for a hand-built VAC90 half stack (switchable from 5W to 90W)), it’s not completely exorbitant, either, and would probably be worth every penny, especially since he fixes and maintains the things for you in perpetuity.
Anyway, in the spirit of the larger conversation, I use 10’s pretty exclusively on electric nowadays. I’ve experimented with all kinds of strings, but the 10’s are a good compromise for me in terms of playability and tone.
(Oh, and WordMan, sorry for antagonizing you in that other recent thread. I was just riffing on a joke. I thought that my use of “rawk” in the original response would clue pretty much anybody in that I was being light-hearted.)
Lovely Lester, WordMan. I’m a sucker for P90 LP’s.
Dude - we’re good 
. Notice how here - in Guitar Geek Central - I am throwing around jargon like nobody’s business. I was just Mr. Uptight in that other thread since it was for a new player starting out. 
Wow - who’s your guy? Sounds great! Is it that Tweed replica guy Clark out of South Carolina or - what’s his name? - Aiken, the guy who made the Invader? Lots of amp talent out there - pricey, but if you get one built right, they change everything tone-wise…
I love the look of your git - I very seriously considered a G&L Bluesboy (Tele) before I decided to build my Parts-o-Caster Tele…
It’s a guitar love fest!! 
Yeah, you play a Cornford. You’re in no position to pooh-pooh spending money on boutique gear.
No, this guy’s out of Birmingham, AL. Name’s Sam Timberlake. Here’s his page. I swear, the guy is a big-timer just waiting to happen.
So true! Oh well, it was cheaper than a Porsche and a lot less draining as far as mid-life crisis things go compared to an affair with a secretary or something! And I could drop the sucker down the stairs and the last note I hit would still be sustaining - it’s a hardy beast, and man oh man does it deliver the TONE!
I will check out your guy’s site - thanks!
Hey, OT but still about guitars. In fact it’s about an SG guitar like Sister Rosetta was playing. I’ve got a really old, beat to shit Gibson SG, ser#623772. How do I date it? Gibson’s site (PDF!)gives puzzling info (that pdf doesn’t seem to mention ser#'s in the 62xxxx range), but it seems it’s from 1969? I think? I figure one of the guitar geeks here may know the serial# lore better than my Google-ing.
It is a weird style of SG – its got plastic over the pots and switch, where most SGs I’m googling apparently put the plate on the back, and the knobs on the front are on the wood body, not plastic. It once had a very bad wang bar that I foolishly discarded and mounted a regular tailpiece (and I did it in my teens, and it shows).
It looks (well, looked) a lot like this guitar, ignoring the 3 pickups and non-wang tailpiece, but otherwise the same color, control layout, and inlays. But the site that owns that picture calls it a “1970 Gibson SG, serial no. 969973” which seems like an awfully high serial# compared to mine, but gibson seemed to have nonsense serial numbers some years.
