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Go ahead - ask anything you want!
Questions? Comments? Send them to me at:
Marshall Arts Music
23852 Pacific Coast Highway Suite 300
Malibu, CA 90265
or in cyberspace via e-mail: wolf@wolfmarshall.com
I have a question regarding Stevie Ray Vaughan's sound. Is it true he used many amps to record his guitar sound? If so, how can I emulate the tone?
John Fredricks, Montebello, Calif.
Yes. Stevie used several amps at one time for
his beefy blues tone. A good example is found on the In Step album, where he used
more than thirty different amps in various configurations. Two of the amps he used for
those sessions were a Super Reverb and a tweed Bassman. Please check out the Stevie
Ray Vaughan sections of GUITARLAND for more details.
One of my favorite guitarists is Steve Vai. I recently had the privilege to see him live. As I'm sure you're aware, he is a whang bar monger and pulls up on his bar as well as dropping it to oblivion. I realize this is done with a floating tremolo and have a similar Ibanez guitar set up as such. However when I bend a note on the fretboard normally, the tremolo bridge pulls forward and this doesn't sound so good. Is there some secret tremolo device Steve is employing or what?! Also your "Blues Rock of Ages" series is too good for words. Keep up the good work.
Bill Dalagauer, West Orange, New Jersey
Thanks for your gracious words. I passed your
question right along to the master, our good friend Steve Vai. He was kind enough to reply
in person. Here is his answer. "I use a trem setter on my guitar. It's a little
spring-type device that is installed on the guitar on the back under the springs. It holds
the tension on the block when the block is in the resting position, but allows you to pull
up on the bar so the strings will go sharp. It lets you rest your wrist on the tailpiece
and keeps the tension normalized on the strings. It helps a lot when you bend one string,
keeping the other in tune, but it does not do this flawlessly. You still get a bit of a
dip in the rest of the strings. That's just trade-off of having the ability to pull up on
the bar. I don't know where you get this device these days. They were stock on Ibanez Jems
for a while." Thanks, Steve...
Your turn...
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