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Post by fjam82 on Apr 29, 2007 16:25:16 GMT -7
I'm thinking of getting a slide guitar built and was wondering if you guys had some suggestions....
Is it better to use a glued neck, or bolt-on neck for slide guitar?
What are the best pickups for slide?
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Post by skydog958 on Apr 29, 2007 16:41:18 GMT -7
It depends on the tone you want and the slide you're using. I use a brass slide because I like the weight and I broke all my glass ones (lol), so I like neck pickup position to give the tone fullness, a slightly more vocal quality, and to take the edge off the highs. The Firebird pickups are a classic for bluesly slide (think Johnny Winter), but Duane Allman used a brige humbucker with a corcidian slide. The lipstick pickups from Danelectros are also supposed to sound great too (see Led Zep's "In My Time of Dying" and "Traveling Riverside Blues"). P-90s are also supposed to be great for a raw rock 'n' roll sound.
Basically, you can use any kind of pickup, it just depends on your style and the sound you want.
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Post by benttop (Steve) on Apr 29, 2007 19:23:58 GMT -7
Skydog's got it right - it depends. One of the coolest slide tones around is the sound Bonnie Raitt gets with her Strat. But I can't make mine sound like that to save my soul - she's obviously got some time into the setup, and some chops to back it up. I have always liked glass slides, but they do break so easily. I tried several kinds of metal ones, but didn't like the tone as well, so now I use a Mudslide which is ceramic. Works great! My slider is a PRS bolt neck with original PRS pups. I typically use the bridge pup for my slide work. The only down side to that is that it's pretty hard to tame for non-full-tilt soloing. I think the sound Bonnie Raitt gets is perfect for between the lines runs, but you can't get there with a PRS!
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Post by billyguitar on Apr 29, 2007 20:04:26 GMT -7
Bonnie uses a boatload of compression. I can hear the pump. Sonny Landreth uses distortion instead. He also strings his guitars with .013s. I use to play a lot of slide, even when I used .009s! Then I got into lap steels with a volume pedal. It's a different sound but much easier to get a good singing note with a lap steel and a bar. When i was playing slide I found that every guitar needed a different slide. Some liked glass, some liked brass and some liked chromed brass. If you're really into slide you'll need a variety of them to see which works best with your particular. The worst example of slide playing I've seen recently was Billy Gibbons doing Tush on some bogus CMT Crossroads show with Brooks and Dunne. Billy G. just pressed the slide right down on the frets. It was totally lame! Why play slide if you can't get the microtones? That show was so lame! They spent a lot of time interviewing B & D and about 6 seconds with Z Z Top. How wrong is that? You really don't need to get one built. Just take about any guitar and raise the action a bit and find the right slide. Or do what I like, find a lap steel with legs, find a tuning you like and do it better than slide guitar. Listen to David Lindley doing Mercury Blues and hear a good Fender steel thru a Dumble!
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