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Dear Supertwang,
I swapped strings to get lighter sets as well. That became especially
important as the 60's moved along and blusier styles took hold.
Like I said in another post, my palm muting skill (which I learned thru
many years of messing about with pedal steel guitar) has served me well
in achieving very fast double picking speeds on lighter strings. This
was necessary to do both surf technique and bending on the same guitar.
I also use knuckle blocking for keeping strings under control at those
speeds.
FWIW, the Wilson Bros bridge on my VM-65 is cast like an American
Standard Strat so it doesn't have screws that stick upwards like a
vintage Fender Strat setup. This allows more secure muting with cutting
my hand up.
You can lean on that all day without a sweat.
Les
On Monday, September 6, 2004, at 11:21 AM, supertwangreverb wrote:
> <<FWIW, I jammed with Nokie Edwards this past weekend at Louiefest in
> Tacoma, Washington, and we used his Hitchhiker guitars (He brought two
> of them so I "borrowed" one of them). Now, I was quite surprised to
> see
> that he had 009-046 on there which felt quite comfortable. So Noke
> evidently, doesn't think that light strings are inhibiting for
> himself.
> HOWEVER, I did notice that his model guitar had a pretty thick and
> dark
> tone which may be his way of compensating for lighter strings. He
> likes
> a mellow sound which suits his "easy-listening" music. When we jammed
> on tyhe old Ventures stuff, I noticed that he could still get the old
> Mosrite tone out of his axe with these strings. Even on my rhythm
> parts, I got the old Ventures sound out of that guitar. And INokie
> mentioned that the Ventures used to use much heavier strings. So it
> must be the player, not the gear.>>
>
> I think the Ventures or at least Nokie got into lighter strings
> pretty early on. When you listen to them in Japan in '65 its obvious
> they are using roundwound strings and Nokie certainly has a steel G.
> I've often compared Nokie's sound around that time to James Burton's,
> who was using banjo strings at the time. I wasn't alive back then
> but I do know guys used to swap "b" strings for "g" strings. Both
> Nokie and James had a pretty shrill sound.
>
> I used to play a Telecaster with 9s on it because James Burton was
> the reason I started playing, and now I use a Jag and Jazzmaster
> strung with 13s and 12s. Having big hands I don't think I'll get
> tendonitis. But I do notice when I dig out the Tele or play a Strat
> in a guitar store it is almost impossible to double pick on those
> strings as well as I can on the heavier ones.
>
>
>
>
>
> .
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