Stevie Ray Vaughan---Guitar And Rig Setup---A Contrarian You Should Follow Rig Wise

Stevie Ray Vaughan---His Rig and Guitar Setup

SRV Did It Differently Than Most

Okay,here's a little tidbit for you guitar players. Most players use Fender's for cleaner sounds and Marshall amps for distortion and OD.

Where as SRV did the opposite. It's opposite day here on the blog. Didn't you know?

Now I'm not sure if he used this rig in the studio or live.

SRV Rig: Marshall 4140 Club and Country Combo with 2 /12 inchers.

For those who don't know including me, that was kind of like Marshall's version of a Fender Twin Reverb. The C&C has more headroom than a typical Marshall design, so for those of you who like that

that is useful to know when deciding on a combo amp to use.

Oh, the Marshall was or is, 100 watts.

Power Amp: Stevie used a Power amp—It did not say what brand—but it had KT77 tubes.

Apparently SRV kept the C&C unit which was an 84' and replaced it with a Dumble Steel String Singer. I can't remember where I picked up all this info online.

SRV's Live Rig: He used 2 fender Vibroverb combos with single 15 inch speakers. He also used one Fender VV to power his Fender Vibratone. Built in 1963 the VV was Fender's first unit with built-in reverb. The VV was made with 2 10 inch speakers—and a brown tolex covering.

But in the late 63' the model's design switched to one 15 inch speaker and black tolex.

SRV thought the serial numbers on the tubes---5 and 6 meant they were one serial number apart. But they are a production run numbers,and the actual serial numbers were 36 numbers apart.

The Dumble Steel Stringer:

SRV discovered Dumble amps when recording Texas Flood at Jackson Browne's studio in 1982.

He also used a brown Dumble and a 300 watt bass amp to record most of the tracks during the sessions for Texas Flood.

I don't know what kind of bass amp was used because it did not say.

That tells you that you should keep things simple, but experiment and get the tone you want. Not what a studio or record label wants.

Think about some of articles I wrote on Jimmy Page and the tips I glommed from his book on producing and setting up your axe,amp and effects. It pays to be an original tone and playing wise.

So read the post on SRV again and test out a few amps different from your own to see if you're tone is missing an element.

Much success players.