heavy or light strings for ventures?
Posted: Sat Jan 16, 2010 11:11 am
Hi everyone,
I´m playing for a lot of years and using heavy gauge strings, 0.12 and 0.13 sets, flatwounds and roundwounds.
I'm always trying to get the sound I´ve listening in the late 50's & early 60s LP's (surf, ventures, Bo Diddley, Steve Cropper...) and in all this time I have found that the heavier strings the more near to this sound(at least it seems to my ear). ANother things that contribute to it are flatwounds and minimum possible sustain (for that I always have the strings very far from the body).
I find these tricks very usefull for my guitar approach to the 60s sound, and my playing is very influenced by this factors, I attack the strings very hard with hard picks. At the begining it was very hard to do, the bendings were difficult, but with the time I ended getting a good playing and I feel very comfortable with this setup.
I play(always clean, with no pedals) in a very purist 60's garage band and the sound of my guitar it´s very good for that. But lately I'm into Ventures and I find that this setup is not the best for this. Of course, I can play the tunes, even with the bendings, but I think that it´s not the way that Nokie did. I think that maybe they used lighter gauges for that millions of bendings and I´ve tried it but the sound with the lights strings is very far from the sound with heavier strings.
I don´t have a Mosrite, I have Vox phantoms and strat and for that I'm using the strat(more near to surf anyway). I know that it´s impossible to sound like the ventures this way, but it´s true that with heavy strings the sound is much more close(of course, as close as a strat can be) than with the light ones. Also my hard playing is not very friend of light strings, I´d have to re-learn to play for them.
So I would like to know what kind of strings you use when play ventures or when you try to sound like ventures.
Any advices will be welcome, cos I don´t know if I must try light strings for ventures(and re-leran to play) and heavy for the rest.
Anyway thanks in advance and sorry for this extensive post.
I´m playing for a lot of years and using heavy gauge strings, 0.12 and 0.13 sets, flatwounds and roundwounds.
I'm always trying to get the sound I´ve listening in the late 50's & early 60s LP's (surf, ventures, Bo Diddley, Steve Cropper...) and in all this time I have found that the heavier strings the more near to this sound(at least it seems to my ear). ANother things that contribute to it are flatwounds and minimum possible sustain (for that I always have the strings very far from the body).
I find these tricks very usefull for my guitar approach to the 60s sound, and my playing is very influenced by this factors, I attack the strings very hard with hard picks. At the begining it was very hard to do, the bendings were difficult, but with the time I ended getting a good playing and I feel very comfortable with this setup.
I play(always clean, with no pedals) in a very purist 60's garage band and the sound of my guitar it´s very good for that. But lately I'm into Ventures and I find that this setup is not the best for this. Of course, I can play the tunes, even with the bendings, but I think that it´s not the way that Nokie did. I think that maybe they used lighter gauges for that millions of bendings and I´ve tried it but the sound with the lights strings is very far from the sound with heavier strings.
I don´t have a Mosrite, I have Vox phantoms and strat and for that I'm using the strat(more near to surf anyway). I know that it´s impossible to sound like the ventures this way, but it´s true that with heavy strings the sound is much more close(of course, as close as a strat can be) than with the light ones. Also my hard playing is not very friend of light strings, I´d have to re-learn to play for them.
So I would like to know what kind of strings you use when play ventures or when you try to sound like ventures.
Any advices will be welcome, cos I don´t know if I must try light strings for ventures(and re-leran to play) and heavy for the rest.
Anyway thanks in advance and sorry for this extensive post.