Slide Guitar

Hey. I've been experimenting with slide guitar off and on for a little while. Everytime I listen to Derek Trucks or The Allman Brothers it makes me wanna try again. The only problem is that even after a lot of tinkering, I haven't been able to dial in a good tone. I don't know if my standards are just too high trying to mimic derek trucks, or if theres something I could do to get things sounding a bit nicer. I have a fender mustang that I use w/ my fender deville, and I use a dunlop pyrex glass slide. I assume that I should be able to get a decent slide tone out of it. Is there anything I can try to get things sounding a little bit better? Possibly different strings or something? It would be cool if I could get some of your thoughts on slide and maybe you could let me know what you are doing. Thanks

The DeVille is a great amp with a great clean tone for slide and it overdrives nicely at high volumes... so you have a good start with that amp.

When you're playing with a slide you'll notice that there is A LOT of treble in the tone. What I do when I play slide is try to take the treble away and get a nice smooth warm tone. The slide is going to give the notes plenty of clarity either way but a lot of times it'll make your tone sound too harsh and sharp. Use your neck pickup and maybe roll the treble knob back on the amp. A good piece of kit to have in any tone situation is an EQ... It will allow you to cut those high frequencies to compensate for the magnified trebles.

I use larger gauge strings on my slide guitar... which is a Mexi Fender Strat.

Most of the tone though comes from the hands, just like any other kind of guitar playing.

Thanks a lot. I was thinking about going to higher gauge strings for slide, so I guess I should try that out. What gauge strings do you use? 11, 12? Anyways, I know the tone comes mostly from the hands, and especially with slide, but a few adjustments to the equiptment never hurt anyone. :)

I know nothing about slide but you might want to try different tunings. Check out this video. Maybe it will spark some ideas.

Click Here for Video

Obviously open tunings are what you're "supposed" to use... You don't HAVE to... But most slide players use open tunings.

I can't say I've ever used them, but on the subject of strings, you might also try out the flatwound type as opposed to "regular" strings which are roundwound. They also make semi-flatwound (aka half-round) as well. They reduce string squeakage with the fingers, while with a slide you won't get that grating sound prevalent on the bass strings of roundwounds.

I was just curious myself to see if Duane used those kind or not (still don't know), but I came across this cool article that goes into some of the details of his tone and technique.

Hmmmm, flatwounds would seem like the way to go for slide, now I'm curious. Also, I always (unless I'm feeling especially lazy) tune to open E. Derek Trucks does and Duane Allman did, so why not.

i like to press down hard on the slide, add a little reverb and overdrive and bam i sound good

Originally Posted by: cdm442i like to press down hard on the slide, add a little reverb and overdrive and bam i sound good

:confused:

Slide guitar has always been a pain for me till I dusted off my old acoustic (it has moderately high action) Tuned it to Open D I think? Learned some Robert Johnson
opened up a new door for me, improved my technique a lot.