Post by Joey GoldsteinPost by j***@mindspring.comPost by vanIt seems that Ed's choice of strings is more complicated than, "He uses .010s .011s or .012s.
A dude that knows him well said that he spoke to Reg Schwaeger about it, and Reg said something like, "I just buy a set of strings, Ed sure doesn't..."
The mystery continues...
11 13 16 24 36 46
Yes. That article in GP in the early 70s.
I dunno about those gauges.
They also claim he used a medium gauge Fender pick.
But when I first started exploring using a Tele for jazz, I talked to my
friend Lorne Lofsky who had done considerable playing/recording with Ed
and who tends to use what seems to me to be a similar setup/tone with a
plain G string.
Lorne told me that Ed was using .012 to .052 roundwounds with a plain
.020 G string.
That's what Lorne was using at the time I talked to him about it too.
So that's what I've been using and my Tele builds are definitely in the
zone for Ed's type of tone, even though most of what we all dig about Ed
is actually his touch so I don't really sound much like him when I play
them.
And I've recently re-read that article and recently tried those gauges
myself.
They simply don't get you there.
Then I put a .012 on.
Still not there.
Then I upped the B to a .016 too.
Still not happening.
And the .016 G is just way too flappy.
So I'm making a few hypotheses about all of this, none of which I've
confirmed yet.
My guess is that when Ed first starting using his Tele on jazz gigs,
instead of just for the pop studio sessions he normally used it for,
that he tried doing it with .010 to .046 which was and still is the most
common gauge for rock and pop and R&B.
But from all his years playing jazz on an archtop my next guess is that
he started using heavier high E strings for jazz gigs.
First an .011 and then a .012.
I'm also guessing that with his dark-ish tone, he found his wound stings
a bit louder than ideal when rolling back the tone control, especially
since he was still using the stock single coil neck pickup at that time
that has no adjustable pole pieces, and that this is why he may have
favoured the relatively light gauge wound strings.
All you can really do is to lower that pup on the bass side and raise it
on the treble side.
But there's no string-to-string adjustment.
I heard he switched to the humbucker, not because of 60hz hum or even
for the tone, but because he was having string balance issues and the
humbuckers had adjustable pole pieces.
So *I* think this 11 to 46 thing is not what he was using on most of the
records we all dig, yet.
I suppose I could just try to contact Ed and ask him, but I don't want
to bother him.
Yeah, I don't know where they got that medium Fender pick thing from, but they list his recording output at the end of the article, and the most recent LP they listed was "Ed Bickert", the great live, trio album with Don Thompson and Terry Clarke. I still have the vinyl on PM Records, and it says 1976 on the record, so the article must be from shortly after he made that record.
When I was going through my EB phase in the 80s, I was using a Hondo(!) Strat copy, and an orange Cube 60. I used .010s exclusively, and was able to approximate his sound, although not his ability, so I always thought that he used a light gauge back in the 70s. Many of the chord solos he was playing in the 70s were just impossible to play with .012s or higher. They wouldn't have the lightness of sound Ed had, and you couldn't play with the dexterity that Ed played with, because you can't do some of those things with heavier gauges.
You could play the chords he used, but you wouldn't be able to play with the precision EB did, because of the tension and the thickness of the strings.
By the time he recorded for Concord, he wasn't making the guitar,bass,drum trio oriented records (even when there was a horn player on the record) he made for Sackville, so it sounds like he went to a heavier gauge (.012s?) and different pickup (with adjustable pole pieces), so he wouldn't get that muddy sound he complained about in that article.