Page and Clapton - strings gauge

Siegler · Oct 22, 2008

zombiwoof said:
What a lot of guys did, as someone said earlier, was take a Gibson Sonomatic set, the 12-56 one, throw away the 56 and use a 10 for the first string, which gave them 10-12-16-25(?)-34-44. Dicky Betts used to do this, which is similar to his Signature set now.

I've waited a long time to hear anything more specific than Dicky's late 70s [?] Guitar Player interview statement to the effect that he uses the heaviest strings he can play for a 3 hour concert.

Sol · Oct 23, 2008

I 'discovered' the Daddario 9.5-44 sets a few yrs ago now, and for me they are perfect.
I have them set a little higher and with that I can play slide ok and not too high for normal playing to.

Ive found that the slight increase in the mass of that guage helps with intonation which is quite tricky with 9's.

Anyone aware of other makers offering the 9.5-44 sets ?

sgtJoe · Oct 23, 2008

I thinl GHS makes a .095-44 set also.

zombiwoof · Oct 23, 2008

There's a GHS Santana set that I think is 9.5 to 43, they're the "Big Core" strings, so the wound strings will also have a little more tension for their gauge. They're also round core and pure nickel wound.

Al

carlygtr56 · Oct 24, 2008

frisco said:
how can these guys managed to play slide with such light strings?
Mick Taylor, Billy Gibbons come to mind i dunno if Duanne and Dickey played slide with those string gauges

Tommy Bolin played slide on his 8-38 sets

cuthbert · Oct 24, 2008

carlygtr56 said:
Tommy Bolin played slide on his 8-38 sets

Brian May occasionally uses slides with the same gauge.

csteward · Dec 22, 2008

does anyone know what string set Page would buy and then get rid of the low E and replace the high e with a banjo 8? or at least what the gauges in the set were?

csteward · Dec 22, 2008

Here's something that I did want to say to you because it's quite interesting, actually. In those days of learning and eventually finding that I couldn't bend an E string in the way that I could hear it on records, I was actually using a banjo string on the top - an .008 - and de-stringing everything else. I'd get a set of Fenders or Gibsons and put their first string on the second and throw the sixth string away.

That was how things were done - I think Eric was doing a similar thing as well. Then I went to LA with Jackie De Shannon and went to a music store there - I was trying to meet James Burton if I could have done - and they said that I could get strings right now: Ernie Ball Super Slinkies. Of course, from that point on it was history.

As a rule, the Les Paul was always strung up with an .008. Later on, you know how people in the 1980s made strange decisions - how they looked, what music they played etc? (Laughs.) I don't think I looked too bad in the eighties, but I definitely changed my strings because of the heavy sets that were around then. But I forgot that the really good guitar sounds had been done with all this quite light stringing.

what guage were these fender and gibson strings?

csteward · Dec 22, 2008

csteward · Dec 22, 2008

my guess from looking at an old Fender catalog for '69 and looking at the gauges for a Gibson Sonomatic set is that his mixed set would be (.008, .012, .016, .026, .034, .044)

zombiwoof · Dec 22, 2008

There was also a Fender set that went from 11-52 that some guys did the same banjo string trick on. Pete Townsend use the 12-56 Sonomatic set at one point, and only substituted another .016 for the third, so his gauge was 12-16-16-34-44-56! It was all heavy except the third, so that he could do bends on that string. Must have been weird with that slinky third and heavy on the rest. This is according to a great site online that details all of the Who gear according to year, it also says which amps and guitars Townsend and Entwhistle used.

Al

csteward · Dec 23, 2008

Here's the Fender Ad from '69

That Who site is where I found the Fender '69 string catalog

csteward · Dec 23, 2008

too bad Page didn't tell us what type of strings or at least guages they were.

zombiwoof · Dec 23, 2008

csteward said:
Here's the Fender Ad from '69

That Who site is where I found the Fender '69 string catalog

That's great! I made a mistake, the Fender set I talked about was 12-52, not 11-52. In that catalog is the "Mastersound Flatwound" set, that's what I first used when I got my first electric! Heavy as hell, and twice as expensive as the roundwounds I should have been using. I got talked into them by the guy at the store where I bought my guitar, probably because they were the most expensive set of Fenders they had. I got straightened out when I met a friend who played guitar, in those days there wasn't all the info around about such thing, I didn't even know about bending strings until I saw a video clip of someone (I think it was Fogerty with CCR) bending strings on a song. I sure couldn't bend much with those heavy flatwounds!

Al

geminitiger · Jan 27, 2020

csteward said:
Like you said Joe, I've always heard in a lot of interviews about the Ernie Ball 9s back in Cream, now that could have just been on the 335 too, I'm not sure. He didn't specify

we supported Cream in 1968 in Notts and im pretty sure when i asked him he said ernie balls but it didnt really matter what you use,its in the fingers.

Pellman73 · Jan 29, 2020

yall should watch Rick Beato's recent youtube thing about "does size matter"

I'm putting 9's on....

TM1 · Jan 30, 2020

I’ve seen a few of these videos.. the bi problem now vs. then is the rubbish materials that almost all string makers in the States use. The stuff they use now is cheap crap compared to what’s made in Europe & the U.K. In the 50’s & 60’s Gibson used silver plated plain strings and silver plated round core wire. Some of their strings were made in Germany by Pyramid. Pyramid has been making strings for 170 years! Almost every string used in the British Invasion sold by or under the “Selmer” banner was a Pyramid.
now I know the strings used by Clapton in The Yardbirds, Mayall & Cream (until late ‘67) was made by Clifford Essex. Rickenbacker Strings originally we’re made by Maxima, but almost all European Flatwounds were the same build: small round core, a round wire wrap followed by a flat wire wrap. The cores were small silver plated German Steel round wire & both wraps were pure nickel wire.

Page and Clapton - strings gauge

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