| Warp + Weft: Thousandths Of An Inch |
|
|
| Written by Steve McPherson | |
| Wednesday, April 2, 2008 at 12:24 PM | |
 I used to be obsessed with string gauges. When I started playing guitar, every little decision seemed important: what brand of strings I played, what gauge, what type of pick I used, and on and on. Like any teenager with a newfound passion, I quickly went from not knowing anything about guitar to wanting to learn everything I could. Here's my deep dark secret: I picked my first electric guitar, a black, Japanese '50s re-issue Stratocaster because of the guitar that Mike Edwards from Jesus Jones played in the "Real, Real, Real" video—and he's actually playing a black Telecaster. So two strikes then: One for mistaking a Tele for a Strat and two for liking Jesus Jones. But that black Strat put me in good company as far as guitarists: Buddy Holly, Eric Clapton, Mike McCready of Pearl Jam, and Jimi Hendrix. Live, Hendrix favored the bold look of white, red, and black Strats, although I've heard he preferred sunburst ones for the studio. Tidbits like that were just some of the many facts and anecdotes that were opening up to me as I went further and further into the minutiae of guitarists' setups, and even though I couldn't buy the expensive guitars that my heroes played, I could at least try to emulate their string choices.I started out playing Ernie Ball .009s, which were what my guitar teacher played. Strings are measured in thousandths of an inch, but in the argot of guitarists, those would be "nines," a light gauge. Ernie Ball referred to them as Super Slinkies. They were easy to play, easy to bend—just generally easy all around. Clapton, I'm pretty sure, played Super Slinkies, which were launched as a line of strings by Ernie Ball after Fender wouldn't consider making lighter, easier to bend electric guitar strings in the mid-'60s.  But I wasn't entirely sure how I felt about easier. There's a basic spectrum for strings on a guitar, with tone at one end and playability at the other. Heavier strings sound better, but lighter strings are easier to play. I'd been reading guitar magazines, and I knew that Pearl Jam used .010s and .011s, and Stevie Ray Vaughan used .013s, and they all used GHS brand strings. But of course, the one place I could get guitar strings in the small, rural Massachusetts town where I grew up was the record store where my guitar teacher worked—and the only electric strings they had were Ernie Balls. I had to special order Ernie Ball's line of .011 gauge strings (Power Slinkies) and all the other guitarists at my high school looked at me like I was crazy when I told them I played elevens. They mostly played metal or metallic punk, where a Boss Metal Zone pedal would wash away any concern over the tone of the string and replace it with a buzzsaw hum that would make any guitar or amp sound basically the same. They couldn't understand why I'd make things hard on myself.But making it hard on myself was actually kind of the point, at least more than I cared to admit at the time. Another factor that increases tone but decreases playability (in some way—we'll get into it in a moment) is action, which basically means how high off the fretboard the strings are. Higher action means you have to push the strings down further, means you have to work harder, but means you get less dampening of the sound from other frets, means the guitar just sounds better. High action hampers your ability to play fast, but in some ways it helps your ability to bend strings, since the mechanics of a bend mean it's easier to move the string up or down on the fretboard when it has more play and the other strings are not so much in the way. As I worked my way back down the chain of influence from Pearl Jam to Stevie Ray Vaughan to Jimi Hendrix to Muddy Waters to Robert Johnson, the way I set up my guitar came to be more than a technical choice; it was an ethical one. It's a not uncommon way for the teenage music snob to see the world. There was the flashy, technically virtuoso way, as exemplified by hair metal (Winger, Poison), Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, and others, and there was the morally righteous way, as exemplified by Hendrix, Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Albert King, Son House, and basically anyone who I decided had a sense of history and played with—wait for it—feeling. Sure, instead of looks of horror, I mostly got pats on the head from my parents (who had met at a Muddy Waters concert in Chicago in 1969) for my taste in music, but it was no less a declaration of who I was than it was for the kids who pierced their noses and wore ratty leather jackets and listened to The Misfits. Like e.e. cummings , I believed feeling was first, and since I wasn't wholly kissing anyone, I, despite cummings' advice to the contrary, paid attention to syntax. At 15, music promised me access to an emotional life I was just beginning to sense, and the tools that would let me in were guitars, amps, cables, pedals, tubes, speakers, the magnets in the pickups, bridge saddles, frets, and nickel-wound strings. Because I was raw and inexperienced, because I couldn't play like my heroes, I tried to gain a measure of command over what I could control: my equipment. When we can't grasp the depth of a thing, we fumble with its symbols and totems. And so like children playing house, or teenagers going to prom, I played at something beyond my years, hoping that having the hardware would mean I was ready when I finally grew into my own skin. As recently as five years ago, I was still special ordering strings—the hard-to-find GHS .0105 set, or ten-and-a-halfs. .010s didn't provide enough weight in the sound, .011s were too hard to bend, and when I discovered .0105s, they were perfect. But then the band I was leading broke up, and I moved to Minnesota with the intention of not playing music so much. The next time I went to change my strings, it was just easier to get GHS .011s than special order some weird custom set. And then I later found out that GHS had struck up some deal with Wal-Mart to sell their strings and undercut local music stores, so I started using D'Addarios, whose multi-colored ball ends (the little metal grommet that anchors the string to the guitar near the bridge) had always seemed kind of wussy before.  The truth is that all guitar strings are more or less the same. And I'm no longer so adamant about my guitars having baseball bat-sized necks, and I have no qualms about buying a cheap, knockoff hollowbody rather than spending the $2,000 for the real thing. I still have my limits: I won't play a Paul Reed Smith because Nickelback pretty much ruined them, and despite its fluid neck and easy action—or maybe partly because of it—I won't play a Parker Fly because it looks like it should be in the cantina scene in "Star Wars." But even as I've grown up and learned that it's not the tools, but the player that makes the music, I can't help feeling that I've lost something as well.It's what we all lose at least a little bit over time: The feeling that we're special, or have access to some greater truth. It turns out that what really matters is a little less exciting and romantic than maybe I'd like it to be. Making music takes hard work, dedication, a knowledge of your own limits, a desire to push those limits out incrementally, and, frankly, a lot of stubbornness. I'm happier now, and happier with the music I make, but I miss that belief that one or two thousandths of an inch could make such a huge difference. |
|
| Last Updated: Thursday, April 3, 2008 at 02:09 AM |
Featured Concerts
