Last night when I played in church, I used my good old Sears Craftsman 11/16" 6-point guitar slide.
"A cheerful heart is good medicine."
Last night when I played in church, I used my good old Sears Craftsman 11/16" 6-point guitar slide.
Craftsman sockets are great! You can fit them precisely to your finger. They're a little heavy for me, a skinny geek, but the sound is brilliant.
Every material seems to have its own sonic character. My Craftsman and my hand-cut bottleneck sound and handle completely differently; generally I favor the bottleneck, which is the perfect weight for me and gives a grainier, more complex sound than the socket wrench.
"You can't write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say sometimes, so you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream." - Frank Zappa
I picked the Craftsman over the Diamond Ultimate I use most often because of its considerable mass and slightly less slick surface texture. I was banging and popping the bass strings as hard as possible without making them jump out of the saddle slots at times, and the heavy slide didn't bounce off of the wildly vibrating heavy strings and buzz like the lighter glass slide. Plus, I was doing some very prolonged slide vibrato, and the metal having a little more "traction" on the string worked better. Tried both heavier and rougher textured metal slides yesterday, but the Craftsman was perfect for what I was doing. Different slides for different styles.
"A cheerful heart is good medicine."
I've always preferred light strings on my guitars - I use 9's on all of them. That has a bearing on the type of slide I've been using lately - for about 12 months or so, I've been using a light perspex slide. I find I get a lot less fret rattle using a light slide - and honestly, I haven't noticed any loss of sustain.
:D :D :D
Vic
"Sometimes the beauty of music can help us all find strength to deal with all the curves life can throw us." (D. Hodge.)
One reason I love these forums is because Guitar Noise always makes me think twice about what I do on the instrument. This thread made me look hard at my slide collection. I weighed them all (took a while) & found the ones closest in weight to my beloved hand-cut bottleneck: a Kobalt 17mm socket wrench, a vintage medicine bottle, and a radiused brass Dunlop. Weight however doesn't seem to matter that much in terms of sound -- matters less than material at least -- my Dunlop "Blues Bottle" fake Coricidin bottle is lighter but sounds much more like the bottleneck than any of the metal ones.
Slides are where my GAS gets expressed. I can't afford a whole wall full of guitars, but I always can find a few bux for the Next Great Slide. 8)
"You can't write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say sometimes, so you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream." - Frank Zappa
And you don't run out of room nearly as fast with slides as with guitars!
"A cheerful heart is good medicine."
