“I could play the first three frets on the two low strings. I started messing around with it when I was about 12 and I could play on the two bass strings and people were saying, ‘You can play guitar.’ I said, ‘Well, not really’, you know? He’d brought it back from Canada in the late 1950s and it was too big for me to get my arms around and it had a brutal action and heavy gauge strings. I hadn’t seen Eric Clapton with John Mayall, but something that’s not far from my turntable is Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton.” I didn’t catch The Stones when they were developing – I started going to gigs from 1966 onwards so I’d missed out on that. “My young life wouldn’t have been the same without hearing Peter Green. Peter Green was in the forefront of that. It was like being admitted into the inner sanctum of the magic temple where you could go, drink and smoke underage, and see these guys who were our older brothers doing exactly what I wanted to be able to do. It was John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers with Peter Green on lead guitar and he was totally thrilling for me as a kid. “I went to see John Mayall at Eel Pie Island. The very things that they were disqualified for having done at one point, suddenly they’re being applauded for. “But luckily, of course, due to The Beatles and The Stones mainly and the bluesmen and the blues bands that were to follow, a light was shone on those great luminaries themselves and many of them were able to forge second string careers.
I guess it’s not a case of being right, it’s a case of being right at the right time. Sonically, they’d already developed what rock was to do a decade later. Here is a video of GB playing solo listen to his low strings and you should hear how low the action is.“Bluesmen were doing this thing: Muddy Waters and Little Walter playing harmonica. Maybe in the first months of owning the strat with the supplied flat wounds, Hank had dropped the action successfully with the flat wounds and then when he few sets of supplied strings he had with the guitar ran out and he switched strings to roundwound that was when the rattles came ? Possibly. So yes flat wounds do help in respect of low action. When I put the flat wounds on the Ibanez Artcore I had, I immediately found the rattles from the strings had reduced a lot and I could get the action down much lower. There was a noticeable buzzing coming from the low strings when he was playing and I concluded that he must have the neck quite straight and the action set low. I tried to get some ideas on what George Benson had as a setup by watching some UTube videos of him playing solo so I could hear his guitar sound clearly. I did not like the strings at all as they rattled lots when I dropped the action down. It was fitted with roundwound strings of a fairly light gauge which I considered to be 10s.
I bought an Ibanez Jazz guitar (Artcore) a few months back at a really good price. Who knows what available strings he may have used when the Fender strings were gone- Cathedral, Hofner etc?
#Hank marvin guitar action strings full
Who knows what available strings he may have used when the Fender strings were gone- Cathedral, Hofner etc? cockroach Posts: 1459 Joined: Sun 10:33 am Location: Australia Full Real Name: john cochraneĬockroach wrote:Well, back then, the two most important things to players were the lowest, easiest action (heaven after the cheap things we had to learn on) and as much treble as possible! Sooner or later, he would have used up the OE strings and the spare sets which were ordered and presumably supplied with the guitar.Īlso, back then he was young, energetic, and as video clips show, he played pretty hard and used the vibrato arm a lot- he was likely to have broken a few strings! Not really knowing exactly what type of strings he used doesn't help- apart from the original strings on 34346, which were probably Fender flatwounds about 13-56, who knows what strings he used as time went by? He must have broken a few strings and restrung with new sets sometime. Using roundwounds after flats might give rise to some buzzes etc - maybe that's why Hank had a problem which he fixed as best as he could.
Well, back then, the two most important things to players were the lowest, easiest action (heaven after the cheap things we had to learn on) and as much treble as possible!įlatwounds don't tend to rattle and buzz as much as roundwounds- I played a three hour gig last night using only a Strat copy with 12-52 Monopole flatwounds with a reasonably low action.no buzzes etc but they are pretty dead sounding however (got another gig tomorrow night too, will be using the same guitar)