List Of Guitars Used By Stevie Ray Vaughan

This is a list and description of the guitars and other equipment played by musician Stevie Ray Vaughan. Vaughan played a number of Fender Stratocasters throughout his career, one of which, a 1963 body and a late 1962 rosewood (curved fingerboard) neck, became "the most famous battered Strat in rock history." He was notoriously hard on his guitars, and many of them required extensive periodic maintenance, as well as other equipment. He used a limited number of (mainly vintage) effect pedals, and favored Fender and Marshall amplification.

In spite of being rough on his gear, it was reported Vaughan could hear even the slightest malfunction, even when, for instance, he was running 32 amplifiers into the mixing console for the recording of ''In Step''. His guitars were serviced by Charley Wirz of Charley's Guitar Shop in Dallas, Texas, and especially Rene Martinez, who worked in Wirz's shop for a while. Martinez also built guitars for Carlos Santana. His amplifiers were tuned and serviced by Cesar Diaz, also the guitar technician for Eric Clapton and Bob Dylan.

Number One

Number One (also known as Vaughan's 'First Wife') was a Fender Stratocaster used by Vaughan for most of his career; it was "rebuilt more times than a custom Chevy." Vaughan always claimed it was a 1959 model, since that date was written on the back of the pick-ups; Rene Martinez, who maintained the guitar since 1980, saw the year 1963 stamped in the body and 1962 on the neck. The guitar was given to him by the owner of Ray Henning's Heart of Texas music shop in Austin, Texas in 1973 and was his main performing instrument and companion. Vaughan used the guitar on all five of his studio albums and on ''Family Style''. The distinctive cigarette burn on the headstock comes from an incident when Vaughan had left a burning cigarette tucked under the sixth string for too long while playing.

The article "Supernova Strats" by Dan Erlewine published in the February 1990 issue of ''Guitar Player'' magazine includes measurements of the specifications of several of Vaughan's guitars. All of Vaughan's guitars had a neck relief of approximately .012" at the 7th and 9th frets, and leveled out through the remainder of the fingerboard. The fingerboard radius of "Number One" when new would have been 7.25" like most Fender instruments made before the 1980s, but after refretting the fingerboard multiple times the radius evolved into a 9" or 10" radius in the upper registers. The guitar featured frets that measured 0.110" wide by 0.055" when new, similar to Dunlop 6100 fretwire. String height was measured to be 5/64" on the high E string and 7/64" on the low E string. Each string had three full winds for the best angle at the bone nut. It had a left-handed tremolo block, even though Vaughan was right-handed.

Neck

The original neck has a fairly thick D shaped profile. It was not as sometimes stated a "D" width nut (D width was 1 inch – the standard width was B which is 1 – SRV's guitar had a standard B width of nominally 1). The nut width letter was stamped on the end of the neck on Fender guitars from March 1962. It had a curved rosewood fingerboard and was refretted so often that, after a while, it could not be refretted anymore. Martinez replaced it with the neck from "Red" (see below). This neck was destroyed when a piece of stage rigging fell on it. After Vaughan's death, the original neck was reinstalled on Number One, and both are now in the possession of Jimmie Vaughan.

Fender signature model

Vaughan collaborated with Fender for an ''Artist Signature'' model, based on Number One; already in the works at the time of Vaughan's death, his brother Jimmie asked for the process to be sped up and the guitar became available in 1992. To achieve the sound Vaughan wanted, builder Larry Brooks put 6000 windings on the pickups. Besides adding to the number of windings, the polarity of the middle pickup was reversed to eliminate hum. The signature Strat has an alder body with a maple neck and pau ferro fingerboard, and comes equipped with .010-.046 strings (lighter than Vaughan's); it was praised by ''Guitar Player'' for its neck and "juicy tone": "the SRV is one of the coolest Strats we've ever played."

Yellow

Yellow was a 1959 Stratocaster formerly owned by Vanilla Fudge's lead guitarist, Vince Martell