“You can get some passable tones at home at low volumes if you do crank the gain up a little bit more, but when you turn the amp up, if you’re using too much gain, you don’t get the dynamics of his sound. “It’s is a very hard sound to play with, because it’s all about power stage drive rather than preamp gain,” says John. Indeed, if you really want to nail that SRV tone, you might have to make yourself decidedly harder than many of us are used to, and you’ll need a hell of a lot of volume to get there… As soon as you use too much compression and make it easy for yourself, that’s when you don’t get the huge tone that he’s known for.” People tend to mask their sound with gain and EQ and compression, but that sound really does come from turning an amp up loud and hitting it with a pedal. In terms of the sound, you really have to back that gain off – there’s so little compression in his sound. “They try to do Scuttle Buttin’ at the first attempt and then fail. “I think a lot of people – probably myself included! – try and learn too fast,” he explains. As someone who has spent more time than most devoting himself to both sounding and playing like SRV, John has a few notes of caution for people who might be just diving into this world. John’s Custom Shop SRV Strats – ‘Number 1’ and ‘Lenny’ – in front of the vintage Fender Super Reverb and Vibroberb amps he favoured The secrets of SRV’s toneįor decades now, players, gear companies and everyone in between have been trying to nail the recipe of gear, playing style and feel that gave Stevie Ray’s guitar tone that wonderful mix of power and shimmer. A paid-up Hendrix obsessive at that point, he was suitably intrigued, but it wouldn’t be until his dad came home with a copy of Couldn’t Stand The Weather, and he experienced Stevie’s take on, Voodoo Child (Slight Return). John Priest is thinking back to the moment that he first encountered Stevie Ray Vaughan’s guitar playing, but for a man who has subsequently devoted a fair amount of time, effort and hard-earned cash in the pursuit of nailing that most sought-after tone, he wasn’t as hooked as you’d expect. That was the thing that first made me sit up and listen to all of the different aspects of his playing and tone.”

My dad had a ‘greatest hits of the blues’ album, and it had Stevie’s version of Commit A Crime on it.

Here he shares his hard-earned wisdom about what you really need to capture that Stevie Ray sound yourself, and picks out some exemplar rigs that will get you close… John was first bitten by SRV’s bug as a kid, and summarily has, “spent years and years trying to nail that tone”. John Priest is the owner of Peach Guitars in Colchester, but in addition to being the custodian of Britain’s largest guitar showroom, his passion is Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Srv lenny el macombo