Members t_e_l_e Posted October 2, 2015 Members Share Posted October 2, 2015 lately i was listening to muddy waters i can't be sadisfied, found the notes of the main riff by ear, tuned my little parlor to open g tuning and since then i practice to get it right and can't get it out of my mind. i'm unhappy with my dunlop 218 glass bottle neck, its bit too big for my pinky finger, not much, just a little bit so it feels slippy when i play with it, and its too short so it can cover the whole fret board. now there are tons of different bottle necks out there, glass, ceramic, metal, brass, chrome, short, long, wide ends, etc.. whats the pro's and con's of them?i know they should fit the finger you want to play with it, but else?how do different materials compare sound wise? what about different shapes? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Freeman Keller Posted October 2, 2015 Members Share Posted October 2, 2015 T_e_l_e, the simple answer is that most of us who play a bit of slide guitar experiment with slides and bottlenecks until we find the one(s) we like. We also often watch what others uses and sometimes emulate them, hoping that will give us the same sound. Let me just list some random thoughts based on my humble experience with different slides - heavier slides seem to be easier to control (which seems counter intuitive). Particularly for vibrato the weight of the slide seems to make smoother. I like heavy slides on my acoustics, lighter ones the few times I play slide on an electric. - if you play on a curved fretboard a slightly curved bottle neck and make barre fretting easier. A cylindrical slide tends to fret out a bit more on the middle strings. If you play a flatter fretboard (like many older or cheap acoustics) then a cylindrical slide seems to work better. Most of my guitars have flatish necks - I like cylindrical slides - in general if you want to barre all six strings with the slide (done a lot in open tunings, not too much in standard) then your slide needs to be long enough (duh). I play on wide necked resonators and twelve strings so I like a pretty long slide. - the finger you use is arbitrary but the slide should fit slightly snugly. It shouldn't be hard to get on or off but it shouldn't fall off either. Some people slightly bend their finger to hold it on, I don't like to do that. - probably the most common finger is the pinkie - big advantage is that the others are left free to fret chords and dampen behind the slide. Next most common is on the ring finger - many players like Bonnie Raitte do this. A few player put it on their index finger (Dave Hole comes to mind) - I think that is because they have a background with lap slide or dobro. - whichever finger you use you need to develop dampening behind the slide - if you don't the string will also ring out on the nut side. That can be used to advantage to get a different slide tone - as you slide up the string you will also get a down slide - think the opening bit of Sleep Walk. - most common materials are glass (including actual cut off wine bottle necks), ceramic, brass, steel and other metals. Chris Whattley used a piece cut from a bicycle handle bar, Rory Block uses a 17mm spark plug socket, Kottke either a heavy brass or his signature Dunlop ceramic slide. Many of the old blues men and women did use bottlenecks. If anything brass might be a little warmer, steel a little brighter, glass seems to have a clean sound. Just got to experiment here. - if you are going to play lap style then you want either a Shubb or Stevens style tee shaped "bar" or a rounded tipped steel. You do a lot of single not playing with the tip of the steel. - setup helps with good slide tone but it is not necessary to have an extremely high action. Basically I play slide on everything I own and most of my guitars are set pretty low. The resonators are a hair higher but I can still finger fret them. Slightly heavier strings are helpful - normally you will downtune to open G or D (electric players like to go up to A or E, don't do this with an acoustic). I usually use medium acoustic strings on my reso's, lights on the standard acoustics - for most of my slide playing career I made my own wine bottle slides (wouldn't you know I'd make my own). I was given one of these http://www.tribotone.com/slides.html and I've since bought another a bit longer for the 12 string. They are some sort of ceramic over a metal tube, pretty darn expensive but I love the tone and the feel. Here is a friend noodling around on my tricone with a tribotone slide http://vom.infocusreviews.com/index.php?p=play&id=Freeman_Keller/Tricone_mike_bills.mp3 Lots of choices, best is to just start playing with them Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Mikeo Posted October 4, 2015 Members Share Posted October 4, 2015 lately i was listening to muddy waters i can't be sadisfied, found the notes of the main riff by ear, tuned my little parlor to open g tuning and since then i practice to get it right and can't get it out of my mind. i'm unhappy with my dunlop 218 glass bottle neck, its bit too big for my pinky finger, not much, just a little bit so it feels slippy when i play with it, and its too short so it can cover the whole fret board. now there are tons of different bottle necks out there, glass, ceramic, metal, brass, chrome, short, long, wide ends, etc.. whats the pro's and con's of them? i know they should fit the finger you want to play with it, but else? how do different materials compare sound wise? what about different shapes? I'm not a big fan of glass, especially those store bought ones. I have a glass one and a bunch of other metal ones. A piece of copper pipe can be nice ( cut it to size). It's very thing too, or you can get the thicker wall stuff. Lowell George used a Craftsman Socket . You need to play around with different slide and see what ya like best. If the slip off take a piece of Velcro ( the fuzz part) and stick it inside of the slide for a snug custom fit. Metal is brighter than glass and ceramic/porcelain. Find someone that has a kiln and does pottery. Custom make your own. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members t_e_l_e Posted October 6, 2015 Author Members Share Posted October 6, 2015 thx for your replies. yesterday i picked a brass curved one up. the store only had the various dunlops, but i did try all of them which fit on my finger. the heavy thing feels really easier to control. the ceramic they had were all too small for me, but i didn't like them anyhow. a couple of days ago, i was out of the living room and my five year old picked up my parlor guitar from the stand, set on the floor and started playing around. cause of the open g tuning it does not sound so weird when i came back in the room and i handed her the glass bottle neck and showed her how to use it. she seems to enjoying it and i thought to myself, hey even if she still has small fingers and hands, with a bottle neck and an open tuning she could already learn a bit how to play and have fun. she likes her uke, but it is hard to press down the strings and complicated i have a hendrixed right handed dano dc59 reissue, which i love the neck and how it plays, but if you hendrix it the controls are in the way for a lefty some day i will pull the trigger on a lefty dc59 and i had already made the plan when the kids are old enough and they show interest i will offer them the righty for them. seems the time has already come, i re-hendrixed the dano and tuned it to open.g and handed it out to her. first thing she asked was, were to plug in the cable i let her also try it with my line6 spider which just eats dust. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil O'Keefe Posted October 7, 2015 Share Posted October 7, 2015 I've got an original Coricidin bottle that I liberated out of my grandmother's medicine cabinet decades ago and guard very carefully, as well as a couple of reproductions. The original fits my finger better - I wear it Duane Allman style, on my ring finger. They're fairly heavy, which as Freeman said, helps with vibrato and control, but they're not overly huge and weighty like some slides. Their main drawback? The closed end makes it rather hot in there for your finger, and I tend to sweat because of it. I personally prefer the sound (and smoother feel) of glass, but you really do need to check out a few different slides (glass of various types and thicknesses, various brass and steel slides, ceramics, etc.) and see what you like - it's really all about personal preference, just like with string gauges and picks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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