Holy monkeynuts, what a difference!

[Dr. Scottie C]

Yeah but we dont actually know if its 7 or 8' s. That just sounds like your assumption.

 

Whole interview is awesome.... but go to 4:00 for the string gauge talk.

 

 

 

[knotty]

 

Whole interview is awesome.... but go to 4:00 for the string gauge talk.

 

 

Fair enough.

 

I would be interested to see what the bottom strings are in that set. The ones on the mojo maker seem pretty hefty to me?

He uses 7's and hes never broken a string? Hmmmm.

edit,, just seen, label says 7 to 38. They look heavier, though its hard to tell.

 

what pick does he use?

[knotty]

 

We don't.... but Gibbons guitar tech has vids on youtube saying "extremely light gauge strings, 8's or lighter.....in various tunings"...... and Gibbons has his own signature 7 gauge strings on the market.......so we can probably safely assume they are not 11's.....wouldn't you agree?

 

Yep I would agree. I am just a bit wary of internet facts so like to see the evidence. Wasnt being funny.

[WRGKMC]

7's tuned down to C? I'm calling BS without proof.

 

Nope, its true. I'm not sure what he uses now but years back everybody used light gauges. I hear he used 8's not 7's from a buddy of mine that knows him. 8'a were the most popular gauge during the 70's. Some used 7's but they broke so easily. Its like playing a guitar with rubber bands on there. You could bend all 6 strings at the same time and get some cool effects happening

 

 

I used to use 8's all the time. I bought some 8.5's recently and tried to play on them and it was like flab city. I was stumbling all over the place using them and I couldn't get the speed and dynamics I needed without major flubs. I can say it does make recordings more interesting however.

 

When I track one guitar with heavier gauges strings then the other, mixing the parts changes quite a bit. The guitar with the lighter strings is pushed back into the mix more which can be good on some stuff. You don't need a guitar that's in your face on every song. There's a certain amount of things you can do to reduce that presence, but just having it reduces from the beginning can lower the amount of processing needed with plugins and actually give you better results.

 

Like anything, if you move to heavier or lighter gauges, you have to readapt your playing skills. For me, going down in gauge caused an issue with my right hand digging in too much. I was used to digging in hard to get the correct note dynamics. I wound up strumming too hard for the strings too, but certain stuff sounded really cool once you got used to them. You could play for hours and not have sore fingers too. Guess gauges aren't as big an issue for me as some. I don't think twice about switching from a bass, acoustic, short or long scale guitars with different gauges. I just adapt my playing skills to whatever I have in hand. If it doesn't fit what I want to play, I pick up a different instrument.

[Steve2112]

Yeah but we dont actually know if its 7 or 8' s. That just sounds like your assumption.

 

Pretty minor quibble that looks likes it been addressed...but point being they are VERY light strings. Does it really matter 7 or 8? {shrug}

[knotty]

Wasn't a quibble. The post I responded to said he used 7 or 8's I just used the same term. I wasn't questioning which of the 2 he used. I just wanted to know if we had confirmation they were v light. We have.

[gdsmithtx]

The EPI Dots come from the factory with 11's and they do play quite well with them. Part of its the wide slim neck. They have a lot stronger pickup output with them for sure. I never found that much of an issue with the amps I use however.

 

I used mine that way for about 3 years and then I noticed the body top beginning to separate from the wood block up near the neck.

11's have allot of string pull and between that and the high humidity the plywood began to unglue. I epoxied and clamped it when I did

find the issue and went down in string gauge and the issue hasn't progressed any more since then. The heavy strings played hell with the truss rod too.

 

Dots do use budget materials and aren't built as well as an ES335's but they do give pretty good tones with the right strings. I put all GHS nickel strings on mine last week and it went from sounding metallic to a much mellower tone yet still very clear sounding.

 

I live in Houston (high humidity coming up for the next several months), so I'll have to keep an eye on that separating thing. My fingers have improved quite a bit in the past couple of days, and I'm still really in love with the sound, so I'm sticking with it on the Dot.