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While the blues can be played on just about any guitar, there are a few clear favourites. The first is the double-cutaway semi-acoustic. This type of guitar originated with the Gibson ES-335, which is still generally considered by many to be ‘best in class’. These guitars are usually equipped with humbuckers for a warm, fat tone (use the neck pickup), or biting lead at the bridge.
The blues in its many forms is so central to the history of the guitar, that most other major guitar types can be identified with a particular player or style, from Fender’s Stratocaster (Stevie Ray Vaughan, Robert Cray) and Telecaster (Albert Collins) to Gibson’s Les Paul (Gary Moore, Peter Green).
The Complete Acoustic Blues Guitar Lessons
Most blues players prefer amps which preserve the subtleties of the guitar’s natural tone. Many classic blues sounds inhabit the area generally known as ‘crunch’ – that is to say neither fully distorted nor completely clean. Full distortion tends to reduce the guitar’s dynamic range - clipped waveforms are by their nature compressed. Crunch can have quite the opposite effect, as quiet notes tend to sound relatively clean, while playing louder produces more distortion.
Valve combos are popular with blues players who require a degree of subtle, creamy tube distortion, but generally don’t need the volume or want the big bottom end of a stack. A 1x 12” valve combo at high volume is capable of both a wide dynamic range and a broad range of tones.
The blues is not a style characterised by the heavy use of effects. Subtle nuances of tone and dynamics will often be lost in the wash of sound produced by effects popular with rock players, such as delay and chorus. Many world-renowned blues players have setups consisting of little more than a guitar, amp and cable.
Blues Guitar Illustrations, Royalty Free Vector Graphics & Clip Art
Overdrive for blues is achieved using the amp itself, a favourite pedal, or a combination of the two. In this situation, the pedal is usually used as a signal booster - rather than producing distortion itself, the it raises the guitar’s output to a level where distortion is induced in the amp.
Certain effects do lend themselves to the blues style though, particularly if a crossover into ‘psychedelic’ rock is sought. ‘Wah-wah’ has been particularly popular since its possibilities were first explored in the late Sixties by Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton. A wah pedal is essentially a sweepable mid-frequency boost. When placed before overdrive in the signal path, the overall volume boost is often enough to increase the amount of overdrive. In this position, the tone is given a degree of ‘grunt’, compared to placement in an FX loop, where the sound is smoother as the amount of distortion is predetermined by the preamp.
The psychedelic blues boom of the late Sixties was infused with another characteristic sound - the Leslie speaker cabinet. The Leslie’s speakers are not in fixed positions, but instead mounted on motorised arms which rotate the speakers to produce a distinctive ‘watery’ pulsating effect. Apart from their great sound, Leslies are famous for being big, heavy and full of moving parts which can easily malfunction if not maintained very carefully. Fortunately, there are now many pedals which produce similar effects, such as tremolo and ‘vibe’, as well as dedicated Leslie simulators.This site uses cookies to provide and improve your shopping experience. If you want to benefit from this improved service, please opt-in. Cookies Page.
Best Electric Guitars For Blues (2023)
Blues music never quite goes away. It’s been around for more than 100 years and you’ll actually hear many of its elements in all kinds of different
Music, from jazz and pop to heavy metal and rock. If you’ve learnt how to play the electric guitar, chances are you’ve learnt some blues scales and chord progressions in your time!
There’s much more to blues than I, IV, V chord sequences and the pentatonic scale; blues is a feeling that you can convey on whatever instrument you play. Since people started playing it in the southern states of America, the guitar has probably been the most popular instrument on which to play the blues. Whilst I do subscribe to the belief that you can play any kind of music on any guitar, there are certain electric guitars that lend themselves particularly well to playing the blues.
Best Blues Guitars 2021: These Six Strings Have The Blues And They Ain't Bad
Eric Clapton, Rory Gallagher, Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Robert Cray, John Frusciante, John Mayer – they’re all blues players that have used a Strat. Since the 50s, people have been using Fender Strats for their go-to blues guitars. With three single coil pickups and five different configurations, you’ve got many different tonal possibilities, so you can go from bright and chimey on the bridge pickup to warm and thick on the neck pickup. The pickups in a Strat don’t normally have too high an output so keeping your tone clean isn’t a problem. Crank the volume on a valve amp and the sound will start to break up nicely; find that nice in between and that’s where the Strat really shines. The singles coils will work nicely with a fuzz pedal too, if you want to go for that Hendrix style 60s blues rock sound.
There are many different variations of the Strat available but if it’s straight up blues you’re playing, you’ll not go wrong with a Fender American Pro Strat – definitely one of the best guitars for blues available today. The American Special has slightly hotter pickups so if you’re leaning slightly more towards to rockier end of blues then check it out. For more info on the differences between the different American Strats then look here. If you want a cheaper alternative, the Mexican Standard Strat will do a similar job quite nicely, as will a Squier Classic Vibe Strat.
Ok, so we’re getting the big two out of the way first. Along with the Strat, the Gibson Les Paul is one of the most iconic electric guitars ever to have been made. A Les Paul is loaded with a pair of humbucker pickups which are more powerful than single coils so you will get a slighter hotter and louder output. They’re a bit fuller and beefier sounding and have a little more warmth to them. Because the body is made up of nice, thick mahogany, you get plenty of sustain – very handy for when you’re bending those high notes and want them to ring out for as long as possible. Whether you want to play on a clean or distorted sound, a Les Paul will perform fantastically throughout. One thing I do when playing blues with a Les Paul is set the amp up with gain on and turn down the volume on the guitar itself to clean it up. Then, just by carefully adjusting the volume knob on the guitar, you can get a whole load of different sounds, without touching the amp! Loads of the big blues guys do this, Joe Bonamassa especially!
Thomann Online Guides Blues Setup Guitar Setups
The Les Paul is one of the most recognisable guitars around, and is also one of the best guitars for blues. Clapton actually played a Gibson Les Paul in his early days, as did/do Gary Moore, Joe Bonamassa, Billy Gibbons, Paul Kossof, Jimmy Page etc. Some Les Paul players who were inspired by, and grew up learning the blues then went on to make huge movements within the world of rock, such as Slash, Joe Perry and Ace Frehley. So whether it’s laid back blues, blues rock, rock that takes influence from blues – a Les Paul can do it all.
The Gibson Les Paul 2017 Standard has humbuckers that retain enough of that vintage character but with a slighty more contemporary bite – they also have coil splitting capability so you can get them to sound like single coils, just by pulling up one of the knobs. The Les Paul Traditional has a slightly lower output, and is loosely based on the much sought after ’59 models so it makes for a great guitar for the classic blues players. If you want to spend a little less, the Gibson Les Paul Faded and Studio both make for good options, as does an Epiphone Les Paul.
Another humbucker-equipped guitar, although this one instead of being completely solid, has a semi-hollow body. There is a wooden block that runs through the centre of the body but the rest is chambered. This helps the guitar resonate really nicely. When you’re doing chord work, everything rings out really nicely and lead work has a big, full bodied sound to it. The solid block in the middle help retain some of that classic Gibson sustain while the chambering gives you resonance and harmonic richness. If you dial in a lot of distortion, the guitar might start to feedback, but you’ll
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