Vaughan's guitars and musical equipment
Vaughan's main guitars were
Fender Stratocasters. His most famous was a sunburst 1962 Strat with a Brazilian
rosewood veneer fingerboard fretted with Dunlop 6100 Jumbo fretwire; it had 1962 stamped on the neck and body, but 1959 written on the
pickups leading Vaughan to mistakenly believe it was assembled in 1962 from 1959 parts. On this particular guitar, he also had a left-handed
tremolo installed. He had it installed, most likely due to Jimi Hendrix's influence on his playing style. This guitar was known as Number One. It had a D-shaped thick neck that was perfect for his large hands and thick fingers. It possessed a deep, dark growl of a tone that was immediately identifiable. The guitar also had a prismatic sticker just below the bridge with the word "Custom" in script letters. This sticker was given to Vaughan by a friend soon after he bought it in 1973. It should be noted Vaughan was given this guitar, known as Number One, as a gift by notable guitarist,
Austinite and music shop owner Ray Henning, of
Ray Henning's Heart of Texas Music. Vaughan also had some custom-made stick-on plastic letters reading "SRV" on one of the body cavities. Even though Number One used all stock Fender Strat parts, about the only original parts it possessed by 1990 were the body and the pickups. Over the years, Vaughan and Rene Martinez, his guitar tech, replaced the pickguard, tremolo, and neck. The guitar was meticulously examined by Fender Custom Shop workers to gather specifications for a run of 100 exact copies in early 2004. The pickups were never overwound purposely, but were from a batch of pickups made at Fender in 1959 that had been overwound by mistake, producing Number One's distinctive sound. The neck was damaged during a stage accident, and a spare was used from another of Vaughan's Stratocasters. After he died, the original neck was put back on and the guitar was given to his brother.
The actual Stevie Ray Vaughan signature model (first introduced in 1992) is modeled after SRV's original guitar. This American-made Artist Signature Strat features an early ’60s “oval” neck shape, pao ferro fingerboard with 21 jumbo frets, three Fender Texas Special single-coil pickups, gold-plated hardware, inverted left-hand vintage tremolo unit and distinctive “SRV” pickguard. Few rare examples made during the first year of production were available with a Brazilian rosewood neck.
Lenny was a 1965 maple-neck that was named after his wife, Lenora. It had a very bright, thin sound and had a hollowed out sound due to the fact that the guitar was hollowed out to fit 4 humbuckers. Supposedly, Vaughan found this guitar in a pawnshop, but couldn't afford to buy it. One of Vaughan's roadies, Byron Barr, bought it and he and Lenora presented it to Vaughan for his birthday in 1976. According to the story, Lenora was supposed to pay Byron for the guitar; she started a pool party with her friends to collect the money, but it was Vaughan who eventually settled the debt, with cash and a leather jacket. Its neck was originally a thin rosewood, but Vaughan replaced it with a thicker non-Fender maple neck, that was given to him by friend Billy Gibbons. Lenny can be seen and heard on "Live at the
El Mocambo". He played it sometimes at the end of the set during the encore, playing the song of the same name,
Lenny. Vaughan also used the guitar during the song "Riviera Paradise", this can also be seen and heard on the
DVD "Live From Austin Texas". After his divorce from his wife and the meeting of the new love in his life, Janna Lapidus, he started calling this guitar "Scotch". Despite other information from various sources, this shouldn't be confused with the butter-colored guitar, as described below. The
Fender Custom Shop is currently making replicas for this guitar, coming out on December 12, 2007.
The 1961 butter-colored Strat was bought by Vaughan in the fall of 1985. He gave away another guitar and bought this piece. It was all stock except for the tiger-striped pickguard, made by Rene Martinez. He usually used this guitar on the song "Leave My Girl Alone".
Charley was a custom-made Stratocaster built for him by the late Charley Wirz, a friend and owner of Charley's Guitar Shop in Dallas, Texas. It was made for Vaughan in late 1983, but had a neck plate with the engravement "More In '84". It had three Danelectro
lipstick tubes and it had a hardtail bridge. The guitar was also rewired with 1 tone knob and 1 volume. This guitar was said by Vaughan to have a lot of "bite" in the guitar's tone.
Red was a 1962 Strat bought in late 1983 at Charley's Guitar Shop. The finish was originally sunburst, but was repainted fiesta red. In 1986, a left-handed neck was installed on this guitar to emulate the sound and feel of
Jimi Hendrix.
Main was a custom-made Hamiltone Strat given to Vaughan as a gift from
Billy Gibbons of
ZZ Top on
April 29, 1984. The guitar was originally supposed to be made in 1979 with "Stevie Vaughan" inlayed with mother-of-pearl in the fingerboard. The plan was crushed when Vaughan started using his middle name. It had cream-colored plastic binding around the body and neck. It was also constructed of 2-piece maple wood and originally had white EMG pickups, an onboard preamp, and Gibson-style "bell" knobs. For the making of the
Couldn't Stand The Weather music video, Vaughan used Main instead of Number One. He said that he didn't want to ruin the circuitry in his "first wife" and didn't like the tone in "Main". Byron Barr, Vaughan's guitar tech at the time, rewired it with a standard Strat system. The guitar also had a jazzy and jangly-type tone.
Butter was the original yellow Strat originally owned by Vince Martell of Vanilla Fudge. It was Vince who donated it to Charley's Guitar Shop. They painted it yellow and Vaughan bought it in 1981. It had a 'swimmingpool' route for four humbuckers. Despite this, it only had a neck single-coil pickup, controlled by one volume knob and one tone knob. The guitar was stolen from him in 1985 and never recovered.
Vaughan also played a guitar made by deceased Minneapolis, MN, luthier, Roger Benedict. A semi-hollow, Alder-built guitar called the Groove Master was a model of choice for Vaughan. It is a seafoam-green Stratocaster-shaped guitar with three lipstick pickups.
Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jimmie Vaughan owned and played a custom Stratocaster-shaped double-neck guitar named "Family Guitar", built by
Robin Guitars of Houston, Texas. This guitar had two maple necks, each with a different scale length and a pointy "drooped"-style reversed headstock with locking machine heads and was equipped with Rio Grande single-coil pickups. The latter is tuned an octave higher than a standard guitar, producing a sharper sound similar to that of a mandolin. Both have also occasionally used a Danelectro guitar/bass double-neck with lipstick pickups during various live performances worldwide.
In total, Vaughan owned 34 guitars throughout his career.
Jimmie Vaughan has possession of all of his brother's guitars, save for the only one released to the public, Lenny. It was sold in the Eric Clapton guitar auction for more than $600,000.
Around early 1985, his pedal board consisted of an
Ibanez TS9 Tube Screamer,
MXR Loop Selector, Vox Wah-Wah, and the Fender Vibratone's footswitch.
His amps around this time were 2 black-face Fender Vibroverbs,
Fender Vibratone, Fender Super Reverb, a blackface and silverface Twin Reverb.
In a recent publication of Guitar World, they revealed a Soldano SLO-100 amp head that Vaughan commissioned before he died. Mike Soldano built Vaughan a customized SLO-100 after repairing a few of Stevie's amps. Stevie told Mike that he was not happy with the fact that he had to crank his amps to such high volume and use pedals in order to get his overdriven tones. Soldano offered to build an amp for Stevie that would allow him to get his tones from the amp without any overdrive or distortion pedals. The amp that Soldano ended up giving Stevie was a customized SLO-100 with a switch that would cut mid frequencies after 700 Hz. The amp was delivered to Stevie a few months before his death. Stevie never had enough time to fully incorporate the new amp into his rig. The amp was returned to Soldano since it was never paid for and therefore not part of Vaughan's estate. Mike Soldano currently keeps the amp in his shop.