Jimmie Vaughan
Jimmie Vaughan is one of our all time favorite guitar players. For us he defines the style of Texas blues with his passion for style, tone, timing, haircut, rythm, everything! His music and unique playing style is recognized by a growing audience who has gotten tired of all the new fast playing blues rockers. You’ve heard many of those who plays fast and loud, have learned all the licks but just throw them around with no sense for timing. For Jimmie it’s all about less is more. A lot of great musicians have invited him to play on their albums and concerts. You owe yourself to listen to Jimmie’s guitar on John Lee Hooker’s Boom Boom on the album with the same name. Texas blues guitar meets Chicago blues at its very best. Few can put together a guitar shuffle like Jimmie Vaughan and make the guitar sound so cool and real together with bass and drums. His signature tone is recognizable in just a few notes. It is not just what you play, but what you don’t play. There are similarities to the style of T-Bone Walker where you need to stay away from hard bending, intense shaking, long notes, funky chords and jazz scales. Stick to the basics. Never try to sound like anyone else, just do what you’re supposed to do.
Amps
Jimmie’s amp tone is not very unlike his younger brother’s, but it’s stripped from effects and has minimal or no reverb. The tone is more mellow and creamier with more mids. It’s more of a brownface tone, and not the scooped blackface character. Due to Jimmie’s playing style, involving mostly single strings and no pick, his tone appears to be clean and clear. But in fact there is a lot of tube amp distortion. You can hear it once he plays a chord involving several strings. The early TBirds albums were recorded with Fender Bassman, among several amps. You could therefore seek amps with 10″ speaker configurations (Bassman, Super Reverb, Vibrolux, Vibro-King++) where the speakers are of vintage type; meaning low wattage, uncolored, smooth, warm, snappy and firm lows. Low wattage 10s are very touch sensitive and dynamic, which is what you need when playing with your fingers with the guitar plugged right into the amp. You could aim for Jensen P10R, Eminence Legend Alnico, vintage CTS and those kind of speakers..
Jimmie’s tone require mostly that you push the amp hard into both power amp and preamp distortion. The Fender Bassman has no negative feedback loop resulting in more power amp breakup and a rawer tone with highs and mids. It is worth trying to lower the amp’s clean headroom opposite to increasing it (as for SRV). This can i.e. be done with 12AX7 phase inverter tube and higher impedance in speakers than in OT. Increasing the preamp gain by pulling V1 and disconnecting the tremolo circuit will also give you a thicker and creamier tone. Hot pickups are good since they push the preamp section hard, and as mentioned earlier you need to match the guitar to the amp and experiment with the EQ controls and bright switch. Turning the bright switch off will most likely bring you closer to a Jimmie Vaughan tone rather than having it on, but this depends a lot on your guitar and speakers.
Fingers
We’re not focusing on playing techniques on this site. However, this is essential when playing in the style of Jimmie Vaughan. Using a capo and fingers in stead of a pick are main ingredients in his signature licks. When using a pick, i.e.on a twelve bar shuffle in A or E, one should try to rest the right hand on the tremolo bridge while attacking the strings over the bridge pup. He often uses the middle or bridge pickup and rarely the neck pickup, but when he does he offers a serious sounding tone.
Here is a video demonstrating a texas shuffle inspired by Jimmie Vaughan:
Here is another, the solo of Wait on time:
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HI
Great videos! I use a 57 vintage reissue strat through a 59 bassman ltd. I get an ok sound but not as “fat” as you get here…any tips for me?
Thanks
Andy
Andy,
I have a 59 bassman reissue (1998) and I use a Fulltone OCD effects pedal (Volume = 12 o’clock, Tone = 12′ o’clock, Drive = 9 o’clock) and it sounds great/fat to me. I only use the pedal with the bassman. That’s just my personal opinion. You can change the settings of course (something you can go by). Have fun!
Rudy
Thanks Rudy, I’ll check it out
Andy
Andy,
You’re welcome! Since I got that effects pedal, I’ve been playing my bassman a little more than my other amps! I go back and fourth, but when I want to hear that fat tone I go with the bassman; not saying my Super and Twin Reverb (which are great) don’t do the same. It’s just a different tone from the Blackface amps and I’ve tried (just curious to see how it’ll sound) that effects pedal with the blackfaces and it doesn’t produce the same tone as the bassman. So, when I play my Super and Twin I stick with the TS-808 and TS-9. Sorry for the short story, I just figured the more information you have the better you’ll be off! You know, you might have someone else say they like another type of effects pedal or no effects pedal for the bassman. I forgot to say, you have to play with your settings for the amp too! Let me know how it turns out,
Rudy
Interesting disussion. I remember fooling around with a super reverb and vibro-king to nail Jimmie’s tone on the earlier TBirds albums, especially his tone on Can’t tear it up enuff. On that song it sounds like they recorded his amp inside a submarine through a Leslie cabinet. After fooling around with the amps I discovered that the right hand technique was also cruical to achieve this tone. He hits the strings between the bridge and bridge pickup, sometimes even closer to the bridge. This produces the raw piano-like sound.
- Jens.
Hi Jens
Apparently Jimmie used to use a bassman through a Fender Vibratone to get that leslie sound. At least I read that on the net somewhere….don’t know how true it is!
Andy
I kind of like the sound of the guitar straight into the amp without any pedals but to get that “sweet” spot I have to have the volume up around 4 – 5 which the band tell me is too loud! I tried to replicate the tone with my maxon od9 pedal at a lower volume but it’s not the same. I might try the fulltone and see if it’s any better…..thanks for the tip.
Is that you playing on the video by the way?
Andy
That’s cool, I just had a hard time finding that sweet tone at higher volumes with band members telling me it’s too loud also!! LOL! Well, hope you find that tone. But let me know how that Fulltone pedal sounds to you!
-R
Hi there,
ive been a guitar nerd for a few years now but only recently started looking for the blues. I have been watching the video I mentioned religiously and ive worked a few things out but not my favourite parts.
I stumbled upon your site via your T birds wait on time solo that you have uploaded into YouTube and if I may say so you nailed it man! im quite fresh on the blues scene but im having loads of fun learning new things
I cant find anything like your video anywhere else on the net, I was wondering if you have this written down somewhere and if so I’d be very very appreciative if you would email it me.
Thanks for your time
Lewis Spear Age 20 UK.
“His music and unique playing style is recognized by a growing audience who has gotten tired of all the new fast playing blues rockers.”
AMEN to that.
Jimmie is an absolute monster in timing and phrasing, not enough people in the world recognize that. Very often I get arguing with people considering him “just the untalented brother of SRV”. Probably they think so because he doesn’t uleashes 2000 notes in two seconds and never overplays like his brother did, and when they get to this point I just quit because it’s just a waste of time. Apparently the boring rockblues players erased from their musical vocabulary what makes exciting the blues: you rarely hear people playing a shuffle with a laidback feeling, few people can really swing when they play, and nearly nobody knows the meaning of the word “pause”. Jimmie is a hero just for that.