Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

I know this sort of thing has probably been discussed a million times but the forum has been quiet lately so here goes.
I got a 330/6....a Vox AC30VR.....Janglebox original and a fairly decent right hand.....I want to sound like early Peter Buck/Johnny Marr.....I love the Ric Jangle, whether it be The Byrds or a more dreamy type jangle, (i.e. Rems Talk about the Passion and Murmur in general.)
What else would you say I need?? (chorus, delay, reverb, etc)

I wouldn't say you needed anything else. If I may ask, what do you think is lacking?

Nothing really, I'm quite happy with my sound but always open to suggestions from more experienced players. I think it's probably in the nature of most players to keep trying new things, pushing to sound better/more complete.

You need six more strings!

fabandgear wrote:You need six more strings!

Agreed but I got hands that sweat acid or something!!....usually have to replace my strings every 2-3 weeks and it's bad enough with 6 strings let alone 12 Would have to go for a 660 as well and that would cost $$££

Hi David,

At the risk of sounding redundant, after multitudes of threads talking about how to achieve Peter Buck's sound, I have one small piece of advice. If you're not already using big strings on your Ric, you should consider 11's, 12's or 13's. The reason is, that to imitate or replicate Peter Buck's early sound, you need to create a certain resistance which only can come from using bigger, stiffer strings. Specifically, Peter Buck does a lot of fast string-skipping arpeggios on the early records (I would call them "circular arpeggios," for lack of a better term) and these can only be approached with heavier strings.

Peter Buck was the first great Rickenbacker player who influenced me, and I did a pretty good job emulating his early style on a Gibson J-35 acoustic strung with 13's. I've tried playing the early R.E.M. stuff on all manner of Rickenbackers at music stores and guitar shows, and when the guitars are strung with .010's, there just isn't enough resistance from the strings to play the fast circular arpeggios that Peter Buck is famous for.

Robert

I find the opposite to be true. I have 12's on my acoustic and I find it hard to appregio with them and have to stick to strumming. On the 10's I find running the pick through the strings much easier. Peter Buck is a big strong guy with big hands and probably finds using the 13's better for him. I wouldn't say it's essential for his sound though.... John Hall once said that he found Peter Bucks guitar very difficult to play as it had a very high action as well as the heavier strings. On the other hand, Roger McGuinn likes the action to be as low as possible and uses 10's. These are preferences for ease of playability and not sound. My ease of playability (and 95% of my style is appregio/picking) is to use the lighter string gauge

david/wales/u.k wrote:I find the opposite to be true. I have 12's on my acoustic and I find it hard to appregio with them and have to stick to strumming. On the 10's I find running the pick through the strings much easier. Peter Buck is a big strong guy with big hands and probably finds using the 13's better for him. I wouldn't say it's essential for his sound though.... John Hall once said that he found Peter Bucks guitar very difficult to play as it had a very high action as well as the heavier strings. On the other hand, Roger McGuinn likes the action to be as low as possible and uses 10's. These are preferences for ease of playability and not sound. My ease of playability (and 95% of my style is appregio/picking) is to use the lighter string gauge

One of the reasons Peter Buck can handle such heavy strings is that, at least on the early R.E.M. stuff, he doesn't do much string-bending. I'm curious as to how you can possibly play "Pretty Persuasion" with skinny strings. I've found that to do that string-skipping really rapidly as Peter does, I need stiff strings and a stiff pick. As for Roger McGuinn's string gauge choices vs. Peter's, we're talking apples and oranges, 12-string and 6-string. (I doubt Peter ever used anything heavier than a .10 set on his 360/12. My advice just refers to his ubiquitous Jetglo 360/6.)

Yea you're right in that the comparison wasn't like for like (6 as opposed to 12 strings) but then you had Johnny Marr using 10's when he played in The Smiths ( He uses Ernie ball 11's now ) and his style and sound was very similar to Peter Buck. It's horses for courses in my opinion