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The Wrecking Crew was mostly Teles, P and J basses, Carol Kaye's jazzmaster (not sure how many sessions it was on), and Gibson archtops and hollowbodies. I don't recall seeing any Gretsches in the pics floating around the internet, but it's possible. Jimmy Johnson played mostly Gretsch and eventually Tele on Muscle Shoals stuff, however. That's all I can think of for Gretsch in those studio/on-call bands.

I'm not saying this to be "internet nit-picky" but I've seen studio pics that show a lot more Epiphone arch tops than Gibsons. (The only reason I say this is because I'm a long time Epiphone nut and it made an impression on me that I would see so many of them in pics and relatively few Gibsons)

Carol Kaye was "famous" for playing an Epiphone Emperor and it's most notable appearance is probably on "You've Lost that Loving Feeling".

Also regarding Carol's Jazzmaster I believe she played it on The Beach Boys' "Salt Lake City". That's a Jazzmaster playing the intro.

Also on a lot of wrecking crew sessions were the Danelectro Bass VI.

Yes, you're right. I just lumped them into the Gibson camp, kind of unfairly. And HUGE oversight on the Dano 6 String bass. That's on everything, including Wichita Lineman (Glen played the solo on Carol's, from what I understand).

I actually just got my Dano Baritone set up as a 6 string bass for Wrecking Crew reasons.

I hear that Kerry King exclusively uses Rics in the studio.

mackerelmint wrote:I hear that Kerry King exclusively uses Rics in the studio.

He's a HUGE Fender Acoustisonic fan as well. His trademark sound.

sirjeremy wrote: ... Lately I've been studying surf stuff and I, for the life of me, can't replicate the tone of a lot of these guys. Ventures specifically. I know they used Strats in part, but I feel like there's something about JMs and Jags that just makes a difference. Then again my Strat is decked. So my Strat prob doesn't even match THEIR Strat setup.

Well, FWIW, Dick Dale, the King of Surf Guitar, uses a Strat, though IMO most surf guitarist go with a Jag, and a good many others go with a JM. A few things will get you there: heavier gauge strings (like, .12 and up), palm muting, outboard reverb tank (a must, IMO), and a tube amp that gives you lots of clean headroom. Getting good at palm muting and double picking is essential. Good luck with the surfing!

mackerelmint wrote:I hear that Kerry King exclusively uses Rics in the studio.

A band I used to play in, when I was setting up/warming up I used to play either angel of death or raining blood on my JM for Lolz.

Didn't sound half bad through the Marshall stack I was using at the time.

I think in general how much guitars matter has changed drastically over the last 10-15 years.

It used to be you needed certain guitars and amps to invoke a certain gain structure or certain sound. Like in the 60's - surfers like the Jazzmaster because it overdrove the inefficient amps of the period and slammed the reverb springs hard without losing that twangy brightness, that crystalline twang. Then Mosrite came along with something similar with a little more push to it. 70's Dino rockers needed a Les Paul and a Marshall because back then a Marshall was basically a non-footswtichable amp that could be misconstrued by a modern day guitarist as being single channel - and you needed a big loud 8.4K humbucker to drive the Marshall into distortion. That's how that whole cliche of pissing off your neighbors with an electric guitar came about. That's why Seymour Duncan, DiMarzio, EMG, all came along and made even more powerful pickups - to drive those amps into distortion. That's why boosters, overdrives, distortion pedals, and whatnot came around. To get the aesthetic you wanted sonically, it required a certain guitar into a certain amp. And there was no internet or instant access information to debunk any myths or learn how it all works either - go ask a sound technology "expert" and they'll ask you why you want to research that "stupid jungle music sound" - ask a musician, and then you'd get an earful of what started the whole "Mojo" and "Tone" thing.

Nowadays, your average high gain amp has so much gain your garden variety Tele, Stratocaster, Jaguar, or Jazzmaster can drive it into super saturation with little effort. And then it just becomes a question of how fast you can flick that volume knob to keep the hum away...but oh wait, now they have noise gates that block THAT out really well. And you don't even really need an amp anymore, a lot of venues I've played in recent years are cool with plugging into the P.A. system. I've done that before with my Behringer V-Amp when that was still alive, and with my Digitech board, and all of them worked out great live. I don't need 5 amps to have 5 different tones, I can just program it into some handy dandy little thing and go direct, or use whatever amp is on the backline if I want to. Though I still prefer my Bugera because it has the ideal sound I had in my head for years.

Most people who still hold onto the idea that you need this or that to play XX music are genereally just being judgemental pricks, or are so out of touch with current guitar technologies they have no idea what one can do with what is out there now.

That's kind of why my guitar buying has tapered off in recent years, I'm happy with my Jaguar, Jazzmaster, Jag-Stang, Paul Dean, Tele, and armada of Strats, and that new Mad-Rite I built, and to be honest, I could really whittle it down to 3-5 guitars if I really wanted to and did not enjoy the stupid excess of owning so much stuff (I actually do have some "whittling" of the strats and some project builds/restorations in the future actually). I could really survive with just my Jag-Stang and Jaguar if I really wanted to thin it down to what I actually NEED to get all the sounds I want.

Of course, you can just get one of those Line 6 Variax guitars and call it a day. I kid, I kid...