EQUIPMENT:

My main guitar is a 1981 Gibson ES-335. It still has the original trapeze tail-piece, which really makes the guitar ring differently. It also allows me to use heavier strings: D'Addario strings XL-J21 (012-052 gauge). The frets are Dunlop 6100 size.

I like practicing or just playing around the house on a nylon string guitar. I play either my 1990 Ovation Classical or a Vicente Sanchis Badia Flamenco. Both have D'Addario Pro-Arte EJ46 Hard Tension strings.

After keeping an unrevealed (but large...) number of amps around, I finally narrowed it down to two: the "bigger one" is a Fender Vibrolux Reverb, and the "smaller one" is a Fender Princeton Reverb. Both are "silver-faced" and from the early '70s.

I use different brands of picks, but all are of the Standard 351 shape. I like Fender's X-Heavy or Heavy, Dunlop's Ultex 1.14 or 1.00, and D'Andrea's Ultra-Plec. I no longer use any effects, and find that using different pick gauges and materials can satisfactorily add variety to the tone. Another plus is that I don't feel too dependent on using just one type of picks anymore...

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