Chords for Kenny Vaughan Of The Fabulous Superlatives On Flat Wound St

_ _ _ _ _ _ [G] _ [C#] _
_ _ _ [G] _ _ [A] You _
_ _ _ _ [F#] _ _ [D] _ _
[E] _ _ _ [B] know, there's [E] a little bit of dive in it, [D] _ _ _ [D] but it [A] plays.
[Dm] It's just so good.
[F#] _ _ _ [A] It serves me well.
_ _ _ _ _ [C] This _
_ _ [E] _ _ _ _ [D] _ _
[C#] is Nashville Session guitarist Kenny Vaughn,
[F#] currently a member of the fabulous superlative [G] Marty Stewart's backing band.
[G#] And we're at [C] Quad Studios in Nashville at a session for Jim Lauderdale.
[D] And Kenny's going to tell us what he likes about the D'Addario product.
[Em] Well, I love your [Gm] flatwound strings.
[G#] _ _ [Gm] They're my favorites.
I'm kind of a flatwound string [G] aficionado.
I've used every kind ever [C#] made.
I'm back to D'Addario.
Been using them for about,
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ [F] _ uh, Gretches, [Em] Harmonies, this thing,
_ _ [F#] _ made by [A] Floyd of [C#m] Nashville.
Why [G] would someone want to put flatwounds on [C#m] a telly?
Well, Luther Perkins used them, [B] you know.
_ _ [G#] _ _ _ [Gm] _ _
And it's just a whole different [G] sound, you know.
It opens up a whole new _ _ range of possibilities, you know.
It's a sonic difference.
Especially when you're playing clean, you know.
Things lay in tracks [Gm] different when they're flatwound.
They're just a different [D] voice altogether, you know.
Both on the treble pickup [G] and the neck pickup.
And, you know, all the different settings you get a different, uh,
you know, just sounds different.
They sit in the mix differently.
Things come out different, you know.
It's great for [N] certain types of parts.
You never know.
_ And you use it with distortion?
What happens under distorted sound?
What happens to a flatwound?
Well, once you get to a certain level,
everything disappears and just becomes distortion, you know.
But when in the early [C#] stages,
you can still kind of detect the difference, you know.
But [Cm] mostly in the clean, [F] cleaner things, [C#] you hear the difference.
[D#] So all that classic rockabilly, the sun stuff,
rock and roll trio, that's pretty much flatwounds?
Probably.
You know, flatwounds were kind of a rage in the 50s.
I think that they weren't used before that as far as I know.
You know, they didn't use them on acoustic guitars.
You know, none of the dance band guys used them on their archtops.
And people sort of equate them with jazz players
like Johnny Smith and Jim Hall and, you know,
Tal Farlow, guys like that.
Definitely West Montgomery, you know.
That's a flatwound sound.
Flatwounds on a spruce top, real clean, you know,
playing that _
_ _ _ [C] _ kind of thing, [Em] you know.
So, _ but I'm pretty sure guys like [D] Mickey Baker and, _
[C#] you know,
[E] Roy Nichols and _ [A#] _
who else?
[C] Luther, he always used them for sure.
I know that because [A#] Marty has all his guitars
and he's never changed anything.
And he even has the old strings that he took off,
he wound them back [F#] up and put them in the pack
and put them back in the case.
So he probably didn't [A#] use, [G] probably didn't change any of the strings
on his [B] guitar very many times because every time they went to California,
[C#m] Leo gave him a new guitar.
[D] And so that's why you see him with, you know,
the different tallies and the Esquire.
And then he [B] switches to the Jazzmaster.
And then the last guitar he used was the Red Jaguar.
You know, and I guess it was just every time he went out there,
he said, well, here's my newest guitar, Luther, you know.
Apparently Leo really liked Luther.
But they all had flatwounds on them.
And [F] now flatwounds, being [F#] flatwounds,
do they just last longer because there's no way [C#] for dirt to get in them?
They don't, they [B] age differently, [N] you know.
They're already kind of dead sounding, you know.
So they don't lose their brilliance like roundwounds do.
You know, you don't notice it as much.
I change them because they get fret marks in them.
Like on the D string and the G string, they'll get_
_ [G] _ _ _ _ So now, let's say your average producer in a [F#] session like today,
you're doing some Jim [F] Lauderdale stuff,
and you've worked with him a lot, and you probably know what he likes.
Would someone ever ask you, do you have a guitar with flatwounds?
Are they that savvy about it?
Or would someone ask you to [B] give them that you would reach for [G] a flatwound guitar?
Oh, you know, it works really good for like _ low string melodic [B] things.
Like if I'm trying to imitate Richard Bennett, I'll sometimes do that.
Although he doesn't use flatwounds, he uses roundwounds.
But he always plays on the neck pickup only.
Even his Strat, he plays on the neck pickup only.
It's like, my God, I've never used the bridge pickup.
_ On a [G] 6120 either?
No, no, never used it.
You could take it off and he wouldn't know it.
You could disconnect it and he'd never know.
So he's getting his tone by moving up and down.
The only guitar I know that he uses the bridge pickup on is his Tele.
And I've seen him use that quite a bit.
But as for his Strat [B] and his 6120, now [A] he's_
_ _ [F#] _
George Harrison, was those flatwounds?
Was that what we were hearing on the Gretches?
Do we know?
I [E] would say that, yeah.
I would say.
It sounds like it to me.
[G#] Although I'm sure by like 1967, they probably had switched to roundwound.
But I'm not really [B] sure.
They probably didn't really [N] know much about that stuff.
And they probably used whatever their tech had brought in from the music store.
_ I don't think that they really cared.
So maybe that's why he couldn't bend his G-string too good in the early days?
Right.
And even when he got hip to the American guys
that were changing their G-string to a plain,
he probably was just experimenting around to see what he could get.
Depending on what music store they were at and whatever.
When it got to where he couldn't go to music stores anymore,
he probably whatever_
What was his name?
Mal, I guess.
Mal Evans.
Probably whatever he bought.
So it probably wasn't until they started mingling with a lot of the London guys
and the nightclubs in like 65 and 66 that they started figuring out
that there was more specialized things you could be doing.
Especially when Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix hit the scene.
It was probably when they really started thinking about their tones.
[F] _ _
_ I know [B] that they _ probably got the Strats in what?
65?
Late 65?
Nowhere Man's a Strat.
Yeah.
And I was just reading in that Beatles recording book
that John Lennon played the Strat a lot more than I thought he did [D#] on track.
_ _ _ [A] _
I think he used his [F] quite a bit.
But you never see him playing it in pictures, but apparently he did.
_ [C#m] Give us a little something to play us out. _ _
[C#] Okay. _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ [F#] _ _ _