Raising The Tone - Stringing Along

In the first of a series on strings and their influence on tone, editor Jamie meets blues-rock heavyweight Philip sayce

- Jamie Dickson

If you’ve ever seen Philip Sayce perform live, you’ll know just how ferociously he attacks the instrument, leaning into giant bends and setting off avalanches of cascading licks during his virtuosic solos. So who better to kick off a series of articles on strings and tone than Sayce – who must surely be one of the world’s most demanding players when it comes to tone, durability and feel? Sayce is best known as a Strat player, so we kick things off by asking what his go-to choice of strings is…

“I use D’Addario strings and I pivot between 11s and 10s; 0.011 to 0.054 or 0.010 to 0.054,” he explains. “And really that just depends on how many shows we’re doing, depending on how things feel. If you play five or six shows in a row, and you’ve been playing hard, by that sixth show you might be feeling like, ‘Man, I’m getting a little tired,’ and that’s just reality. And I think listening to your body is really important.

“One of the things I’ve noticed is that people don’t talk about injuries in guitar playing very much. But it’s a real thing, man. Especially if you’re following in the footsteps of somebody who’s a heavy blues player with a lot of bending, a lot of vibrato – and you’re in that world, getting things like bigger frets and figuring out what is the right fit for your body makeup. Not everybody has hands as strong as Stevie Ray Vaughan, right?” says Sayce.