Stevie Ray Vaughans guitar tone was as dry as a San Antonio summer and as sparkling clean as a

Dallas debutante, the product of the natural sound of amps with ample clean headroom.
However, Vaughan occasionally used pedals to augment his sound, mainly to boost the signal,
although he occasionally employed a rotating speaker cabinet and wah pedals for added textural
flair.
Vaughans fierce playing style was the key to his distinctive sound, but it was also very hard on his
equipment, and over the years his amps and pedals were heavily modified to withstand the abuse.
AMPS
1980 Marshall model 4140 Club and Country
Most guitarists with multi-amp rigs will use Fender amps for clean tones and Marshalls for
distortion and overdrive, but Vaughan did the opposite. However, it made sense that he used a
Marshall for clean tones, as his Marshall was a model 4140 Club and Country combo with two 12inch speakers, which was Marshalls version of a Fender Twin Reverb. With 100 watts of output
and a power amp section driven by KT77 tubes, the Club and Country provides more clean
headroom than the typical Marshall design. The amp remained in Vaughans rig until early 1984,
when a Dumble Steel String Singer replaced it.
1964 Fender Vibroverb

The heart and soul of Vaughans live rig for most of the Eighties was a pair of Fender Vibroverb
combos. The Vibroverbs, each featuring a single 15-inch speaker, were the source of Vaughans
cranked-up overdrive tones, and he also used one of the combos to power his Fender Vibratone
rotating-speaker cabinet throughout his career. Introduced in 1963, the Vibroverb was Fenders
first amp with built-in reverb.

Fender initially produced the Vibroverb with two 10-inch speakers and brown Tolex covering, but in
late 1963 the models design switched to a single 15-inch speaker and black Tolex. Vaughan
always assumed that his Vibroverbs were one serial number apart from one another based on the
numbers 5 and 6 on the tube charts, but those are production run numbers and the actual
serial numbers were 36 numbers apart.

Dumble Steel String Singer

Vaughan first discovered the amps of legendary Los Angeles boutique-amp pioneer Alexander
Howard Dumble when recording Texas Flood at Jackson Brownes Downtown Studios in 1982,
using Brownes Dumbleland 300-watt bass amp to record most of the tracks during the sessions.
Impressed with the Dumble amps ability to maintain crystal-clean tone even when subjected to his
aggressive low E string attack, Vaughan custom-ordered a Steel String Singer head, which Dumble
beefed up with 6550 tubes and 150 watts of output instead of the models usual 6L6 tubes and
100 watts. Vaughan usually used his Dumble head with a custom-built 4x12 cabinet loaded with
Electro-Voice speakers.
When delivered in 1984, the Steel String Singer immediately became the main clean amp in
Vaughans rig, earning the King Tone Consoul nickname that Vaughan bestowed upon it.
Vaughan acquired a second Dumble Steel String Singer in 1986.
Mid-Sixties Fender Super Reverb
Before Vaughan bought his Marshall Club and Country
amp, a mid-Sixties blackface Fender Super Reverb was
the source of his clean tone. When Vaughan started
playing increasingly larger venues in 1983, he added a
pair of Super Reverbs to his rig, which he used along
with his Vibroverbs.
Like the Vibroverb, the Super Reverb is powered by two
6L6 tubes and provides 40 watts of output, but because
it has four 10-inch speakers (Vaughan loaded ElectroVoice speakers in his Super Reverb amps) instead of a
single 15-inch speaker it provided the louder clean
headroom Vaughan needed onstage.
Eventually, the Super Reverbs replaced the Vibroverbs
as the source of his onstage overdrive tones, although
Vaughan kept one Vibroverb in his rig exclusively for
driving the Vibratone rotating speaker cabinet. During

his 1990 tour, Vaughan replaced the Super Reverbs with a pair of Fenders newly released 59
Bassman Reissue amps.
Fender Twin Reverb
For his 1985 Japan tour, Vaughan used a pair of Fender Twin Reverb amps (a mid-Sixties 85-watt
blackface model and a late-Seventies 100-watt silverface version with master volume) in place of
his Dumble Steel String Singer head. The Twins disappeared from his rig after that tour, only to
resurface for a brief period in 1987 when they temporarily replaced his Vibroverb combos.
Early Seventies Marshall model 1967 Major Lead
As Vaughans insatiable appetite for power increased, so
did the size of his onstage rig, until 1988, when he
decided to simplify his multi-amp setup by stripping it
down to a pair of high-powered amps: his 150-watt
Dumbles and a 200-watt Marshall Major Lead head.
Vaughan experimented with a variety of speaker
cabinets for the Marshall, including huge 4x15 and 8x10
cabinets designed for bass, before settling on a 4x12
loaded with Electro-Voice speakers like he used with his
Dumbles.
If the Marshall Major lasted through the set (this models
linear design frequently caused intense voltage spikes
that arced across adjacent tube sockets and blew
tubes), Vaughan would use it to perform a raucous
version of Voodoo Child (Slight Return) to close his
set.
In Step session amps
When recording In Step, his last studio album with
Double Trouble, Vaughan had 32 different amps at his
disposal, including a 1962 Fender Twin, a mint original
1959 Fender Bassman, and vintage Fender Harvard and
Magnatone amps, in addition to the Fender Vibroverbs,
Dumble Steel String Singers, and various Fenders and Marshalls he used onstage. When recording
each song, Vaughan experimented with different combinations of amps and settings until he dialed
in the sound he wanted.
EFFECTS
Ibanez Tube Screamer
According to pedal-geek lore, Vaughan was a big fan of the TS808
version of the Ibanez Tube Screamer, but evidence in the form of
stage photos, live videos, insurance documents and customs
declarations reveal that the TS9 version of the Tube Screamer was his
preferred choice from 1982 through most of the Eighties.
Vaughan usually used his TS9 to provide a clean boost to his Fender
Vibroverbs for solos, with the level control all the way up and the drive
control set to relatively low gain.
In 1988, a new Ibanez TS10 Tube Screamer replaced the TS9 in his
pedal board, which Vaughan generally used to generate high-gain
distortion (with both the drive and level controls boosted) that wasnt
otherwise available from his Dumble and Marshall Major rig.

Fender Vibratone
The lush rotating-speaker effects heard on Vaughan tracks like Cold Shot and Couldnt Stand the
Weather were generated by a Fender Vibratone speaker cabinet. Similar to a Leslie Model 16, the
Fender Vibratone is designed for gigging guitarists and features a rugged, roadworthy cabinet
covered in black Tolex.
More importantly, the Vibratone is also designed for use with a standard guitar amp and features a
guitar speaker that emphasizes crucial midrange tones instead of the full-range, two-way woofer
and tweeter speaker array found in most Leslie cabinets. Fender sold the Vibratone from 1967
through 1972, and it is still considered one of the best true rotating speaker effects for guitarists.
Roland SDD-320 Dimension D

Although Vaughan didnt use the Roland Dimension D in his live rig, it was a secret weapon in the
studio, where he often added it to his guitar tracks during mixing. Vaughan first discovered the
Dimension D while mixing his guitar tracks on David Bowies Lets Dance, and he liked how its
subtle chorus effect thickened his guitar sound without changing his natural tone significantly like
other chorus effects frequently do.
The Dimension D was used on the solos to Mary Had a Little Lamb and Pride and Joy on Texas
Flood and most of the solos on Couldnt Stand the Weather. During mixing, Vaughan would add
the Dimension D effects himself via the effects send/return controls on the mixing console.
Vox V846 wah
Vaughans wah pedal of choice was a Vox V846 from the
Sixties that originally belonged to Jimi Hendrix. Jimmie
Vaughan, Stevies brother, acquired the pedal from
Hendrix when Jimmies band shared a bill with the
Experience in Fort Worth. Vaughan owned several other
Vox wah pedals and was allegedly very fond of an early
Seventies version with a Japanese TDK inductor.
Vaughan used the Vox wah on his Hendrix covers and
Telephone Song on the Vaughan Brothers Family
Style, and he famously used two wahs at once to record
Say What.
Dallas-Arbiter Fuzz Face
Vaughan tended to prefer clean tones and natural tubeamp overdrive, but in 1988 he added an original Sixties
Dallas-Arbiter Fuzz Face pedal to his rig when he became obsessed with emulating Jimi Hendrixs
signature sounds.
Unfortunately, the Fuzz Faces germanium transistors were extremely unreliable when exposed to
hot stage lights or the sun during outdoor gigs. Vaughan collected several Fuzz Face pedals, and
he would try several during sound check to choose the one he thought sounded best that
particular day. Eventually, he got tired of the unreliable transistors in his Fuzz Face pedals, so he
had them modified by his amp tech Csar Diaz, who later used the modifications as the basis for
the Diaz Texas Square Face pedal.
Tycobrahe Octavia
Another key effect that Vaughan used to emulate Hendrix tones was
an Octavia fuzz pedal that produces octave-up effects. Vaughan
initially used Roger Mayer Octavia pedals (housed in distinctive
spaceship metal boxes), but when Diaz located three New Old Stock
Tycobrahe Octavia pedals, Vaughan switched to those.
His guitar tech, Rene Martinez, says that Stevie thought the Tycobrahe
pedal produced the best Octavia effect he had ever heard. Vaughan
especially liked how the Octavia sounded when used along with a
Tube Screamer