Stevie Ray Vaughan's guitar strings: the Number One Strat rig, sourced

Stephen "Stevie Ray" Vaughan (October 3, 1954, Dallas, Texas, August 27, 1990, East Troy, Wisconsin, helicopter crash) was the lead guitarist, vocalist, and primary songwriter for Double Trouble, the Austin-based blues-rock trio that broke through with Texas Flood (1983) and reshaped American electric blues for a generation. His five studio records, plus the posthumous Family Style (with his brother Jimmie) and The Sky Is Crying compilation, define the canonical Texas-blues sound of the 1980s.

He's the most-cited modern blues guitarist in any "greatest guitarist" list, both for his technical fluency (the Texas Flood solo, the Couldn't Stand the Weather shuffle, the live Riviera Paradise improvisations) and his role in pulling the major-label industry's attention back to electric blues at a moment when blues was commercially marginal. He died at 35, four hours after a benefit show in East Troy, Wisconsin.

GHS Nickel Rockers in a custom heavy set: .013, .015, .019 plain, .028, .038, .058, always tuned a half step down to Eb standard. The plain unwound .019 third string is the unusual gauge configuration; most .013 sets ship with a wound third. The plain third bends like an unwound string but rings with single-coil clarity, part of the distinctive Number One Strat tone.

His primary instrument was Number One, a hybrid 1962/63 Stratocaster picked up at Ray Hennig's Heart of Texas Music in Austin in 1973. Alder body (1963), rosewood-fretboard neck (1962-style), pickguard engraved with "SRV." Number One is on every Double Trouble record. He also played Lenny (a 1965 Strat his wife Lenora gave him), a 1961 Strat known as Number Two (sometimes "Red"), and a 1964 Strat known as Charley.

The signal chain into Fender Vibroverbs and Dumble Steel-String Singers (the Dumble was on his major-label era) drove the saturation. His pedalboard was small: an Ibanez Tube Screamer (the TS-808 / TS-9 cycle), a Fuzz Face, a Vox wah, an Octavia. The harmonic-rich Strat-into-tube-amp tone is the textural baseline.

The .013 set at Eb tunes to roughly the tension a .010 set hits in E standard, the heavier mass moves more air, drives the pickups harder, and stays in tune under his violent picking attack. SRV's right hand pulls the strings with enough force to detune lighter gauges; the .013 set is mechanically calibrated to his attack. The plain .019 third is the secret detail, plain strings bend more cleanly and ring clearer through single-coil pickups than a wound third at the same gauge.

Pickup choice matters here: Number One's bridge pickup is famously hot and bright, and it's the saturated bridge-Strat-into-tube-amp combination that produces the Texas Flood tone. The heavy strings keep that bright, hot bridge pickup from sounding thin, the higher mass delivers fundamental low-mid weight that a .010 set in the same rig would lose to high-end fizz.

The closest stock equivalent is the GHS Stevie Ray Vaughan Signature set itself: GHS Nickel Rockers .013, .015, .019 plain, .028, .038, .058. It's been in production unchanged for decades.

Tuning to Eb is non-optional if you want to play Vaughan's catalog at the original keys with comparable string feel; the heavy gauges in E standard turn into piano wire on a 25.5-inch scale.