Oteil Burbridge's bass strings and gear: the Allman Brothers Band and Dead & Company rig, sourced
Documented bass gear for Oteil Burbridge: 17 years with The Allman Brothers Band, a decade in Dead & Company, and the D'Addario XL Nickel 50-105 gauge tied to his own artist page. Primary-source citations throughout.
The Allman Brothers Band · reviewed by the Change Your Strings editorial team ·
Oteil Burbridge is a two-time Grammy-winning bassist, known for 17 years with The Allman Brothers Band (1997 to 2014) and a decade in Dead & Company (2015 to 2025) alongside Bob Weir and John Mayer. He also played bass in Tedeschi Trucks Band from 2010 to 2012 and co-founded the jam-band touchstone Aquarium Rescue Unit in 1991. His documented rig runs D'Addario XL Nickel 50-105 strings and signature 6-string basses built by Modulus and Fodera.
Who Oteil Burbridge is
Born August 24, 1964, in Washington, D.C., Oteil Burbridge is a bass guitarist whose career runs through three of the most respected bands in jam-adjacent rock. His mother enrolled him and older brother Kofi in classical and jazz lessons as kids, and Oteil picked up bass clarinet, violin, and trumpet before settling on bass guitar as his main instrument (Wikipedia).
His national profile starts in Atlanta in 1991, when he became a founding member of Col. Bruce Hampton's Aquarium Rescue Unit, an avant-garde band that never sold many records but became a template for the jam-band scene that followed. It's where Burbridge crossed paths with members of Phish and the Grateful Dead orbit who'd later become bandmates.
He joined The Allman Brothers Band in 1997 and stayed 17 years, through the band's 2014 retirement. He played on Hittin' the Note (2003) and One Way Out (2004), both Grammy-nominated. In February 2012, the Recording Academy gave The Allman Brothers Band a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award; Burbridge, the band's longest-serving bassist, was a member at the time (OteilBurbridge.com).
Overlapping the tail of his Allman Brothers years, Burbridge joined Tedeschi Trucks Band in 2010 as a founding member of the touring lineup, an eleven-piece ensemble Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi built around their own bands, playing alongside his brother Kofi on keys and flute. The band's 2011 debut, Revelator, won the Grammy for Best Blues Album. Burbridge stepped back from TTB touring in October 2012 to start a family (Wikipedia).
In 2015, Burbridge became the founding bassist of Dead & Company, formed by Grateful Dead members Bob Weir, Bill Kreutzmann, and Mickey Hart with guitarist John Mayer and keyboardist Jeff Chimenti. His own site describes a ten-year run: ten US tours, more than four million fans across 235 shows, headline stops at Folsom Field, Oracle Park, Citi Field, Fenway Park, and Dodger Stadium, a Wrigley Field attendance record, an annual Mexico run called "Playing in the Sand," and two residencies at the Las Vegas Sphere in 2024 and 2025 (OteilBurbridge.com). Today his live work centers on his own project, Oteil & Friends, and a 2026 collaborative album with Lamar Williams Jr., The Offering.
If you want this rig
EXL160 Nickel Wound Bass (.050-.105)
Why this one: The gauge tied to Burbridge's own D'Addario artist page: XL Nickel Wound at .050-.105 Medium. His 2023 Bass Magazine interview lists a 6-string set instead, so treat this as D'Addario's artist-page association, not confirmed current use.
Why he's ranked among the greats
Per Wikipedia, Bass Player magazine's list of the 100 greatest bass players of all time, hosted today at Guitar World, ranks Burbridge 64th, and Wikipedia credits him with building his reputation across 4-, 5-, and 6-string bass before six-string became his signature (Guitar World, Wikipedia). He's also known for working scat-singing into his improvised bass solos, a technique that shows up regularly in Dead & Company and Allman Brothers live recordings.
Documented gear
Strings.
Documented D'Addario artist · Gauge caveat below
D'Addario EXL160 Nickel Wound Bass (.050-.105)
Burbridge is a documented D'Addario artist, with his own page on the company's artist roster. That page's own description calls him a "two-time Grammy winning bassist" who has "been in the music business touring and recording for over three decades," and ties him to D'Addario's XL Nickel Wound line. The gauge documented on that carousel is .050 to .105 Medium, nickel-plated steel roundwound on a hex-core. One caveat: Burbridge's documented basses are all 6-string instruments, and a 2023 Bass Magazine gear rundown lists his actual bass strings as D'Addario EXL170-6 Nickel Wound (.032-.130), not this 4-string gauge. Treat the EXL160 tag as D'Addario's own artist-page association rather than confirmation of what's currently strung on his bass.
Source: D'Addario Artists; Bass Magazine.
Current main bass: Sandberg California 6-string. Burbridge's newest and lightest bass. He told Bass Magazine in 2023 that its vintage Fender-like tone comes from how light it is, "seven-and-a-half pounds" (Bass Magazine). On his own site, he calls it a back-saver: "I love playing this bass, not only because of the fat vintage sound, but because of how lightweight it is. It has saved my back!" (OteilBurbridge.com).
The Modulus 6-strings. Two Modulus basses anchor his recent Dead & Company years: a custom Ankh-shaped bass in purple and black, built for stage use, and his own signature Modulus Quantum 6-string. Burbridge has praised the graphite neck for eliminating dead spots: "While the Fenders are my connection to the past, my six strings are my reach into the future" (OteilBurbridge.com).
Fodera Signature 6-string, "LaWanda." A handmade Fodera, one of two he owns, named after actress LaWanda Page. Burbridge has cited session legend Anthony Jackson as the first six-string bassist he ever heard play the instrument (OteilBurbridge.com).
Vintage Fender basses. Two Fender P-basses cover his more traditional tones: a '63 Precision nicknamed "Petunia," strung with flatwounds for a mellow tone as he chased the sound of reggae bassist Aston "Family Man" Barrett of Bob Marley and the Wailers, and a Fender Road Worn '58 Reissue, modified with an added J-bass pickup, which he's described simply as "the bass that I used with the Allman Brothers Band" (OteilBurbridge.com).
Burbridge has also played other custom and specialty instruments: a short-scale, semi-hollow 6-string built by luthier Stephen Sukop; a fretless 6-string built by Joe Perman (who also built his Modulus basses), nicknamed "Pretty Boy Floyd"; and a Goldtone electric banjo bass, nicknamed "the Boto bass," that he's used on hard-rock material and on Tedeschi Trucks Band stages (OteilBurbridge.com).
Related
Bandmates and collaborators. The Allman Brothers Band, Derek Trucks (Tedeschi Trucks Band co-founder), John Mayer (Dead & Company).
Documented strings. D'Addario EXL160 Nickel Wound Bass (.050-.105), the gauge tied to Burbridge's D'Addario artist page (D'Addario).
Bassist hub. Bassists index. Jam-band and fusion-adjacent bass canon: Victor Wooten, Marcus Miller.