David Gilmour (Pink Floyd) Facts & Biography. The Search for Sound: A Long Road to the Destiny David Gilmour Guitars

23.12.07 Phil Taylor: The main secret of Gilmour's sound is Gilmour himself!

David Gilmour's technician Phil Taylor continues on about David's equipment and answers questions from guitar fans.

The David Gilmour Strat will still have that little Black Strat button that combines neck and bridge pickups like I read somewhere?
Yes, the Fender David Gilmour Strat will have it.

Will the Gilmour Strat become a production Fender product, like the Clapton and S.R.V. ?
Yes, it's planned. There is no mention of a "limited edition". David insists that this model, a good faithful replica in terms of sound, tuning, appearance and playability, should be affordable. He won't give Fender permission to produce a limited edition that will be snapped up by the few who can afford the investment.

Is it true that the soundboard of the Black Strat is made from two varieties of alder?
I don't know, because it seems to be painted black.

How do Black Strat David's sensors connect to the selector?
This information is in my book.

Does David protect his ears? If not, how does he manage to play loudly and not go deaf, and even have an excellent ear?
No, he doesn't use ear plugs. Don't play too loud and focus the speakers lower, i.e. don't aim directly at your ears.

Does David only use Evidence Audio cables, or does he use them along with others? And why did you switch to Evidence Audio?
All David's cables (both signal and speaker) are Evidence Audio, and I have them cryo-frozen for big gigs. In time, all the cables of all the musicians on stage were replaced with these and with excellent results.

How important do you think the quality of the cables is when passing a signal?
Very important: after all, the sound goes from the instrument to the amplifier through the cable. The quality of the cable can greatly affect both the level, frequency response, depth and detail of the useful signal, as well as unwanted extraneous noise. This also applies to speaker cables.

I know that David has two amplifiers and two speakers. Are they all used together or are there different combinations of amps and speakers for different songs?
Basically they are used together. The "On An Island" tour featured a third amp and speaker for his Long Delay effect on "Shine On You Crazy Diamond".

Which lamps in Hiwatt... EL34s or KT-77?
Mullard EL34 we have always used them.

I've been eyeing the original 1970 Hiwatt SA212 amplifiers, but I'm afraid I won't be able to properly care for them. I see that Hiwatt is re-issuing David Gilmour SA212, this is the second option. In your opinion, what should I buy, maybe even a Fender?
First, at home you probably don't need a 50 watt amplifier - 3 to 10 watts are more acceptable. The original Hiwatts are known as the most reliable amplifiers ever made, but they are too powerful for the home. They would just work for nothing. It is better to use something smaller and turn on stronger. (I have tried and compared some of the new Hiwatts, they don't sound like the old ones.)

What piece of David's equipment is the most valuable?
I have no idea. Ask him when you decide what you mean by "valuable".

David's 1955 Fender Esquire guitar looks pretty beat up. What is the biography of this guitar?
In this condition, David received it from Seymour Duncan (Seymour Duncan) in the early 70's. David just loves this instrument and does not disdain its appearance. Interestingly, there are marks on the wood of the deck, which is why we call it The Workmate (like Black & Decker benches).

David's playing technique, especially his bending, requires frequent string changes. But because of this, the life of the pins is significantly shortened, also requiring their frequent replacement?
No, I do not think so. I don't know what the average life expectancy of a ring is.

Have any changes been made to the red Stratocasters besides EMG and electronics? Maybe Pre-CBS or Callaham block...
Not now. At different times they had other parts: breeches, string three, springs.

It was said that Eric Clapton abandoned the Blackie because the guitar was unplayable. Can this be the case with an electric guitar, especially with a Stratocaster that is so repairable (replaceable necks, interchangeable electronics, etc.)? If so, how long do you suppose David's Black Strat has left to live?
Parts of the Stratocaster can always be replaced. All alterations for David are described in my book "The Black Strat".

If you could hypnotize David into giving you three of his guitars, which guitars would they be and why?
Why only three?

I just found out on [David's] website that David is an Arsenal fan (a "Gooner"). And you, too, "guner"?
Manchester United forever!

What do you think conveys the "true" tone of Pink Floyd: the Pete Cornish P-2 or the newer G-2?
Neither one nor the other. David almost never used Pete Cornish distortion pedals – this is a popular but misleading misconception. They are in his panel, but only as an alternative to his favorites, and as separate pedals. He tried them, as did many others Rat, Boss HM2 and so on, but his choice has always been EH Big Muff, BK Butler Tube Driver and, in the past, Fuzz Face or Colorsound Overdriver.

Do you think it's true that the secret of Gilmour's sound is David himself? So he could play a cheap copy of the Strat for £80 and still sound like Gilmour, or is that just an excuse for those who are faced with the fact that "the sound is not right"?
Yes, this is definitely true. The way David plays combines the choice of moves, and the sense of melody and tempo, and at the same time the pressure and refinement in the work of both hands with the instrument, and its tuning of the apparatus, and control over it. It's all a combination of what his sound is. It is said that sound quality can be achieved by using the best audio equipment. But consider does it sound like David when he plays a Telecaster, Les Paul, Gretsch Duo Jet or Lap Steel instead of a Stratocaster? We filmed a TV show once with Mark Knopfler he used David's red Stratocaster with David's amp and David's settings and who did he look like? On Mark Knopfler, of course. Like any great guitarist, he is his sound. I've never heard anyone like David because this sound really comes from the person who created it. You can only be like yourself, even if you try to imitate someone else. It's like professional parrot parrots like Roger Waters or Pink Floyd cover bands who try their best but don't sound like David. In this regard, the analogy with the facsimile of the original work of art is best suited.

Publication date: March 22, 2012

denouement

In principle, yes, of course, Pink was no stranger to it - at first he looked at himself in the mirror, and Clive Metcalfe was reflected in it, then - Barret, then - Waters .. So that he would not be reborn again? ..

But still, age - at the time of Waters' departure, Pink was over twenty. That for a teenager, which he always was, is already too much.

And now it's just Gilmour and Waters, Mason and Wright. The first two spat at each other in the press, the last two were pushed back by this struggle somewhere very strongly to the rear - and none of them eventually had the strength left to revive Pink.

Nevertheless, Pink Floyd as a brand was by that time already extremely successful and promoted - and therefore Gilmour, Mason and Wright continued to perform, the three of them without Waters, withstanding a couple of attempts on his part to sue the right to use this name ..

By the mid-nineties, they even began work on the next album, "Momentary Lapse of Reason" - by that time Gilmour had bought himself a wonderful house on the Thames, which he soon converted into the Astoria recording studio, where most of the album was recorded.

"Momentary Lapse of Reason" was released in September 1987.

The squad did not notice the loss of a fighter - and the album took third place in the UK and the US.

From the outside, it seemed that Pink Floyd was still more alive than all the living - however, in fact, he became only Gilmour's second solo project. According to him, "Nick played a couple of tam-toms on one of the songs, and for the rest I had to hire other drummers. Rick played on a few fragments. Mostly I played keyboards, pretending that it was him."

Is it any wonder that the sound of the new album, devoid of the drama and social pathos so characteristic of Waters and the musical experiments of the Barrett era, was almost identical to the sound of Gilmour's solo albums? ..

Gilmour divorced in 1990. And a year later he married again, to the English writer and journalist of thirty-two years, Polly Samson. Soon the couple adopted a child, Charlie, and then made three more - plus one from Polly and four from Gilmour - Joe, Gabriel and Romani.

In 1994, Pink Floyd's last album was released - titled, at the suggestion of Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, "Division Bell". The album, which included eleven tracks, reached the first lines of the UK charts, and in the US it went triple platinum at all - although it did not receive particularly warm recognition from music critics. The theme of misunderstanding and bad communication runs through the album as a red thread, symbolized by a short telephone conversation between Steve O'Rourke, the band's manager, and Gilmour's adopted son Charles at the end of the final track "High Hopes".

Postposition

"Division Bell" was the band's last album. Yes, live albums and bootlegs were also published, musicians still got together, playing old hits and participating in each other's solo albums - but Pink Floyd remained in the past.

March 6, 2006 Gilmour - at that time, the father of a large family, an honorary doctor of arts, Commander of the Order of the British Empire and the winner of many music awards - turned sixty - an age that inspires respect.

I am 60 years old,” he told La Repubblica in 2006. “I no longer have the desire to work so hard.

On his sixtieth birthday, he presented the album "On an Island" - very different from everything he had done before, and even more so - from the classic pink floyd sound. For comparison, if the first album of the group drew Barrett's bottomless eyes from LSD, if "the Wall" described the very human soul of Waters and the social drama of society, then "On an Island" generally renounced the human component - this album sounds like sea, sky, earth , rivers, all the elements and natural phenomena - a kind of "world without people." Only for this lovely picture the album deserved the first place in the UK charts and a number of other European countries.

A very impressive list of very impressive people took part in its creation, which is typical of Gilmour: Roxy Music guitarist Phil Manzaner, Rob Wyatt of Soft Machine, organist Georgie Fame, drummer Andy Newmark, Americans Graham Nash and David Crosby on backing vocals and the composer Zbigniew Preisner - who later became the conductor of the Polish Symphony Orchestra, who played with the group at a concert in Gdansk, Poland - from which the album "Live in Gdansk" was made.

The concert and album on it became one of the best works of the group - and the last recording for Richard Wright, who died of cancer a few days before the release of the album.

Epilogue

There is a time to scatter stones and a time to collect them. And the album "On an Island" is a vivid evidence of this. David once said, a rock star ceases to be such at thirty. At the time of the recording of "On an Island" he was sixty.

And despite the fact that Gilmour is by no means planning to quit his creative work (last year, for example, he recorded an utterly impossibly concept album with the Orb group), it becomes clear that he has said everything - and it’s very cool if somewhere in his soul sounds his "Je ne regrette rien"*.

And if you sit don't make a sound
Pick your feet up off the ground
And if you hear as the warm night falls
The silver sound from a time so strange
- as it was sung in one of his favorite songs, the ballad "Fat Old Sun"... Everything should go into silence.

___
*I don't regret anything

Gilmour sound

"David Gilmour uses a lot of effects like Big Muff and delay, but what really matters is his fingers, his vibrato, his choice of notes, and his effects setup. I find it strange when people try to achieve his sound by copying his sets. Never mind, how well you can do it, it's important that you don't copy his personality" - Phil Taylor, Pink Floyd's technician [and friend of Gilmour, by the way].

Over the years of his musical career, David Gilmour has become in some way the absolute size of the guitar - and the quality of guitar solos, I suppose, can already be measured in Gilmours.

On this long and hard journey, he saved up over a hundred guitars - not to mention amplifiers, pedals, consoles, branded sets and sound engineers ...

There is probably no point in considering the whole hundred, but I would like to focus on three of them:

Tri-color Sunburst Fender Stratocaster (repainted radical black and later released in two fender custom shop variations),

Fender Stratocaster No. 0001 - formally speaking, the first released strat from the very beginning of mass production.

Candy Apple Red "57" is also a Strat, he used it, among other things, on the "A Momentary Lapse of Reason" tour, recording the "Delicate Sound of Thunder" live album, "On an Island" tour (during the performance of "Shine on..."), on "Pulse" and on the latest "Division Bell". The guitar is equipped with a set of active EMG SPC pickups (rewired from SA), two tone controls and an EXG bass and treble expander - the set is called the DG-20 and is personalized Gilmour set: mother-of-pearl pickguard and ivory pickups made of alnico alloy (aluminum, nickel, cobalt), the specificity of the sound is achieved due to the built-in single-backer: two coils and a magnet.

The DG-20 set costs $310. Information for 2007 - now, taking into account inflation, somewhere under $ 350 .. Although you can buy cheaper from the hands, so luck will smile on those who seek.

However, from my own experience I can say that the characteristic gilmourish sound is far from being determined by pickups in the first place - and the sound recipe is determined very much by the following parameters:

Effect pedals:

Digitech WH-1 Whammy,
Dunlop wah wah,
Demeter Compulator,
Pete Cornish G-2,
Pete Cornish P-1,
T-Rex Replica Delay,
Electro Harmonix Big Muff

Amplifiers:

Hiwatt DR103 All Purpose 100W heads,
WEM Super Starfinder 200 cabinets,
Fender 1956 tweed twin 40w combo.

In general, welcome to gilmourish.com. Or, while it's closed, the English Wikipedia is showing extraordinary awareness.

P.S. However, in addition to hundreds of guitars, Gilmour also plays bass, keyboards, banjo, harmonica and drums (for example, in Barrett's "Dominoes"). Since recently, and in general on the saxophone ...