Albert King question

[Dannyalcatraz]

I'm sitting around watching KERA (Dallas/FW's PBS) doing their pledge drive and they're currently showing SRV & AK "In Session." While I've listened to AK's work numerous times, I've never seen him play.

 

...And it looks like he's got his lefty "Albert King" Flying V strung with the heavier strings on the lower side of the neck. It's as if he'd taken a regular V and just strapped it on lefty style...which I know he didn't (the name inlay and controls are a dead giveaway he's playing a custom designed lefty).

 

• Are my eyes deceiving me or is that how he did things?
  
• What advantage- if any- do you get with this upside down arrangement? Or is it just that that was how he learned guitar- on an upside down standard guitar?

[The Geoff]

Here's a pic confirming what you've just said.

 

http://j.imagehost.org/0099/Albert_King.jpg

 

I used to play with a keyboards player who was left handed & played guitar exactly like that, as his big brother played guitar & he learned on it, and, of course, had to leave the strings as he found them.

 

Anything's possible.

 

G.

[picker]

Albert King originally had a right handed Gibson V which he left string right handed, but played left handed and tuned open. I used to know the tuning but I can't recall it right now.

[Caevan O’Shite]

Yhup, flipped-over and played lefty while still being strung righty.

 

He probably used more than one tuning over the years; very reliable sources have cited different tunings.

 

None other than Steve Cropper said once that he'd picked up King's guitar and found it to be tuned C B E F# B E, low-to-high; while Dan Erlewine, who made King's black walnut Flying-V style guitar, "Lucy", recounts its being tuned C F C F A D, low-to-high.

[Bluesape]

Coco Montoya plays the same way.

[Dannyalcatraz]

Re: tunings

 

One of the interesting things about the "In Session" footage is that AK is constantly messing with his tuners, even mid-tune while SRV is playing. I can't tell if he was having issues or if he was changing tunings on the fly. If it's the latter, that could explain the varied reports...

 

Re: lefties & upside down tuning

 

Dick Dale is another whose heavier strings are on the bottom (which I had forgotten).

[LeftyBlues]

That's how he got those huge double step bends in part, he's pulling down to bend rather than pushing up on the strings.

[Caevan O’Shite]

Dannyalcatraz and LeftyBlues both- good call! I think you're on to something there...

[G. A. Donis]

In high school I played in a band with a guitarist who played lefty, strung for a righty. It was a little harder to steal licks from him. I also thought the chord voicings had a lighter, "chimier" sound to them.

[whitefang]

Comedian Rick Moranis, also a guitar player, plays lefty that way, too

Whitefang