What Gauge Strings Does Hooky Use??

Anyone know what Gauge Strings he uses to get his sound?? I know they are Heavy. Any tips on how to get the sound on a 4 string bass??

thanks

I think he went into this in Bass Player magazine some time ago. They were pretty heavy, and he plays them with a pick like a 2p.

A quick Google uncovers several pages that go into detail.like this one

For step 4;

thanks guys. I went to that link and it says he uses a .60 gauge string on the G string. Would that even fit on a standard bass guitar or did he have to customize the guitar/guitar nut??

I've played .55's (as an experiment to see if I sounded more like Hooky.....I didn't, they just fatten the sound a bit). And they are FUCKERS to play. Hooky must have hands like vise-grips, cos I shredded myself with the .55's Fuck that says I, and heads right back to my .40's (or even .38's).....ie guitar strings with ideas above their station....loads easier to play, and fine for the Hooky studio sound (where the first thing the engineer/producer does, is freak out at this guy who plays his bass wrong, and cut everything below 300Hz on his channel by about 18dB).....only live do you hear the massive arse-end you get from the fat wires.......the bastard made me puke the first time I seen them.

As for "will it fit".....yes they will, but you'll have to fuck around with your setup....tighten the truss, adjust saddles and maybe (unless it's a REALLY hot bass) shim the neck a bit. If you put on a set of 60-120 (or 118 I think it is, can't remember), and bring them up to concert pitch, your neck will go U shaped until you put some more torque into the truss rod. This may well explain the snapping of a few Eccleshall neck along the way....they are not weak or crap.....they're just carrying the same load as the average box girder bridge.

I've never understood how he does it, but he's told basically the same story more than once, and it's been confirmed by his bandmate in Revenge.

I tuned my D string (.065) up to G once just to see how it sounded - fatter, but with a lot less high end, and a lot harder to play. I decided .050 was plenty thick enough for me. I don't think string gauge is as big a factor as chorus, playing style, and heaps of treble, but if you decide you still want to bother, you will probably need to recut the nut slot and definitely tweak the truss rod. I don't think you'll need to shim the neck unless you change the bridge height.

It's only the top string that's beefed up (Step 3 has the strings in the wrong order), or the top 3 strings on the sixer. The Eccleshalls have carbon fiber in them, but the Shergold and Yamaha necks are just maple and maple-mahogany laminate (resp); never mind breaking, I don't know why they're not twisted into corkscrews.