I'm a huge King's X fan, and love Ty Tabor's tone and style. He's been through a lot of different brands of guitars over the past decade, mostly humbucker type guitars with Guilford Guitars, and Yamaha guitars... but now he's back to a strat. I'd love to know if any of you know what kind of strat and what kind of pickups are in the strat that he's playing.

Here are some pics:

http://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/577123_4628480308499_1826890921_n.jpg


http://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/242105_10151221266272174_197702191_o.jpg

he might be my favorite guitarist. the dude can really cover all the bases. very unique sound and style to my ears. i simply love Platypus and my wife describes it as geek metal but she also enjoys the music.
cool pics mike. thanx.

If it's geek metal, I am definitely a geeky nerd. I love King's x and all of ty's side projects. just to clarify, I did not take the pics myself. Found them on Dug Pinnick's facebook after their recent mini-tour opening for Kansas out east.

I'd love to know what kind of set up that Ty has and which single coils he is using. I've loved his single coil sounding stuff from the earlier albums, but I am definitely curious what single coil bridge pickup is beefy enough to give him his signature tones.

When I try to imitate an early King's X tone with my HSS American Special, I get some cool sounds when I mix the bridge and middle pickup (atomic humbucker and Texas specials in my case.)

I am a huge Ty fan and a huge Fender fan, and if Ty is finally switching over to strats, I'd love to hear his thoughts or the thoughts of anyone else who is getting heavier sounds from single coils.

Yes! I was very remiss in not posting that I saw King's X on the first night of the tour in NYC, and Ty was indeed playing the blue Strat. As expected, his tone was huge, clear, and awesome. I remember reading someplace that he used to use a model that predated the Clapton Strat, with active pickups. If you look up Ty and also King's X on Wikipedia I'm sure you will find the interview with Ty that I am referring to.
Just an amazing band. Still sound as incredible and magical as always.
SB

I live on the west side of Houston which is near Katy where Kings X is from. I'm a Kings X fan from the beginning.

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Gary

my cousin "told" me i was going to learn "lost in germany". i told him it was impossible and that Ty was an alien. well, i spent what seemed like a year learning the tune. its not perfect but i'm not someone who can plat tunes note for note. i got pretty damn close on this one.
if it sounds like i'm giving myself a pat on the back, you would be right. i love that riff and i answered the challenge. i've never practiced that much on one tune. it paid off.

Wow. I'll bet that was a great show. I've heard people say that King's X only played for 40mins or so, but I'd buy a ticket even if for only that long.

Ty played a Fender Strat Elite for a lot of his early stuff. He said that the pickups sounded great but could be a nightmare in a live setting with extra noise. Zion created a guitar for him that was strat-ish that he used for a while too. I still think that his best tones came out of those two set-ups.

I would love to know which pick-ups are in his current strat and what caused him to switch back.

Here is a vid of one of their shows from the past few days:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoZBrVYaZQE&feature=g-all-f

You are right, they only had 40 minutes to play. But it was a very sweet 40 minutes. Didn't regret going for a second. Thanks for the link to the video.
SB

paztormike, cool pic's! I saw King's X open for Robert Plant at the Allstate Arena way back in 89 or 90. They rocked and apparently they still do.

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you can save the world with your guitar one love song at a time it's just better, more fun, easier with a fender solid body electric guitar or electric bass guitar.

That had to be just epic!

They are still my favorite live show. When they headline, they play some pretty small venues over here on the West Coast, it's a crazy cool experience to see 3 guys with that much talent in a small venue giving it as much energy as if they were in a sold out arena.

I was in Idaho for a conference and heard that they were opening for Dio in Spokane, so I left the conference a bit early to drive for an hour and a half to see if I could get a ticket. I barely got there in time, but people were walking out and were angry because they announced that Dio was sick and could not play that night. A good portion of the crowd left, but King's X put on an unbelievable show playing for at least 2 hours. A lot of the crowd that was leaving stuck around to check them out, and King's X totally won them over.

Cool story paztormike, thanks for posting For me they were the real McCoy. Purple, Tull, Winter, Heat, heck even Jimi, too many to list actually what I'm trying to say I guess is from the moment they hit that first note on stage you knew it was going to be great. Solid professional rock and rollers, glad that they're still making music!

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you can save the world with your guitar one love song at a time it's just better, more fun, easier with a fender solid body electric guitar or electric bass guitar.