The "Number One" became Texas blues legend Stevie Ray Vaughan's main workhorse trough his short but groundbreaking career. It was acquired at Ray Hennig’s Heart of Texas Music in Austin ca 1973.

Ray Hennig was a father figure to many Texas musicians. He sold or borrowed equipment to many struggling artist over several decades. He died in 2020 at the age of 91.

Before Stevie took off to stardom, Stevie (at young age) was almost daily at Hennig´s to play different guitars looking for "That Guitar", One day in 1973, an old Strat had arrived at the store and Stevie took note of it, took it down and started to look at it closer and feeling its neck. up and down.

The Strat that had come into the store about two weeks prior and had been traded in by Chris Geppert a.k.a Christopher Cross for a Gibson.

Stevie really liked how that Strat felt in his hand because he had been searching for a bigger neck which was not so easy to find those days. To Hennig, that was one of his biggest "piece of junk" he had in store. But Stevie insisted that it was a keeper and the guitar had something to offer for his special needs.

So he and Hennig took it apart for inspection, assembled it and got it set up for Stevie's playing style the way he wanted. Stevie traded in a newer Strat for the "junk strat" (which Hennig had actually loaned to him prior 😄) But one mans junk is another mans treasure. Stevie obviously felt something special with this Strat and told Hennig some time later that he never would have played the way he played if it was not for that guitar.

The #1 is most certainly NOT a factory original guitar but a partcaster on acquiring it. Rene Martinez (SRV's guitar tech) got to inspect it properly and found things on it that would put this one in Partcaster land.

SPECS: (Today)

BODY: 1963 3-Tone Sunburst Body (Heavy worn)

NECK: 1962 Neck Wide D-Profile​

PICKUPS: 1959 Fender pickups (One of the apparently)

TREMOLO: Replaced with left handed gold vintage tremolo because of Stevies affection to Jimi Hendrix (Saddles are today mixed new and old)

TUNERS: Schaller 80's Elite Gold

Modifications:

• The guitar had a white pickguard on purchase, but got changed fairly quickly to a black one.

• The Square-font SRV logo got added soon after. It could be that the neck and body came out of Fender as one. But there is no real evidence that they did.. Most likely it did not.

• The 59 pickups is a mystery. Could be that Christopher Cross changed them. but again, no evidence to back that up either.

• The original neck had been re-fretted several times due to hard playing style with Dunlop 6100 Jumbo or similar size. So many times that it was deemed unable to be re-fretted in the end and was put away. This was around 1989 or 1990. Then René Martinez fitted the neck from his "Red" that would be destroyed in July 9th 1990 at Garden State Art Center after some stage props fell over the guitar.

  Martinez ordered a new neck right away. The third one.

• The new 'SRV' curved font decal it has on today got installed in-house at NBC Studio by the prop-department before he went on the Jay Leno Show.

• Now with its third neck, this was the one that was on August 25th 1990 in Wisconsin. Stevie would sadly perish in a helicopter crash right after the concert.

• Martinez plan was to restore the original neck to functional state, but never got around to do it in time. However, after Stevie's passing, he mounted on the original neck anyway and handed the guitar to Stevie's brother, Jimmy Vaughan. The guitar has been in Jimmy's custody ever since.

The Pickups of Number One:

Probably least coveted is the pickups. There are myth and stories going around. But what we know is this:

• Pickups are typical low-output stock pickups of its time.

• The Neck pickup is actually the hottest of the three (This was common with '59 pickups)

• All pickups had the bobbins copper foiled. Probably done to tame the high frequencies, as they were heavy formvar wound

Afterwards: Stevie was in his later years in discussion with Fender to make a replica version in the late 80's. But after his sudden passing, the plans was put on ice.

Jimmy Vaughan eventually got back in touch with FCS in 1991 to get the #1 in production.

In 1992, the guitar was unveiled to the public at NAMM. This model is still in production today.

In 2004, John Cruz made 100 Masterbuilt replicas for sale. These demand very high price today on second hand markets.

Bullock Museum's displayed the real "Number One" for the first time to the public in 2012 on the Texas Music Roadtrip Exibition. 

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CHASING THE SRV TONE​​

• Stevie's tone was basically created trough his amp. He played with Low-wound pickups but with amps cranked up very high.

• Stevie's playing style was "aggressive" and he punched the strings hard.

• Van Zandt Pickups was at least installed in one of SRV's other guitars. Good source to start with pickups is with Van Zandt's. Straight from the heart of Texas.

• Do not be misled by Fender's pickup set called "Texas Special". These are equipped on the SRV Signature guitar. But it is fairly known that Stevie´s pickups are regular underwound 50´s style. The Texas Specials are slightly hotter pickups and they are designed to give you the SRV sound but on lower Amp volumes which is opposite of the real thing. But for the real deal SRV sound you should go for 50´s low wound or CS69´s. But low wound = Bright pickups, which to Stevie was a negative thing, and he was often chasing ways to tame the highs... So.:

  
  

•  He used long but cheap signal chords like Hendrix did because they gave slight capacitance. His amp tech, Cesár Diaz gave Stevie an expensive high quality chord once to try out. Stevie tried them, gave them back and said "They let too much electricity trough"

• He copper foiled the bobbins on his pickups. This gave some capacitance to tame the highs as well.

• His neck was fairly thick. This contributed to tone down the highs slightly as well

• He used .012 gauge strings (sometimes .013). These are very heavy strings that eventually took a toll on Stevie's skin on his fingers. But higher gauge strings are less bright in tone but louder in volume.

• His amps had Solid State rectifiers. Which fueled the power of the amps

  
  

MORE INFORMATION:

Fuzzfaced - WIKPEDIA - Bullock Museum - GroundGuitar