Bottleneck / Slide guitar - probably the most 'organic' of any guitar effect…..all you need for this style of playing is a guitar, your fingers - and a slide!

Ahh, but which slide do you choose? Well, for starters it's probably the cheapest piece of kit you'll ever have to find….but it'll also be the most perplexing!

From the origins of slide guitar in West Africa, to the American connections in the late 1800's - early 1900's when Negro slaves, migrating to the Mississippi Delta at the end of the civil war were seen sliding penknives or pocket razors along the strings of 'dollar 50' Sears acoustic guitars and home-made one string 'diddley bows' - to today's high-tech slide guitar wizardry of Sonny Landreth & Debashish Battacharya using reproduction 'Coricidin' pill-bottles and custom-made glass lap-slide bars, every conceivable type of cylinder & bar imaginable that could coax a whine from guitar strings has been tried, discarded - or held to high esteem by it's faithful user!

And the list of materials used to make the 'Ultimate' slide is enormous! Genuine re-cycled wine bottle necks; pocket razors & penknives as mentioned earlier; all manner of metals - bronze, brass, stainless steel, copper & aluminium tubes with mind-boggling variations of weights and lengths; porcelain & ceramic tubes; medicine bottles & test-tubes; spark-plug socket wrenches and even wood & polished bone have seen good use on the digits of many influential slide guitarists throughout the years.

The general rule of thumb here though is - there ARE no rules regarding 'the best' slide - it's purely a matter of personal choice using your own ears and hands to find 'that' slide tone which suits your own style of slide playing.

>> choosing the right slide for you >>