16-year-old Rhys John Stygal – the young blues prodigy whose electric guitar abilities have led to the proclamation that he is “the next Stevie Ray Vaughan” – has taken the next step towards fully embracing that mantle, having been given the keys to an obsessive recreation of SRV’s legendary rig.
Stygal’s is a name that has been floating around the blues scene for a few years now. The teenager has amassed a huge following online thanks to his full-throttle, razor-sharp Texas blues chops and gritty style that punters have drawn parallels to SRV’s own.
He’s also previously detailed how the guitar has changed his life, overcoming extreme anxiety brought about by his autism, which prevented him from leaving the house, to sharing the stage with Buddy Guy and Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram.
His ability to accurately channel the six-string spirit of Stevie Ray Vaughan, along with his formidable phrasing and handling of the fretboard, has already firmly put him on the path to guitar stardom.
Now, the acclaimed youngster has returned to the Pedal Pawn YouTube channel – who has called him “a walking encyclopedia of Stevie knowledge” – to take another deep-dive into all-things SRV, playing through a rig that has been specially and obsessively curated in order to further blur the lines between Stevie and Stygal.
“This is it – the moment Rhys finally dialled in the real Stevie Ray Vaughan tone!” Pedal Pawn writes. “After years of experimenting, tweaking, and obsessing over every detail of Stevie’s legendary rig, we pulled out all the stops: vintage amps, authentic pedals, and full stage volume (120dB+). The result? Insane.”
For the video, a pedalboard modeled after Vaughan’s late setup was built. That included an Ibanez TS10 and a few Pedal Pawn-own boxes – some of which, it should be mentioned, have themselves been reverse engineered from SRV’s own units.
Joining them was a “wall of Fender amps”, including Deluxe Reverbs and Vibroverbs with an EV-loaded cab and spinning Vibratone. ‘Insane’ is a rather apt word to describe it.
Stygal, who is an authority when it comes to emulating SRV’s tone, also gave his two cents on how to best capture that specific style, paying attention to string gauge and pick attack and sharing his in-depth knowledge about the late blues guitar great.
When asked if bigger strings are a necessity, Stygal says, “It helps, but if your hands don’t like a heavy gauge, that’s no problem. The width of the tone is slightly larger and it’s a bit darker-sounding, and the lighter strings you can’t hit as hard.”
Ultimately, though, Stygal echoes a sentiment widely held by the guitar community – that tone is in the hands: “As much as people don’t hear it, or like to hear it, it’s all in their hands.”
It’s a nice full circle moment for Stygal, who was the focus of a guitarguitar campaign last year that put the spotlight on 20 inspirational players.
Check out Rhys John Stygal on Instagram follow his journey.
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