Review: The Thimble Slide

A slide adds a distinct shade to your musical color palette.

Everyone from White Zombie to the Allman Brothers Band pulls out the ol’ bottleneck in pop music. When you think about Lynyrd Skynryd’s “Free Bird,” are you humming the lyrics or are you humming the slide guitar line while fumbling for a cigarette lighter to hold in the air?

The two setbacks of using a slide are, you lose a fretting finger and you gain a lonesome, sweaty finger. The Thimble Slide, however, takes your basic slide and trims it down. The brass slide sits right below your fingertip. It's only 1 inch tall, so you can fret with your slide finger as well as slide on up to three strings at once.

Thimbleslide.com offers a printable PDF to help you choose the right size. There's a small gap along the side that allows you to increase or decrease the size to fine-tune the slide according to your finger.

Suppose you aren’t in love with the fleur de lys on the top of the slide. The company has future plans to sell Thimble Slides with a different design. If you want to wow your dinner guests, be sure to mention that "fleur de lys" is French for flower lily. If you need a more macho description, tell your drummer it’s the New Orleans Saints logo!

Check out my photos below. The guitar is my poorly refinished '60s Silvertone. For my fellow multitaskers out there. I typed this review with the Thimble Slide on. Try that with your slide!

Web: thimbleslide.com
Street price: $19.99

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