Gear Timeline
Sometime in the late 1960s, Ry Cooder played a Fender Stratocaster with the original pickups replaced — the bridge pickup swapped for an Oahu lap steel unit, the neck pickup replaced by a Japanese Teisco. “Then I started experimenting with electronics, trying for a thicker sound,” he recalled. “P90s came and went. I had the bright idea to install an Oahu lap steel bridge pickup. It was the thing to do to help the bottleneck sound relax and it stopped the headaches.” The result was a guitar that shouldn’t have worked — a Stratocaster body with a lap steel pickup at the bridge and a Japanese budget-brand pickup at the neck, electronics from three entirely different instruments combined in one body — and that produced a specific tonal character unavailable from any standard guitar configuration. This guitar became the “Coodercaster,” and its influence has been so pervasive that “Coodercaster” is now a recognized category of guitar modification: any Stratocaster modified with non-standard pickups in the manner of the original.
Ryland Peter Cooder was born on March 15, 1947, in Los Angeles, California. He is one of the most important guitarists in American music history — not in terms of commercial success (which has been limited; he has never broken through to mass market) but in terms of cultural significance: the person who taught Keith Richards open G tuning, directly leading to “Honky Tonk Women,” “Street Fighting Man,” “Brown Sugar,” and the entire Open G period of the Rolling Stones’ greatest work. The person who played slide on the Rolling Stones’ “Sister Morphine.” The person who brought traditional Cuban music to the world through the Buena Vista Social Club project (1997 album, 1999 Wim Wenders documentary). The person who played the Paris, Texas soundtrack. Rolling Stone ranked him the 8th Greatest Guitarist of All Time in 2003. The sounds he makes and the images those sounds evoke place him, in Guitar World’s assessment, “closer to Zen masters and Impressionist painters than to other guitarists.”
He learned guitar from Reverend Gary Davis, the blind gospel-blues master whose technical influence runs through the entire American fingerpicking tradition. He played with Captain Beefheart on Safe As Milk. He was a session musician on the Rolling Stones sessions of 1968-1969. He formed the Rising Sons with Taj Mahal. He played alongside Joseph Spence — the Bahamian guitarist whose use of open tunings made a lasting impression on Cooder’s own developing style. He has played with John Lee Hooker, Eric Clapton, Ali Farka Touré, The Chieftains, Van Morrison, and dozens of others. His solo catalog — over twenty albums — represents one of the most sustained explorations of American and world roots music by any single artist. And the specific guitar tone he developed for Paris, Texas — slide, open tuning, tremolo, the sound of the American West as an idea rather than a geography — is one of the most specifically recognizable guitar sounds in film history.
Background: From the Ash Grove to Buena Vista
Cooder’s musical education was specific and unusual in its primary venue: the Ash Grove, a Los Angeles folk club that presented traditional American music to the audiences that sought it in the early 1960s. “I was lucky. I saw a lot of good things firsthand, and I heard them the way they were supposed to be heard. I made it a point to check out what was there so I wouldn’t miss anything.” The musicians who came through the Ash Grove — the Delta blues masters, the gospel guitarists, the roots music figures whose work was not widely available on records — gave Cooder a direct education in American music traditions that no amount of record-listening could have replaced. Reverend Gary Davis, in particular, taught him the fingerpicking techniques that inform all of his acoustic work.
Joseph Spence — the Bahamian guitarist whose highly idiosyncratic fingerpicking style and use of open tunings is unlike anything in the mainstream guitar tradition — was another specific influence. Spence’s open tunings, encountered through recordings and personal contact, demonstrated to Cooder that the harmonic world available from open string configurations was not just a slide guitar convenience but a complete compositional universe with its own specific character. The transition from using open tunings for rhythm work to discovering their slide potential was gradual: “Originally using them for rhythm work, he soon discovered their potential for slide and continues to use the open tunings — mainly D and G — for his contemporary work.”
The Rolling Stones connection — his session work on Let It Bleed (1969) and the subsequent teaching of open G tuning to Keith Richards — is one of the most musically consequential guitar-to-guitar transmissions in rock history. The Stones had been a standard-tuning, E-chord-based rock band. Open G gave Richards a completely different harmonic vocabulary — the specific chord voicings, the five-string approach (Richards removes the low E string when playing in open G), and the rhythmic feel that come from a different tuning. “Honky Tonk Women” (1969) was the first fully realized expression of what Richards did with open G. It was not the last. The period of Rolling Stones music that resulted from that tuning lesson — Exile on Main St., Sticky Fingers, Let It Bleed — is arguable their greatest creative period. Cooder taught him the tuning. What Richards made from it is rock history.
The specific Rolling Stones contribution deserves elaboration: Cooder played mandolin on “Love in Vain” from Let It Bleed — one of the most famous Robert Johnson songs, here given a sympathetic and historically informed arrangement. He played slide guitar on “Sister Morphine” from Sticky Fingers — Mick Jagger’s dark ballad about hospital injury, Cooder’s slide providing the song’s specific emotional undertone. And he was part of the “Jamming with Edward” sessions that included Jagger, Watts, Wyman, and Nicky Hopkins. The subsequent accusation of plagiarism — Cooder suggesting that Richards had appropriated more than just the open G tuning — has never been fully elaborated publicly. What is documented is the musical relationship, its specific contributions to the Stones’ recorded legacy, and the open G lesson that changed the direction of the most commercially successful rock band of the twentieth century.
The subsequent decades — the solo albums from the 1970s (Ry Cooder, 1970; Into the Purple Valley, 1971; Boomer’s Story, 1972; Paradise and Lunch, 1974; Chicken Skin Music, 1976), the film soundtrack career (Paris, Texas 1984 being the landmark), the world music collaborations (Buena Vista Social Club, 1997; the African guitarist Ali Farka Touré on Talking Timbuktu, 1994; the Indian sarod player Ali Akbar Khan) — chart an extraordinary trajectory of musical curiosity across cultures and traditions. Cooder was a world music artist before “world music” was an industry category, approaching non-Western musical traditions with the same scholarly respect and musical sensitivity that he brought to the American roots traditions he had absorbed at the Ash Grove.
The Rig: Ry Cooder’s Guitars, Amps, and Effects
Guitars
Ry Cooder’s most famous and most influential instrument is his modified 1960s Fender Stratocaster — the guitar that has become known as the “Coodercaster” and given its name to an entire category of guitar modification. The original Coodercaster is a Fender Stratocaster fitted with a Valco lap-steel pickup at the bridge and a Japanese Teisco pickup in the neck. It has been Cooder’s main slide and blues guitar for years and is the inspiration for every Coodercaster that’s come since. Per the Premier Guitar American Reverence rig rundown: “’60s Fender ‘Coodercaster’ modded with an early ’60s Teisco pickup (neck) and a Valco lap-steel pickup (bridge).”
The genius of the Coodercaster modification is the specific tonal character produced by the lap-steel pickup at the bridge position. Lap-steel pickups are designed for the different string-height and playing context of lap-steel instruments — they have a specific frequency response, a particular warmth in the midrange, and a kind of tonal character that is unlike either standard single-coil or humbucker pickups. In a Stratocaster body with its specific resonance characteristics, the Valco lap-steel pickup at the bridge produces a tone that Cooder describes as “helping the bottleneck sound relax” — giving the slide notes a warmth and sustain that standard Stratocaster single-coils didn’t provide. The Teisco neck pickup adds a different warmth and character, the budget Japanese brand’s specific tonal voice complementing the American lap-steel unit in ways that no matched set of premium pickups would have suggested.
Cooder’s own account of acquiring the original guitar is characteristically vivid: “Captain Beefheart got a record deal with Buddha Records and a Fender endorsement; modern youth target marketing had just been invented, you see. I was told, you go down to the Fender factory in Fullerton, and speak to so-and-so, and he’ll set you up.” The guitar he acquired there — a 1967 Stratocaster, serial number 144953, in blue lacquer finish — became the foundation of the Coodercaster as it has been known. The headstock decal is missing a few spots and reads “ratocaster.” Its case is a road case, implying extensive touring use. This instrument sold through RetroFret for a significant sum when it appeared on the market.
Cooder’s second primary guitar is a 1967 Fender Stratocaster in daphne blue, also heavily modified: a Guyatone pickup in the neck position and a Bigsby steel-guitar pickup at the bridge, with a Bigsby tremolo arm. “That’s an original Bigsby PU in there, and yes it’s somewhat microphonic like early Bigsbys are sometimes, and it takes a little getting used to, like when you put that ’53 Cad motor in the Model A, but you can learn to handle it.” This guitar uses D’Addario ECG25 Chromes Flatwound Light (.012-.052) strings — flatwound strings providing the smooth feel and warm, compressed tone suited to slide playing.
Ry Cooder’s main acoustic guitar, according to his guitar repairman Rick Turner, is a Gibson Roy Smeck model from the mid-1930s. Frets were added to this guitar, which was originally designed for lap-style playing. Roy Smeck was a 1920s-1930s vaudeville performer who specialized in string instruments, and Gibson produced a series of guitars in his name during that period. This specific instrument — a mid-1930s Roy Smeck model, originally fretless for lap-steel use, with frets added — is one of the more unusual acoustic guitars associated with any major guitarist. The Gibson Roy Smeck’s specific construction and the added frets give it a character unlike standard production acoustic guitars.
“Boris” is the name Cooder has given to his 1937 Martin D-28 that was retopped sometime in the 1940s at the Martin factory. Cooder picked the instrument up from T.J. Thompson, who also replaced the neck with one from a 1935 Martin. This 1937 Martin D-28, with its 1940s retop and 1935 neck, is a layered instrument — three different decades of Martin craftsmanship in a single guitar — with specific historical resonance given the era of American roots music it was manufactured in. He is also noted to still own a 1950s Martin 00-18 acoustic, believed to have been used in recording the Paris, Texas theme.
The Premier Guitar American Reverence rig rundown lists a 1959 Gretsch Country Gentleman — the same model that Chet Atkins designed and that George Harrison made famous — among Cooder’s instruments. The Country Gentleman’s Filter’Tron pickups and semi-hollow construction provide the warm, chimey tonal character that suits Cooder’s specific musical applications in the country-rock and world music context.
A Guyatone LG-200T appears in Cooder’s documented collection — the Japanese-made budget guitar from the 1960s whose specific tonal character (the “Goldfoil” or similar Japanese pickup’s warm, slightly nasal quality) appealed to Cooder’s interest in non-mainstream tonal sources. His use of Japanese budget guitars and their pickups — the Teisco in the Coodercaster, the Guyatone in various configurations — reflects the same eclecticism that led him to Valco lap-steel pickups and traditional African instruments.
The Premier Guitar rig rundown lists a Japanese Kent Electric Mandola — an unusual instrument combining the mandola’s range with an electric pickup. This appears in his documented gear for specific musical applications requiring the mandola’s specific pitch range and tonal character.
Cooder plays in many different tunings. He has been known to use drop-D, open D, open G and open E. His primary tunings are open D (D A D F# A D) and open G (D G D G B D), used both for slide playing and for the fingerstyle rhythm work that Premier Guitar documented in detail. When playing electric with a glass slide, he wears it on his fourth (pinkie) finger — unlike Bonnie Raitt’s second-finger approach, Cooder uses the conventional fourth-finger position, which provides the slide stability of the pinkie while allowing fretted notes with the first three fingers.
Cooder uses D’Addario EXL115W Nickel Wound Medium (.011-.049) on the Coodercaster and D’Addario ECG25 Chromes Flatwound Light (.012-.052) on the daphne blue Strat. The flatwound strings on the blue Strat reflect his preference for a warm, smooth feel in specific applications. The standard wound strings on the Coodercaster give it the immediate attack and sustain that slide requires.
Amps
The Fender Tweed Deluxe — the small tube combo from the mid-to-late 1950s, with its 12AX7 preamp tubes, 5Y3 rectifier, and 6V6 power tubes in a push-pull configuration — is Cooder’s most consistently documented amplifier. The Tweed Deluxe’s specific character: warm, responsive to touch variation, with a natural breakup at moderate volumes that adds harmonic complexity to slide notes without overwhelming them with saturation. Its modest power (approximately 12 watts) means it reaches its character at studio-practical volumes, and its specific tonal footprint — the gentle presence peak, the warm low-end, the EL84-influenced breakup character — suits slide guitar in intimate recording settings. The Paris, Texas soundtrack’s specific guitar character owes much to this amplifier.
The Fender Vibroverb — a 40-watt, 1×15 cabinet tube combo produced from 1963 to 1964 (one of the rarest Fender models) and reissued later — features Fender’s vibrato circuit (true pitch vibrato) alongside reverb. The Vibroverb’s vibrato is the authentic tremolo-like pitch modulation effect (distinct from amplitude tremolo) that suits Cooder’s atmospheric, evocative playing. The 1×15 configuration provides more low-end body than the more common 2×12 or 1×12 setups, suiting the warmth and presence his slide needs in live performance.
A 1956 Fender Super appears in the Premier Guitar rig rundown — the vintage tweed-era amplifier that precedes the blackface and silverface periods. The tweed Super’s specific warmth and breakup character suits Cooder’s approach to vintage American roots music.
The Premier Guitar rundown also lists a 1950s Gretsch Artist amplifier — a period-correct vintage amplifier whose specific tonal character suits the vintage guitar instruments and tunings that characterize Cooder’s approach to American roots music.
The “Green Man” — a dual tube guitar preamp designed by Danny McKinney — appears in Cooder’s documented setup for specific recording and performance applications. Custom-built preamps allow precise control over input gain and frequency response before the signal reaches the power amplification stage.
Effects
In 1982, Ry Cooder approached effects builder Roger Mayer asking for a tremolo pedal, as no commercial tremolo pedals were being made at the time. “In 1982 Ry Cooder came to me asking if I could make him a tremolo pedal, as none were being made at the time. After some experimentation, and Ry’s old Fender twin amp as a sound model, the Tremulator was born.” This commission is historically significant: Cooder’s request led to the creation of the Tremulator, which became a celebrated boutique tremolo pedal. His amplifier’s built-in Fender vibrato circuit (on the Vibroverb) provides similar functionality, but the dedicated tremolo pedal gave him the effect independent of amplifier model.
A Musitronics-made Dan Armstrong Purple Peaker plugged into his Stratocaster appears in documented photographs — the Dan Armstrong inline effects units that plugged directly into the guitar’s output jack, before the guitar cable, processing the signal before it reached any amplifier. The Purple Peaker’s specific character: a high-frequency boost/treble enhancer that adds presence and cut to the signal. Used with his slide guitar, it would add the upper harmonics that give slide notes their characteristic singing quality.
More recent pedalboard documentation shows the Old Blood Noise Endeavors Black Fountain — a delay pedal designed to emulate oil-can delay, a specific vintage analog delay technology that produces a warm, dark, slightly unpredictable echo character. The Black Fountain’s specific character suits Cooder’s atmospheric, reverberant playing style, adding spatial depth without the clinical precision of digital delay.
As with Joni Mitchell and Bonnie Raitt, the most important “effect” in Cooder’s setup is harmonic rather than electronic: the open tuning system he developed from Bahamian guitarist Joseph Spence’s influence, primarily open D and open G. These tunings are the foundation of his slide work and his fingerstyle rhythm playing — the specific harmonic vocabulary of open string intervals giving his guitar parts their characteristic resonant, open quality.
The ethnomusicological dimension of his playing and producing cannot be separated from the musical dimension. When Cooder engaged with Cuban traditional music, West African music, Hawaiian music, Tex-Mex accordion music, or Appalachian folk forms, he was not merely adopting exotic elements for commercial effect. He was doing the serious scholarly and musical work of learning the tradition’s vocabulary, finding its emotional center, and translating it into a musical context that could reach audiences who hadn’t encountered the original. This is genuinely difficult work — harder than playing well technically, requiring cultural sensitivity and musical intelligence simultaneously — and Cooder has done it more consistently and more successfully than any other figure in American popular music of his generation.
Playing Style & Tone Philosophy
Ry Cooder’s playing style is built on a scholarly engagement with American music traditions that is unique among major rock guitarists. He doesn’t just play the blues; he understands the blues historically, culturally, and musically in the way that a musicologist or an ethnomusicologist might, and this understanding informs every note he plays. The specific fingerpicking technique he learned from Reverend Gary Davis — the alternating bass-and-melody fingerstyle approach of gospel-blues tradition — is the physical foundation of everything his right hand does. The open tunings he absorbed from Joseph Spence provide the harmonic framework. The slide work places these elements in a specifically emotive, vocal context where the guitar becomes a singing voice rather than a rhythmic or harmonic instrument.
His playing has two distinct modes, both of which are exceptional. As Premier Guitar noted, “Cooder’s reputation as a bottleneck badass is well deserved” — but “what fewer folks know about Cooder is that, when the slide is off, he’s also a tremendous rhythm guitarist.” The fingerstyle rhythm work on his early 1970s albums — using open G tuning, caped variants for key changes, and funky syncopations that create contrapuntal rhythm parts — is as musically sophisticated as the slide work and deserves equal attention. He creates polyrhythmic guitar arrangements from a single instrument, the thumb alternating bass while the fingers carry melody and rhythm simultaneously, in the tradition he absorbed directly from Gary Davis and through the Bahamian open-tuning vocabulary of Joseph Spence.
His tone philosophy is perhaps best expressed by the Guitar World description: sounds closer to Zen masters and Impressionist painters than to other guitarists. The evocative quality of Cooder’s playing — the way a guitar note in the Paris, Texas context creates a visual and emotional landscape rather than simply a musical event — is the result of specific choices: the right tuning for the mood, the right instrument for the tuning, the right amplification for the instrument, the right tremolo or reverb for the space. Each element serves the evocation. Nothing is present for its own sake.
The Paris, Texas soundtrack deserves its own extended discussion as the fullest expression of Cooder’s tone philosophy applied to a specific compositional purpose. Wim Wenders’ 1984 film needed music that conveyed the American Southwest as a physical and emotional landscape: the emptiness, the heat, the distance, the longing. Cooder’s slide guitar — specifically the Coodercaster through the Fender Tweed Deluxe with the Vibroverb’s tremolo — created that landscape in sound. The notes are simple: open tuning, slide, tremolo, reverb. But the emotional effect is precise: each note sustains and then releases like the desert heat releasing at dusk. The guitar is not commenting on the landscape; it is making the landscape audible. This is what Cooder meant when he said “Impressionist painters” — the music makes you see the thing rather than describing it. And the technical means by which this is achieved are traceable to specific gear choices: the lap-steel pickup’s warmth, the Tweed Deluxe’s natural saturation, the tremolo’s slow pulsing rate. Everything serves the evocation.
How to Sound Like Ry Cooder
Approximating Cooder’s tone requires understanding that the Coodercaster modifications are as important as any tuning or technique choice — the specific pickup combination is the foundation of the electric tone.
Guitar: For the authentic approach: a Stratocaster body with a lap-steel pickup at the bridge (Valco, Lollar Supro, or similar vintage-voiced lap steel unit) and a Japanese Teisco or Guyatone-style pickup at the neck. This is the “Coodercaster” configuration that has been widely replicated by independent builders. Open G tuning (D G D G B D) for most slide work; open D (D A D F# A D) for specific applications. Heavy strings for slide (D’Addario .011-.049 or similar).
Amp: Fender Tweed Deluxe (or quality reproduction) for the intimate, warm slide tone of the Paris, Texas era. Fender Vibroverb for live performance where the built-in vibrato is desirable. The amp should be warm, touch-sensitive, and reaching its natural saturation at studio-comfortable volumes. Add tremolo — either the amp’s built-in vibrato circuit or a quality tremolo pedal like the Tremulator — at a slow, deep rate for the atmospheric quality that characterizes his best film and solo work.
Amp Settings (Fender Tweed Deluxe or equivalent):
| Control | Setting (0–10) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Volume | 6–8 | Working hard — natural breakup is part of the Tweed tone |
| Tone | 5–6 | Moderate — the lap-steel pickup’s warmth doesn’t need treble boost |
| Tremolo Speed (Vibroverb) | Slow | Slow, deep vibrato — atmospheric rather than rhythmic |
| Tremolo Depth | 5–7 | Noticeable — the tremolo is not subtle in his best work |
| Reverb (if available) | 3–5 | Present — spatial depth for the evocative quality |
Influence & Legacy
Ry Cooder’s influence on guitar playing is primarily indirect — operating through his impact on other musicians (Keith Richards, most famously) and through his demonstration that the American roots tradition was an inexhaustible creative resource for musicians willing to engage with it seriously. The open G tuning lesson to Richards changed the direction of the Rolling Stones’ music, the most commercially significant guitar-to-guitar teaching moment in rock history. The Coodercaster modification inspired a generation of guitarists to explore unconventional pickup combinations, with “Coodercaster” now a recognized category in guitar building.
His Buena Vista Social Club project demonstrated that Cuban traditional music — the son, the bolero, the danzón — was of international interest, and the album’s and documentary’s success produced both a commercial phenomenon and a serious engagement with a musical tradition that had been largely invisible to English-speaking audiences. This is cultural work as much as musical work: the use of musical skills in service of cultural preservation and cross-cultural transmission.
For context on where Cooder fits in the slide guitar tradition, the comparison with Duane Allman’s electric slide approach at #16 illuminates the parallel reputation — both are regularly cited as among the greatest slide guitarists in rock history, each using different instruments and different approaches in different musical contexts. Allman’s is blues-rock, physically intense, emotionally direct; Cooder’s is more ethnomusicologically informed, quieter, more spatially evocative.
The comparison with Bonnie Raitt’s emotionally direct slide approach at #76 shows two West Coast American musicians who both derived their slide vocabulary from deep engagement with the Delta tradition and both developed genuinely distinctive personal voices from it. The technical contrast — Raitt on middle finger, Cooder on pinkie; Raitt in open A, Cooder primarily in open G and D — is the external expression of different compositional orientations and different relationships with the tradition.
And the comparison with Ali Farka Touré’s West African guitar tradition — which Cooder brought to international attention through the Talking Timbuktu collaboration — shows the fullest expression of his musical mission: not just to play his own music but to act as a vehicle for traditions that deserve wider hearing. His guitar playing is only part of what Ry Cooder has contributed to music.
Rolling Stone ranked Ry Cooder the 8th Greatest Guitarist of All Time in 2003 — the highest ranking in this series for anyone outside the rock mainstream, acknowledging that “greatest” encompasses a wider range of musical achievement than commercial success or technical virtuosity alone. Cooder’s guitar sounds like the American landscape heard from its edges rather than its center. The Coodercaster is in its case. The Martin “Boris” is in its bag. Open G is tuned to D G D G B D. The slide is on the fourth finger. The tremolo is set slow and deep. And somewhere in a specific moment of specific light, the Paris, Texas theme is playing on the Fender Tweed Deluxe, and the guitar is not making music. The guitar is making a place.
The Tremulator story is worth documenting fully because it represents a specific kind of influence that most guitarists never achieve: the influence on guitar effects manufacturing. In 1982, tremolo pedals did not exist as commercial products. Cooder needed one. He commissioned Roger Mayer to build one, using Cooder’s Fender Twin Reverb as the sonic model for the target character. The result — the Tremulator — became a respected boutique tremolo pedal. The 1982 vintage tremolo pedal market: one pedal. The reason it exists: Ry Cooder’s commission. This is influence operating at the level of guitar effects history.
His guitar collecting philosophy — focused on vintage American instruments and their international counterparts, with specific attention to budget Japanese guitars whose unconventional pickups produce unusual tonal characters — has also influenced the broader guitar collecting community. The Teisco and Guyatone interest that Cooder expressed through the Coodercaster modifications inspired generations of guitar collectors to look beyond the recognized brands to the Japanese budget guitars of the 1960s, which are now genuinely collectible and sought after partly because of Cooder’s endorsement by example. This is cultural and commercial influence operating through the guitar collector world rather than through the music industry.
Cooder’s career embodies a specific understanding of what a musician’s relationship to tradition should look like: deep engagement with the music itself, serious study of its historical and cultural context, genuine respect for the tradition’s originators, and the musical intelligence to translate what has been absorbed into personal creative expression. This is different from appropriation (taking surface elements without understanding or respecting the source), different from academic musicology (understanding without creative application), and different from mere eclecticism (combining elements from multiple traditions without the depth of understanding that makes the combination meaningful). Cooder has always done the third thing: deep engagement, creative synthesis, genuine transmission. The guitar is the instrument through which this happens. The tradition is American music in all its forms, plus the world music traditions he has been privileged to encounter. The result is a body of work unlike anything else in popular music.
Rolling Stone ranked Ry Cooder the 8th Greatest Guitarist of All Time in 2003. He is seventy-nine years old in 2026. The Coodercaster is in its case. Open G is tuned to D G D G B D. The slide is on the fourth finger. The Paris, Texas theme is thirty-two years old and still sounds like a specific place at a specific time of day. This is what great music does: it makes time into place, and place into feeling, and feeling into something that lasts longer than either the time or the place. The guitar, modified in ways that no standard handbook would suggest, does that work. The Valco lap-steel pickup at the bridge is the reason. Or part of the reason. The hands, informed by Reverend Gary Davis, by Joseph Spence, by the Ash Grove and the Delta and the Caribbean and Cuba — the hands are the rest of the reason.
Frequently Asked Questions: Ry Cooder Guitars & Gear
What is the Coodercaster?
The “Coodercaster” is Ry Cooder’s most famous and most influential guitar modification — a Fender Stratocaster with the standard single-coil pickups replaced by non-Fender units: a Valco lap-steel pickup at the bridge position and a Japanese Teisco pickup in the neck position. This combination of pickups from entirely different instrument traditions produces a specific tonal character unavailable from standard Stratocaster configuration — the lap-steel pickup’s warmth “helping the bottleneck sound relax” in Cooder’s words. The original Coodercaster is a 1967 Stratocaster that Cooder acquired through a Captain Beefheart-era Fender endorsement deal. It has become so influential that “Coodercaster” is now a recognized category of guitar building, with numerous independent luthiers producing replicas and variations on the concept.
Did Ry Cooder teach Keith Richards open G tuning?
Yes. Ry Cooder taught Keith Richards the open G tuning (D G D G B D) during the period when Cooder was working as a session guitarist on Rolling Stones recording sessions in 1968-1969. Richards subsequently adopted the tuning as his primary playing approach, removing the low E string (playing effectively a 5-string guitar in open G) and using it to write some of the Stones’ most celebrated songs: “Honky Tonk Women,” “Brown Sugar,” “Start Me Up,” and much of the Exile on Main St. material. This single tuning lesson is one of the most musically consequential guitar-to-guitar transmissions in rock history. Cooder has since had a complicated relationship with Richards, at one point accusing him of plagiarism, though he has declined to elaborate publicly.
What acoustic guitars does Ry Cooder play?
Ry Cooder’s main acoustic guitar, according to repairman Rick Turner, is a Gibson Roy Smeck model from the mid-1930s — originally designed for lap-style playing, with frets added. He also plays “Boris” — a 1937 Martin D-28 with a 1940s factory retop and a neck from a 1935 Martin, acquired from luthier T.J. Thompson. He is noted to still own a 1950s Martin 00-18 believed to have been used on the Paris, Texas recording. Additional documented acoustic instruments include a Gibson J-200 and a Takamine J-15E for specific applications.
What amplifiers does Ry Cooder use?
Ry Cooder’s primary documented amplifiers include the Fender Tweed Deluxe (a 1950s 12-watt tube combo), the Fender Vibroverb (with built-in vibrato), a 1956 Fender Super, a 1950s Gretsch Artist amplifier, and the “Green Man” — a custom dual tube guitar preamp designed by Danny McKinney. His amplification choices consistently favor vintage Fender tube designs from the 1950s-1960s, particularly the smaller combos (Deluxe, Vibroverb) whose natural breakup at moderate volumes suits the warmth and expressiveness his playing requires. The Paris, Texas soundtrack is closely associated with the Fender Tweed Deluxe’s specific tonal character.
What is Ry Cooder’s slide technique?
Ry Cooder plays slide with a glass slide worn on his fourth (pinkie) finger — the conventional slide position that allows the first three fingers to fret normally while the slide is in place. He plays primarily in open D (D A D F# A D) and open G (D G D G B D) tunings. Beyond the slide work, he is also an exceptional fingerstyle rhythm guitarist — using open G tuning with capo variations and a thumb-pick/bare-finger technique derived from his study with Reverend Gary Davis to create contrapuntal rhythm parts that function as self-contained accompaniment. The combination of slide and fingerstyle capability — both drawn from American roots music traditions but applied in distinct ways — gives his playing its extraordinary range.
What is the Buena Vista Social Club and Cooder’s role in it?
Buena Vista Social Club is the 1997 album produced by Ry Cooder that brought traditional Cuban music to worldwide attention. Cooder traveled to Havana and recorded with a group of elderly Cuban musicians — many of whom had been largely forgotten after the Cuban revolution effectively ended Cuba’s international music industry connections — including Ibrahim Ferrer, Rubén González, and Compay Segundo. The album became a worldwide commercial success and a cultural phenomenon, leading to Wim Wenders’ 1999 documentary film (nominated for an Academy Award). The project introduced traditional Cuban son, bolero, and danzón to audiences who had no previous access to the tradition, and revived the careers of the Cuban musicians involved. It is one of the most significant examples of cross-cultural musical collaboration and roots music documentation in the late twentieth century.
Is Ry Cooder in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?
Ry Cooder has not been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as of 2026, a situation that many in the music world consider an oversight given his Rolling Stone ranking as the 8th Greatest Guitarist of All Time (2003) and his profound influence on American roots music, slide guitar, and cross-cultural musical collaboration. His limited commercial success may be a factor in the Hall’s electoral process, which has tended to favor commercial impact over cultural significance. His contributions — teaching Keith Richards the open G tuning that shaped the Rolling Stones’ greatest work, documenting Cuban traditional music through Buena Vista Social Club, and his extensive work introducing world music traditions to American audiences — represent one of the more significant bodies of musical work by any American guitarist of his generation.