Glenn Tipton

On his website, Tipton states:

The stage gear is the second most important thing after the music itself. It has to be something that you can rely on and feel not only safeness but also comfort. Glenn tells us a bit about his equipment:

“Each tour is different and requires different units or amps in the racks depending on what songs we are playing. It’s forever changing and I’m always experimenting with new equipment and I think it always will change and evolve on stage. On the stage guitars, I use Kahler tremolo systems. The guitars are strung with Ernie Ball RPS-10 strings, which are specially reinforced for the Kahler tremolo systems. My other considerations for stage work are the pickups: They’ve got to be hot!! Most of my stage guitars are fitted with EMG 81s, which are of course active. All the EMG 81s are wired with the batteries in series so they run the pickups at 18 volts. That makes them last longer and the pickups sound hotter, with more edge and poke. This is partly for the signal-boosting active circuitry and partly to avoid worrying about the danger of picking up the local radio station midway through a solo. In later years I’ve used modified EMG’s (GTX’s) as well which are specially designed for me.”

Before switching to the RPS 10-46 for E flat, Tipton used to use a custom set of RPS .009, .011 and .016 for the top three strings and regular Nickel .028, .038, .048 for the bottom three strings. I also remember for standard tuning his gauges were .009, .009, .014, .022, .034 and .038.