Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi spoke in an interview with Musicians Institute and revealed how he continued playing guitar after losing the tips of his fingers. He said:
“I went to the next stage of trying to find light strings. Of course, there were no light strings in them days, they were all quite heavy really. And if you had normal fingers it’s fine, but when you’re like this it’s painful. So I had to make a setup of my own and I bought some banjo strings.
I used at first banjo strings because they were light, and then I dropped the gauge down so that it’ll make basically a light gauge set. That’s what I did, I used that for years.
And then I went to string companies saying, ‘Can you make me some light gauge strings?’ And they were, ‘Light gauge strings? You can’t do that.‘ I said, ‘You can! I’ve got them, I use them!’ And they said ‘No, they’ll never sell. They’ll never do any good.’ Really peculiar, isn’t it?
And I found this company in Wales called Picato and they said, ‘We’ll make them for you.’ So they made me my own sets of these light gauge strings. And I used them for years.
Of course, other companies then started doing light gauge strings. It’s ironic, you have to prove everything before everybody accepts and have a go at it.”
Click here to entire interview.
