Episode #229 The Great Slide Comparison of 2025

In this episode I'm lining up my slide collection (or some of it) and giving you a straight side-by-side tone comparison.

I talk about different slide materials, makes and sizes, featuring handmade slides like the Diamond Bottle Neck hand-blown glass slide and the Delta Lizard - Delta Howler slide as well as Dunlop slides and the Magslide. 

Let me know which one you like best ben@thebluesguitarshow.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:46

Hello and welcome to the Blues Guitar Show podcast with me Ben Martin from thebluesguitarshow.com, the podcast that brings you passion, practice and perseverance for your guitar playing journey. Today we are doing the Great Slide Comparison episode of 2025. So I am a man that owns far too many slides. But one of my absolute favorite things of the last kind of five years is getting really, really deep into playing slide guitar, both on acoustic and electric. And what I thought would be a cool idea, a couple of people have asked me to do this, is to compare all the different slides that I have, all the different ones that I commonly use, and see if we can really hear the differences and talk a little bit about which ones I like for different things and why. So I'm going to do this on a steel string acoustic just because I want it to be more like the sort of thing that most people have most people don't have a resonator at home some people do most people don't so I'm going to do this on an acoustic I'm going to attempt to play the same thing so you can really hear the differences in not just slide materials, but also specifically in different slides. So I'm going to go right to left on my little slide collection here. I've got a Dunlop mudslide. Okay, that's one that I use quite a lot. Ceramic, very heavy Dunlop mudslide. The next one is a Dunlop blues bottle. And that's one that's a slide that your finger doesn't go all the way through. It's got a top on it. And that's glass. then I've got this handmade delta lizard slide which got sent to me from Nick go check out delta lizard blues over on Instagram and you'll see that he makes these really really cool slides this is a great nice heavy glass slide and it's got a really it's really I really like that it's kind of left so one side is has a bigger opening than the other which is really nice because it gives it a really good fit and for me it's a really really comfortable thing to play then I've got a diamond bottleneck hand-blown glass slide which is a really nice heavy slide made uh by ian at diamond bottleneck slides again go and check him out on instagram uh gorgeous looking slide you can see pictures of that on my instagram too then i've got a uh what is this a standard kind of metal dunlop slide which might be similar to what a lot of you guys have especially kind of first slide type stuff and then i've got this mag slide that was sent to me very kindly by my student mark um over in north carolina so cheers to mark for this and it's um it's really light it's made of magnesium which is super cool um very very light slide but really really great sound so let's check out how all of these sound i'm going to play a few different things but i'm going to play one lick and just go from one slide to another and i'll let you know which slide i'm playing and you can you can let me know which one you like the sound of and why i'll talk about how i feel to play and which ones i prefer for which things as we go so first up is this donlop mud slide now i love this because i like how heavy it is i do quite like a heavy slide um it's ceramic and it's got a really really great sound great to staying the only thing that i find a little bit tricky about this is that the fit is not ideal for me and i do get some of this kind of um raking of the frets underneath just because of how kind of cumbersome and bulky it is but i do love the sounds check it out this is dunlop mudslide so All right, next up, sticking with the Dunlop theme, the Blues Bottle. This is probably my least comfortable slide in terms of fit for me, and I don't particularly like the fact that it's got a top on it, which means that I can't put my finger all the way through. But Glass Slide has a nice sound to it. Check it out. MUSIC PLAYS Alright, now we're getting to the good stuff. My Delta Lizard handmade guitar slide. This one's called the Delta Howler. Very, very cool slide. Again, it's glass. Beautiful sound. Check this one out. This one is probably the most comfortable fit for me out of all of them. It's fast becoming my pick-up-and-play slide. Next up, we've got my diamond bottleneck hand-blown glass slide. Again, cheers to Ian for sending me this over. Very, very cool. Awesome looking slide. Really heavy glass. Beautifully made. Let's check out how it sounds. OK, next up, we've got the Dunlop Metal Slide. This is one that a lot of people have. It's a very kind of standard slide that you find people have. And some people love, love the metal sound. So check out. It sounds quite different to the others.

UNKNOWN: 6:06

Oh.

SPEAKER_01: 6:17

Okay, last up in this lineup, we have the MagSlide, the magnesium-made slide. This is a really interesting one. It's made from the lightest structural metal on Earth, is what it says. It's 33% lighter than glass and 80% lighter than brass. So let's check out how it sounds. This is a really, really comfortable slide to play because it weighs so little, which is super cool. Okay, so that's a basic sound comparison of all the different slides. And hopefully you heard some differences in kind of tone. And I tried my best to play the same thing. All the settings were exactly the same, so there was nothing different. Just recording this with a microphone with my Martin and a little bit of reverb added at the end. But the same for all of the slides. Now, if I was to kind of rank these in a way in orders of what I like about each of them, I would say tonally, the warmest tone slide... would have to say is this diamond bottleneck slide i think it's just really beautifully made massively heavy glass it just has a really great sound to it and it's it's um it's yeah definitely the warmest sound if i play acoustic so just has this really smooth tone to it. So I would say tonally, the warmest one is definitely the Diamond Bottleneck Slide. I would say I also still love the sound of this Ceramic Mud Slide in terms of tone, same. But you know, actually when I play these side to side, I much prefer the Diamond Bottleneck one. But both of those sound good. I would say my least favorite tone is probably the Dunlop Metal Slide. Some people love the Metal Slide sound. If you're doing the kind of more of a, you know, kind of trashy blues stuff, Elmore James kind of stuff, Metal Slide can be really good. I would probably use that more on an electric than the acoustic. So tonally, I would say, yeah, it's between the Mud Slide and the Diamond Bottleneck Slide. Then if I move on to comfort, I think, in terms of comfort, and this is really worth thinking about if you're going to be playing gigs on slides, playing for a long time, I would say for comfort, this... See, I'm knocking things over now. I would say for comfort, this Delta Lizard slide, the Delta Howler, is definitely the most comfortable. It's the kind of weight that I really like. It's not too heavy, it's not too light, it gets enough sustain... If I compare that side to side with the metal one, just see how that sounds different. You can really hear that glass and metal difference in that one. And if I stick the blues bottle slide on. You can kind of hear the blues bottle is so much thinner, thinner kind of glass. Whereas this one is presumably a wine bottle kind of glass. And you have that. That's the wine bottle glass. Here's the blues bottle. Here's the diamond bottleneck, and comparing glass ones. So yeah, you can kind of feel that there's a warmer tone with the thicker glass. The diamond bottleneck one has the warmest tone, then the second warmest tone would be that delta lizard one, and then that blues bottle actually sounds a little bit thin to me now. Now I'm playing it back to back with other ones. And then last up for comfort, this mag slide. There's no slide that I think is as comfortable as this one just because it weighs nothing. It feels like I've got nothing on my finger. I would particularly use this when playing electric slide because I think... It's got great sustain, actually. But... I think it's really good when I'm playing the electric because it doesn't get in the way of my other fingers. I'm going to use my other fingers more probably when playing electric slide than acoustic because my acoustic slide playing tends to be more open tuning based so I get a lot more of those kind of chordal based things and getting a really nice warm tone for those chords by something like this. That's the diamond bottleneck one. So let's compare some of the chord sounds. So let's start with, I'm gonna eliminate some of the ones that I've decided that I'm not a fan of anymore, or that I'm not gonna keep for the purpose of this. So the Dunlop Metal Slide is gone. That goes over there. The Blues Bottle is gone. And I'm gonna get rid of the Mud Slide. So that leaves me with the Diamond Bottlenecks Slide, the Delta Lizard Slide, and the Mag Slide. Now check out how this works for chords. So I'm gonna play just some chords. open tuning, I think I'm in open E, yeah, open E, and just do a kind of one, four, five thing, just see how it sounds when we get more of a bigger sound, because we've got some single note examples there, but how does it sound when we get a bigger kind of chord sound, so... So this is the diamond bottleneck slide... Okay, let's compare that to the mag slide. interesting because even in that little comparison I can hear already why I think I prefer that mag slide for electric playing or single note stuff because it handles the single notes really really well okay and last up for this one the delta lizard slide let's compare it with the chords so Awesome. So those three are definitely my favorite slides that I own. I have compared about six slides today, but I actually own something more like 10, I think. I haven't bothered with the plastic one because the plastic one's horrible. You all let me know on Instagram that you agree with me that the plastic one is horrible. Head over to my Instagram, at bluesguitarshowpodcast, if you want to see me demoing a couple of these slides. So I think for me, the mag slide would probably be my go-to slide when I'm playing electric, just because it's so comfortable. It sounds great and And it's the sort of slide that I could just pick up and I could play for hours playing a show. I think if I was playing single note stuff on an acoustic, I would definitely pick either the Diamond Bottlenecks or the Delta Lizard slide. These two are definitely my two favourites for acoustic playing. I think the Diamond Bottleneck Slide has the edge when it comes to playing chords or just wanting that extra kind of beefy sustain. But both of them sound great. They're both really great fits. And Nick and Ian really know what they're doing in terms of making these. So I would thoroughly recommend checking them out if you've ever thought about getting a sort of custom slide. check out the Delta Lizard Blues slides and the Diamond Bottleneck slides you can't go far wrong with those so I hope that was fun I hope that was useful do let me know if you've got any other slides that you think I should give a go I've got a few more metal ones so maybe I'll do a bigger one at some point and record a video of me comparing these but it's really good to do this via audio just because it stops you being in any way kind of influenced by the way things look so you can really you can listen to it and go okay what do I like the sound of if you like a kind of warm tone I would think probably one of those thicker glass ones or maybe the ceramic one if you like a slightly trashier tone or something a little bit more um classic bluesy kind of crackly um you'd be looking at something more like the metal one or the magnesium one but i love them all for different things i love them all for different reasons but really really fun to be able to just play them back to back actually highlights how difficult it is to swap out slides i tend to just uh get used to a couple of them and use them pretty heavily that show in sweden i think i was playing the um mudslide and then going from the mudslide when I came back to playing the mag slide feels like a world apart because one is bulky and heavy and I have to adjust my hand position for it and the other one just feels like there's nothing on my finger at all more like a sort of black mountain slide ring or something that I have had before as well interesting to try slide rings it's not for me because I think I've spent too long with the kind of bar slide technique to be able to adjust now to a ring slide but my buddy Sam who also teaches at the academy he has a slide ring he's a phenomenal guitarist Sam Birchall over on Instagram if you want to check out him as well fantastic guitarist really kind of the opposite to me in every way he's like super shreddy and very very cool stuff but he has a ring slide and he's going to try and get to grips with the ring slide but I feel like my technique is too far gone for that I'm a slide purist and I like the big fat ones alright I hope that was fun I hope that was useful do let me know if you have any comments or let me know which one was your favourite you can email me ben at the blues guitar show.com have a great week and i'll see you the same time next week