equipment played by musician Stevie Ray Vaughan

And the reason I came up with that gauge is because he started to tear his fingers up quite a bit using heavier gauge strings, and I said to him, Stevie, you're just gonna fender srv parts
 have to use a different set to keep your hands. So we finally settled on 11, 15, 19, 28, 38, 58. And that became the standard when his sets came out. His custom sets. You can buy custom sets from people, not that they were sold in stores as custom. I think maybe today there's a bunch of string manufacturers that sell that gauge. Soon after, Vaughan received a new Charvel? guitar neck as a gift from his friend and ZZ Top guitarist Billy F Gibbons. Vaughan installed the neck (with a maple fingerboard) on “Lenny”, at which time he also etched his name into the guitar’s neck plate as a point of pride. Fame began knocking loudly on Vaughan’s door. He first drew worldwide recognition by playing with David Bowie on his chart-topping 1983 comeback Let’s Dance; then by not playing with David Bowie. Vaughan famously declined to tour with Bowie in favor of releasing the debut album he’d recorded in Los Angeles in 1982 with his powerful trio, Double Trouble.