Guitar Style and Technique
From inception, Mack's rock-guitar style was steeped in the blues. However, he routinely used fast-paced "fingerstyle" and "chicken picking" techniques and runs with origins in traditional country and bluegrass styles. This distinguished Mack from most of the blues-rock guitarists who rose to prominence in the decade following "Memphis", guitarists whose styles had evolved more exclusively from the Delta and Chicago blues traditions.
Mack typically manipulates the whammy bar with the little finger of his right hand, while picking at a 45-degree angle with a pick or the remaining fingers of the same hand, and bending the strings on the fret-board with his left. Stevie Ray Vaughan: "Nobody can play with a whammy-bar like Lonnie. He holds it while he plays and the sound sends chills up your spine". Mack's pioneering use of "lightning-fast runs" and machine-gunned climaxes became hallmarks of virtuoso rock guitar by the end of the 1960s.
On most of his early guitar solos, Mack employed a variant of R&B guitarist Robert Ward's distortion technique, using a 1950s-era tube-fired Magnatone amplifier to produce a distinctive "watery" tone. On other tunes he plugged into an organ amplifier to enhance his vibrato with a "rotating, fluttery sound".
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