king had an intuitive style, often creating guitar parts with vocal nuances. he achieved this by using the open-string sound associated with texas blues and the raw, screaming tones of west side, chicago blues. king's combination of the texas and chicago sounds gave his music a more contemporary feel than that of many chicago bands who were still performing 1950s-style music, and he befriended the younger generation of blues musicians. in his early career he played a solid-body gold-top gibson les paul with p-90 pickups. he later played several slimline semi-hollow body gibson electric guitars, including an es-335, es-345, and es-355. he used a plastic thumb pick and a metal index-finger pick.