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Experimenter
Richard Leo Johnson.
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Check out these equipment picks from artists featured in the April 2001 No.100 issue of Acoustic Guitar magazine.
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All of Richard Leo Johnson’s guitars, including a six- and 12-string double-neck and separate six- and 12-strings, are made by luthier Lance McCollum (PO Box 806, Colfax, CA 95713; [530] 346-7657; www.mccollumguitars.com). The double-neck has three pickups: an EMG pickup in the soundhole on the six-string side, an L.R. Baggs Ribbon Transducer for the 12-string neck, and an EMG saddle transducer for the six-string neck. "The bridges are two separate pieces completely, so they don’t bleed over that much, and you get a nice stereophonic quality," Johnson explains. ––Bill Milkowski On Puro Blazers, Manuel Gonzales plays a handmade classical guitar that he inherited from his father, who bought it in Tijuana in the early 1950s. It’s strung with D’Addario classical guitar strings. His bajo sexto was handmade in Guadalajara and converted into a bajo quinto, with five pairs of strings handwound by Candelas Guitars (2716 Brooklyn Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90033; [213] 261-2011). Gonzales’ electric guitars are a 1971 Gibson Les Paul Custom and a "mutt telecaster" with a Thinline body and an Elliot Mechanic neck. Both are strung with D’Addario jazz-rock EXL-115 strings and played with Fender heavy flatpicks. Rubén Guaderrama plays a tres, with three pairs of strings, converted from an ’80s Yamaha Grand Concert classical guitar; a requinto romantico, handmade in Paracho, Mexico, with six strings tuned a third above standard tuning; and a 1968 Gibson Les Paul Custom electric guitar. ––Kenny Berkowitz Kate Rusby has played a guitar made by Peter Barton (36 Main St., Addingham, Ilkley, Yorkshire, LS29 0PL, U.K.; [44] 1943-830447) ever since she borrowed one a few years ago. "I was playing a little Gibson B25," Rusby recalls. "It had a really little neck on it, because my hands are tiny. And there was something wrong with it when we were recording Hourglass, so I borrowed one of Peter’s instruments and just fell in love with the sound of it. So he made me one the same, but he measured up the neck of my Gibson, so it’s still got the small neck on it." The Barton has Brazilian rosewood back and sides and a Sitka spruce top. For live work, Rusby uses an L.R. Baggs Dual Source system that she plugs directly into the PA, which is usually run by her brother Joe. "It’s great for touring," Rusby says of the Baggs. "When I first got the new guitar, I was doing some really nice art centers as well as the folk clubs, and it was difficult to get a good sound out of some of the PAs. But the Baggs system works really well. Whatever you plug it into, it always sounds like itself." Rusby has mostly used double dropped-D tuning (D A D G B D) ever since she heard Arty McGlynn use it on a Patrick Street record. "He was doing this bass thing, and I kept rewinding it going, ‘What’s he doing?’," Rusby recalls. "So when I got home, I thought, ‘I’ll do that on this song. See what that’s like. Right, that’s good.’ And that’s what I use all the time now. I don’t use standard tuning anymore. ‘All God’s Angels’ [from Sleepless] was in a funny C tuning, but when I started doing it live, I couldn’t remember what it was [laughs]. So now I just play that in D A D G A D." Rusby and McCusker recorded Sleepless at Pure Records Studio, a ProTools-based studio that is owned by Rusby and her mother and father. She lets her father and brother and their favorite engineer Andy Seward deal with the technical end of things. "I’m just kind of the decorator woman," she says. "I go in and say, ‘Black! Grey! What are you doing?! Get some color in here! We need a yellow ceiling!’ And they’re like, ‘OK, bye.’ I never really get me own way, but I sneak some color in there." ––Scott Nygaard Excerpted from Acoustic Guitar magazine, April 2001, No.100. |
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