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Check out these equipment picks from artists featured in the June 2001 No.102 issue of Acoustic Guitar magazine.
MARK
ERELLI |
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Mark Erelli’s main guitar is a 1995 Martin HD-28. He also has a 1946 Martin 0-17 that he uses in the studio and for writing. Erelli also has a Danelectro 59-DC Pro reissue electric guitar, and his amps include an early ’70s Fender Deluxe Reverb that he bought from Brooks Williams. He uses D’Addario phosphor-bronze, medium-gauge strings exclusively. He alternates between Clayton .80 mm. picks for rhythm and green Dunlop Tortex (.88 mm.) for lead playing. His HD-28 is rigged with an L.R. Baggs Dual Source system, and the stereo signal is run through a Rane AP-13 preamp, which he uses to split the signal so he can EQ the pickup and mic separately. ––Karen Iris Tucker Claus Boesser-Ferrari’s main guitar is a Goodall Concert Jumbo, which features a cutaway, rosewood back and sides, and a spruce top. For amplification, the guitar is equipped with a hexaphonic Paradies pickup (built in Switzerland by Rolf Spuler and no longer in production) and a Fishman Rare Earth Blend. The Paradies pickup sends the signal from the bottom three strings to a rack-mounted Paradies Sub-Bass, which gives Boesser-Ferrari a unique bass sound. The signals from the Rare Earth and the top three strings of the Paradies are split into separate channels via a special seven-pin cable. His current 12-string is a Taylor Leo Kottke model, which includes the same electronics as the Goodall. He also owns a custom Martin 12-string, an Albert and Müller S-5 (www.albert-mueller.de), Joel Lapman and Wechter nylon-strings, and two Paradies solid-body acoustics, one with steel strings and one with nylon. He uses two AER Acousticube amps (www.aer-amps.de) with a Sub-Bass extension box and endorses D’Aquisto strings. ––Teja Gerken P.J. Olsson plays several Martin auditorium-size guitars and a Guild acoustic. He doesn’t remember the specific model numbers, and he covered the soundholes with cardboard years ago, drawing images on top that would be ruined if the covers were removed. He runs his guitars into a four-channel Whirlwind Multiselector and then to a Boss OC2 octave pedal. From there, the signal goes into a T.C. Electronic stereo chorus pedal, and then into a Big Briar Mooger-Fooger pedal, a ring modulator that Olsson uses to create a swirling effect at the end of some songs. After that, it runs into a SansAmp GT2 pedal, into a Countryman DI box, and finally to the front of the house. He supplements his acoustic guitar with several keyboards: a Waldorf "Q" Synthesizer and an Ensoniq TS10. He uses Shure Beta 58 microphones to record his voice and runs the signal into a Digitech Talker and a TS10 Vocoder, which gives his voice a robotic edge. ––Andrew DuBrock For most of the last 40 years, Johnny Cash has played Martin guitars. The one exception that Cash finds worth mentioning—a red 1958 Gibson J-200 with his name inlaid in the neck—disappeared back in the mid-’60s, when it was either stolen or given away, along with a 1961 Martin D-28 that he’d spray-painted black. Since then, he’s played a series of Martins, including a 1969 D-28, a limited-edition Martin D-76 made for the bicentennial year, a 1982 custom Martin D-45 (with a D-41 neck and D-35-style three-piece back and sides, and signed by Cash, C.F. Martin III, and C.F. Martin IV), and a 1989 custom D-35. On Solitary Man, his primary guitar is No. 1 of the limited-edition Johnny Cash Martin guitar. "It was a lot of fun to do it," says Cash of designing the guitar. "I didn’t ask anybody’s advice. I knew all the things I wanted from the different Martin guitars I had played, and put them all in this one. And Martin likes the design, so I’m told." For strings, Cash long ago switched from heavy-gauge, which bent the necks of his guitars, to Martin medium-gauge, which he says, "gets me the sound I need, and it’s alright for the guitar." On the road, Cash carries a Franklin electronic Bible in his briefcase ("Just punch in what you’re looking for, hit enter, and there’s the scripture you want"); at home, he keeps a King James version by his bedside, along with a St. Brigid’s cross and a Navajo dream catcher. ––Kenny Berkowitz Guy Van Duser’s main guitar for recording and live performance is a nylon-string built by Steven Warshaw (who is now a teacher at the Leeds Guitarmakers School in Northampton, Massachusetts) in 1981. For studio work (for example, for the theme for PBS’Antiques Road Show series), he uses a ten-year-old mahogany-body 000 steel-string built by Tom Williamson (25 Federal St., Brunswick, ME 04011; [207] 729-4059). He plays with nails (kept fairly short) and Golden Gate medium thumbpicks, which he thinks are the best replacement for the old National picks. For sound reinforcement, the Warshaw (RR 2, Box 395, Cornish, NH 03745; sduryea@turbont.net) has active RMC pickups in the bridge (RMC Pickups, [510] 845-9130; www.rmcpickup.com). Van Duser supplements the pickups with a microphone on stage—often whatever the sound engineer supplies, though he carries an Electro-Voice mini-condenser. In the studio he has used a Neumann TLM-103 and a Shure SM-81. ––Russell Letson Excerpted from Acoustic Guitar magazine, June 2001, No.102. |
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