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Check out these equipment picks from artists featured in the August 2001 No.104 issue of Acoustic Guitar magazine.
SEAN
WATKINS |
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A devoted endorser of instruments from Dana Bourgeois Guitars, Sean Watkins used a Bourgeois OMC model for the lead guitar work on "Neo’s Song" and a Bourgeois Ricky Skaggs model dreadnought as the rhythm guitar (Dana Bourgeois Guitars, [207] 786-0385, www.danabourgeois.com). "The OMC just mics well," he explains. "It’s pretty much my main guitar now." It isn’t a custom model, he adds, but one he picked off the rack at a music store and loved immediately. Bourgeois Guitars is now making a Sean Watkins Limited Edition OMC, a specially priced, upgraded version of this guitar. He also owns a Bourgeois JOMC and a Flatiron F5 Artist Model mandolin. Watkins strings his guitars with D’Addario EXP coated strings, and he uses an unusual 1.17 mm. plastic Clayton pick that’s "a reddish purple color and doesn’t get scratchy, ever." Watkins says he keeps the action on his guitars really low. "My hands are not that strong and I play with a light touch anyway, so I make it as easy as possible," he explains. "I’m not going for volume because I don’t have to; I don’t play in loud jams." His guitars are equipped with the L.R. Baggs Dual Source system, and Watkins also plays into a stage mic when he solos. "If they have them, I like the AKG C 1000 S mics," he says. "They’re really nice and relatively cheap." For studio work, he prefers Neumann KM 184 mics. "They’re great. I used them on everything I did on my CD," he says, explaining that the engineer used stereo pairs of the small-diaphragm condenser mics to record both his guitars and his mandolin. ––David McCarty Ralph Towner plays a classical guitar made in 1995 by Jeffrey Elliott and Cynthia Burton (2812 S.E. 37th Ave., Portland, OR 97202; [503] 233-0836 www.maui.net/~rtadaki/elliott.html). "We generally do not make instrumentstogether, but we are both big fans of Ralph Towner, and decided to risk it," says Burton. The guitar has a 65 mm. scale, a European spruce top, and East Indian rosewood back and sides. Other features include an ebony fingerboard, a Spanish cedar neck, a Brazilian rosewood bridge, a spalted maple rosette, and flamed koa binding. It has a French-polish finish and is equipped with David Rodgers tuning machines. Towner uses normal-tension D’Addario strings and mics his classical with an old Beyer M 160 double-ribbon mic. That signal goes to a Symetrix preamp, then to his own monitor system, then to the house. Towner plays two 25-year-old, custom-made Guild 12-string guitars. Both have classical-width necks, no pickguard, and no fingerboard ornamentation. The guitar he tours with has a cutaway and is kept at standard pitch. With Oregon, he also plays a Frame Works (www.frameworks-guitars.com ) guitar, a collapsible nylon-string with RMC pickups for driving a guitar synthesizer. ––Mark Small Train guitarist Rob Hotchkiss plays two Alvarez dreadnoughts: a DY84 six-string and a DY40-12 12-string. Each guitar is equipped with a feedback-busting soundhole cover, and the signal runs through both the on-board preamp/EQ and an external Fishman preamp. On the electric side, he plugs a 1968 Fender Strat into Boss Super Distortion and Stereo Chorus pedals and a Vox AC 30. Hotchkiss’ guitars are strung with D’Addarios, medium gauge on the acoustics. On Train, he use D A D G A D tuning extensively, but the new record is mostly in standard, except for "She’s on Fire" in open E. He plays with a medium Fender pick. Lead man Jimmy Stafford’s main guitar is a 1972 Gibson gold top Les Paul. For more earthy tones, he plays a custom Benedict (www.benedictguitars.com), a semi-hollow-body model with both electric- and acoustic-style pickups. He also picks a Lotus mandolin. ––Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers Although he won Winfield last year playing a Gallagher 72 Special, Robert Shafer’s main guitar is the Taylor 410-CE that he won at last year’s MerleFest guitar contest. "Playing with Johnny Staats requires that I plug in," he says of his switch to the Fishman pickup–equipped Taylor. Shafer runs his signal into a DI and then into the PA. He has ordered a new Taylor 612-CE with a Fishman Prefix Blender pickup system that incorporates both a pickup and an internal mic. The Taylor’s thinner, faster necks are similar to the neck on Shafer’s Telecaster, making it easier for him to switch from acoustic to electric. He prefers GHS Bright Bronze strings and uses black Dunlop nylon teardrop picks. ––David McCarty "I love to think of myself as an acoustic guitar girl," says Emmylou Harris, who owns dozens of instruments. "Different songs sound best on certain guitars. That’s one of the things I love about them: they all sound different and they all feel different. They have been great friends, great comfort to me over the years." Since the start of her career, Harris has spent most of her stage time playing Gibson jumbos, because, she says, "they remind me of pictures of the Carter Family. If you see a J-200 up close for the first time, it just takes your breath away. And for rhythm guitarists, it’s about the best. You get a big sound, and yet it’s an intimate sound; it’s not too overwhelming. And if you just play chords, you might as well have a really great-looking instrument to do it on, so maybe people don’t notice that all you’re doing is I–IV–V." After learning to play as a teenager on a $30 Kay, she bought her first serious instrument, the early 1960s Gibson Country Western that’s still her main performing guitar. Her other Gibsons include a ’93 rosewood Montana SJ-200, a ’47 sunburst SJ-200 that was her main guitar on Wrecking Ball, and a ’67 Gibson Everly Brothers, which she plays in open-A tuning. The customized ’57 blond SJ-200 that she inherited from Gram Parsons has been retired from the road, replaced with a copy made by Gibson Montana in 1999. During the making of Red Dirt Girl, Harris totaled her car in the rain, destroying the ’78 Martin M-38 she bought when she was pregnant with her second daughter and needed a smaller, thinner guitar to get her arms around. "It was a great traveling guitar," she says, "and a beautiful recording guitar. I had to put it into a garbage bag, there were just so many pieces of it. I mourn the loss of that little guitar so much." It’s been replaced by a ’99 Martin OM-42, which she usually plays in open A. She also plays a ’37 Martin 00-28 and a Martin J-40M. On the road, Harris plays a ’98 Collings Baby guitar, which is small enough to carry onto an airplane; at home, she plays her signature SJ-200 Emmylou Harris Elite Custom, which has a solid spruce top and flamed maple back and sides. Occasionally, she plays a metal-bodied resonator guitar by Larry Pogreba, which has a Nash Rambler hubcap as the resonator cover. For lower notes and deeper drones, she open-tunes an acoustic baritone guitar by Glen Reid and a pair of six-string electric baritones: a Joe Glaser and a Danelectro. On the acoustic guitars, she uses D’Angelico 80/20 bronze medium-gauge strings (.013–.058), and on the baritone, she uses GHS bright-bronze heavy-gauge strings (.014–.060). She uses custom-made, teardrop-shaped medium flatpicks and horseshoe-shaped Golden Gate capos. Her stage guitars are all equipped with Sunrise pickups, which are run through a Chardstuff ACH-104 preamp. On her electric guitars—a ’67 pink paisley Fender Telecaster, a ’62 rosewood Fender Stratocaster, and a late ’50s Musicmaster—she uses Pure Nickel strings from Kendrick Amplifiers. ––Kenny Berkowitz |
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