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Photo by Mark Takeuchi |
Check out these equipment picks from artists featured in the October 2001, No.106 issue of Acoustic Guitar magazine.
PATRICK
BRAYER
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Patrick Brayer’s main guitar is a ’86 Lowden G-23 (similar to today’s O-23), set up with medium-gauge strings and often tuned down to B E A D F# B or, he says, "20 other Tibetan tunings." On stage or in the studio, he blends the output from a Sunrise pickup (run through a Stewart UDP-1 preamp) and an AKG SE 5E-10 condenser mic, boosting the bass to compensate for the low tuning and make his guitar sound like a "little giant." His other guitars include a 1957 Gretsch Rancher, a blond 1940s Epiphone Triumph Regent (signed on the headstock by Scotty Moore), a Harmony Sovereign, and a 1939 Gibson tenor guitar (tuned C G C G) that was, he says, "catalyst for much of what I call my psychedelic Appalachian period." —Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers On the road, Shawn Colvin plays the late ’70s Martin D-28 she’s had for years as well as a Martin 000-18 she bought from Charlie Sexton a few years ago. A new addition to her guitar collection and live rig is a vintage Gibson LG-2, a gift from Jackson Browne. She also has a Lowden that she uses from time to time. She usually just takes one guitar when she’s touring by herself and changes tunings as she goes. When she’s out with a band, she takes two or three guitars. "Usually I tour with the D-28 and one other," she says. "On this tour I’ll probably take the Gibson." At home Colvin also plays a Dobro. "I just play it like a guitar," she says. "It’s fun to play around with because of the different sound. It’s a wood-body with an aluminum cone. And I have this tiny, handmade guitar that I bought from Greg Brown in 1990 that has a pretty awesome sound for playing indoors." Colvin uses D’Addario light-gauge strings and a white National thumbpick for fingerpicking and strumming. Her guitars are equipped with Sunrise pickups, and she uses whatever DI box is provided by the venue. "I’ve toured with Jackson Browne, and there’s a guy who’s crazy about his instruments," says Colvin. "He loves experimenting with what the best sounds are, and he loves setting his guitars up and doing whatever he can to get the best sound. I just play by myself in a theater, and I use my Sunrise pickup, direct box, strings, and one of three or four really nice guitars that I have. And I’m happy." —Julie Bergman John Fahey was not known to play fancy instruments. He tended to pick up inexpensive guitars and then pawn them when he needed cash. During his heyday in the late ’60s and early ’70s, Fahey was partial to a 1930s Gibson Recording King with a sunburst top and a bell-like tone. He used it to record some of his most enduring albums, including America, Of Rivers and Religion, After the Ball, and Fare Forward Voyagers. Sometime around 1974, Fahey smashed the Recording King in a fit of rage. A friend gathered together all the pieces of splintered wood and planned to someday put them back together. In the early ’80s, Wisconsin guitar maker Fred Sheppard gave Fahey a lap-slide guitar, and in a deal Sheppard refers to as "a convoluted kind of a trade," Fahey bequeathed him the pieces of the Recording King. Sheppard, too, put the project on hold for nearly a decade and was finally propelled to make it happen after Fahey’s untimely death earlier this year. Fingerstyle guitarist Peter Lang, one of Fahey’s friends and protégés, told Sheppard that he’d be recording "Witness to the Messenger" 16 days later for a forthcoming Fahey tribute album. Sheppard unplugged his phone, locked himself in his shop, and spent the next two weeks madly refurbishing the guitar. While the top was pretty much intact, the rest of the guitar was absolutely shredded—the left side alone, for example, sported 24 major cracks. "I recognized that the guitar was a piece of Americana that needed to be preserved," Sheppard explains, "and I didn’t want to replace the sides. I wanted to use every single scrap of the material that was in the guitar when John had it." He rebuilt the guitar from the back up, using hide glue and more than 150 lightweight spruce and rosewood cleats. "I also had to put a new bridge plate in, because it was toast," he says. "The headblock where the dovetail goes in was in five pieces, and I had to remove a lot of the braces and reglue them into a flat position." As he assembled the body and top, Sheppard could only hope they would fit together when he was done. "It was an absolute perfect fit," he recalls, "like two pieces of broken glass! When I brought it up to pitch, there was no doubt in my mind that this was the guitar used on those records. It’s got that indescribable quality, and it sustains for ten full seconds!" Lang strung the Recording King with GHS light-gauge strings (the kind Fahey used), and he too was overjoyed with the familiar tone. "It sounded like a choir of angels," he says. "Fred didn’t do a whole lot with cosmetics. The main thing was to get it playable. With all the cracks, I felt a little bit nervous playing it, but Fred assured me that it’s solid. Hide glue is amazing stuff." —Simone Solondz Rodney Crowell writes most of his tunes on a Collings C-10 or, more frequently, on a Martin New Yorker. "The Martin is a little parlor guitar from the 1960s with a slotted peghead," he says. "I keep silk-and-steel strings on it. Mainly I write on that because it’s always out of the case. I usually play it with my fingers; I very rarely use a pick with it." On stage, he favors a Gibson J-45 from around 1952. "That’s the guitar that I play hard with the band. I also have a 1949 D-18. That’s a delicious guitar." Other instruments include a 1973 D-35, a few handmade Gibson J-100s and a 1955 J-200 he purchased from country superstar Marty Stuart. All Crowell’s guitars except the New Yorker are strung with Ernie Ball Earthwood medium-gauge 80/20s. His stage instruments are equipped with L.R. Baggs pickups run through Baggs preamps. "I’ll also use a mic on stage," he adds, "an old Neumann." He uses little or no signal processing. "I’m a very bare-bones equipment guy," he says. In the studio, he prefers a specially modified Neumann U 87 that’s been converted into a tube microphone, but he has also used Audio-Technica 4041s. —David McCarty Martha Masters performs on two of the five guitars she owns: a 1995 cedar-top guitar by Madrid luthier Paulino Bernabe and a Martin C-THS (a copy of Thomas Humphrey’s Millennium model). Her favorite strings for these instruments are Savarez Alliance high-tensions and D’Addario’s Pro-Arté EJ-46s. —Carolyn S. Ellis Eddi Reader plays a small-bodied Yasuma model 1000 that she bought from a friend in the mid-’60s. In the 30 years since, it’s developed a pair of bald patches on the upper bout, but she still uses it as her main guitar, enjoying its loudness, its ringing sound, and its ability to stay in tune no matter how hard she hits it. After years of using Martin and D’Addario strings, she’s now trying Elixir lights. —Kenny Berkowitz |
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