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Check out these equipment picks from artists featured in the October 2002, No.118 issue of Acoustic Guitar magazine.
ALEX
HOUGHTON |
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Alex Houghton's main steel-string is a custom instrument made by Edward V. Dick (EVD String Instruments, [303] 777-7411, www.evd303.com), who lived in Ottawa before moving to Denver, Colorado, several years ago. The guitar's shape is similar to that of Gibson's Everly Brothers model, and it features a Sitka spruce top and Indian rosewood back and sides. It has a Fishman Matrix under-saddle pickup, which Houghton runs through a Rane AP-13 preamp. She combines the pickup signal with an external mic whenever possible. Houghton's nylon-string is an inexpensive laminate-top Aria AC-8. "You can just stick any microphone in front of it—it almost doesn't matter where—and record in any room, and the guitar sounds beautiful," she says. "And it's really lovely to play." Happybody was recorded with a vintage AKG C-12 mic, and Houghton's guitars are strung with either Elixir or D'Addario strings. —Teja Gerken John Doe's guitar of choice is a late-'60s Gibson J-50. "I use it for most everything," he says. "Of course, I also have a National steel from the mid-'20s. It was my wife's great uncle's guitar. It was a family heirloom that I married into." Doe favors Gibson medium-gauge Monel strings (the same kind that Chet Atkins used, he hastens to note). Onstage, he uses a magnetic Sunrise pickup that fits into the soundhole and a Shure SM87 external microphone, and if an amp is absolutely necessary, he pulls out a Fender Blues Deluxe with 12-inch speakers. —Dan Ouellette Neil Finn plays two custom-made Maton EBG808 acoustic guitars. Maton Guitars (www.maton.com.au) is known for using native Australian tonewoods for its guitars' backs, sides, and necks, and Alaskan spruce for the tops. Rather than playing through an amp, Finn plugs his acoustics straight into a DI during his live performances. D'Addario EJ16s are his strings of choice, and he uses Dunlop .073 guitar picks and Kyser capos. On the electric side, he plays a 1958 Gretsch Firebird and a 1968 Gibson goldtop Les Paul. —Drew Pearce Marco Pereira has a strong attachment to his Sitka spruce and Brazilian jacaranda guitar, which was built in 1976 by late German luthier Walter Vogt while Pereira was staying in Vogt's home near Stuttgart. "That is the guitar I love," he says. "I've been looking for a substitute for it for years, to give it a rest, but I haven't found one yet." He uses a variety of microphones to amplify the Vogt. Pereira also plays several Brazilian guitars of various shapes and sizes, including a seven-string requinto (used on many of the tunes on Luz Das Cordas) and an eight-string guitar made by São Paulo luthier Shigemitsu Sughyama. —Ron Forbes-Roberts Paulo Bellinati's first concert-level instrument was a 1977 Paul Fischer (Fischer Guitars, West End Studio, West End, Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire OX7 5EY, England) with a spruce top and Brazilian rosewood back and sides. He used the Fischer on Garoto and Guitares du Brésil. On his next three albums, he used a 1991 cedar and Indian rosewood Fleta (Fleta Guitars, Calle de Los Angeles 4, Barcelona, Spain). Bellinati is currently using a 1997 Robert Ruck (Ruck Guitars, 5805 Minder Rd. N.E. #3, Poulsbo, WA, 98370; [360] 297-4024; www.maui.net/~rtadaki/ruck.html) with a spruce top and Indian rosewood back and sides and feels that "the spruce top has more attack and definition in an ensemble recording situation." He amplifies his guitars with Schertler Dyn-G transducers (www.schertlerusa.com) in combination with an AKG 535 (www.akg-acoustics.com) condenser microphone. Other performance guitars include a Giannini C7 classical with an RMC pickup (www.rmcpickup.com) and a Takamine Hirade HP-7. Depending on the venue, he uses a Schertler PUB 2/280 active bi-amplified loudspeaker or a Fishman Acoustic Performer 8 (www.fishman.com). He uses D'Addario Pro-Arté EJ46C hard-tension composite strings on all his guitars. Bellinati also owns several vintage Brazilian instruments, including a 1907 Giannini "serenade guitar" that once belonged to the great Brazilian guitarist Américo Jacomino (aka Canhoto). —Ron Forbes-Roberts
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