Guster

For Guster's live performances, Adam Gardner's primary guitar is a Gibson Chet Atkins SST, which he runs through a Pendulum preamp. "That acts as a DI as well," he explains, referring to the unit's balanced XLR output. "I also run a Roland MIDI pickup on that SST through a Roland GR30. That's for the synth bass." Gardner also plays a Gibson ES-335 electric through Electro-Harmonix Memory Man and Boss BD-2 Blues Driver pedals. He uses a Victoria guitar amp. "It sounds like a 1950s Vibrolux," he says. Ryan Miller plays an Alvarez-Yairi WY1 acoustic-electric guitar through a Countryman DI. He also plays through a variety of pedals and a Fender Blues Junior amp. Brian Rosenworcel plays LP congas, djembes, African and Latin percussion, and a kick drum that triggers drum kit sounds.

—Drew Pearce

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Pete Yorn

Onstage, Pete Yorn plays two brand new Gibson Hummingbird acoustics, a sunburst Epiphone John Lennon Casino semi-hollow-body electric, and a Danelectro Baritone. Of his baritone, Yorn says, "It's awesome, really fun to write with because it's tuned in B, so you can mess around in different keys. I use that guitar on songs like 'Crystal Village,' 'On Your Side,' and 'So Much Work.'" Yorn's main stage amp is a Fender Hot Rod DeVille.

At home, Yorn also plays a 1965 Gretsch New Yorker acoustic archtop that he's had for a long time, a Gibson LG-O mahogany flattop steel-string, and a 1965 Gibson F-25 Folksinger. "That's a weird guitar, with two white rectangles as pickguards. It looks like a Mexican guitar, kind of. It has a really nice sound." He uses medium-gauge D'Addario strings on his acoustics.

—Drew Pearce

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Alex de Grassi

On Now and Then, Alex de Grassi played a Lowden Premiere Series F35C with quilted maple back and sides and a European spruce top as well as a Jeff Traugott R model with Brazilian rosewood back and sides and a German spruce top (www.traugottguitars.com). Both were built to de Grassi's specifications.

"The fingerboard on the Traugott is wider than your typical modern fingerstyle guitar," de Grassi says, "about 1 7/8 inches, and it's dead flat like a classical." The Traugott's body depth is shallower than a typical steel-string, with a significant taper from the lower to the upper end. De Grassi says it cuts down on the low and midrange tones that can be too prevalent when recording with larger-bodied instruments. "The Traugott has that dark, rich, beautiful sound," he says.

According to the Lowden Guitar Co.'s Iain Wilson, the neck on de Grassi's Lowden is about one mm. wider than a stock model, and the guitar's braces have been custom tuned. "The Lowden has this bright sound to it," de Grassi says. "It's really lively and so easy to play." De Grassi generally used the Traugott for tunes in standard tuning and C G D G A D, while the Lowden seemed well suited to D A D G A D and Eb G D G Bb D tunings.

De Grassi strings the Traugott with a combination of light and medium gauges, .013, .017, .025, .032, .042, .056, but finds that a standard light-gauge set is best for the Lowden. "It's nice to play light-gauge strings and still get the whole sound of the instrument," he says. He uses D'Addario phosphor-bronze strings on all his guitars.

In concert, de Grassi mics his guitar with an AKG C 460 cardioid condenser mic. "In the last couple of years," he says, "I've abandoned all pickups and am just playing with that microphone. It has a nice flat response so it makes it easy to use on the road because it doesn't require much EQing."

—Ron Forbes-Roberts

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Rob Ickes

Although Rob Ickes owns several resonator guitars, his instrument of choice for both stage and studio work is a 1998 Scheerhorn L-body resonator (Tim Scheerhorn, 120 Sam Hollow Rd., Dickson, TN 37055, [615] 441-5935). "It's a little different," he notes. "[It has] Indian rosewood back and sides with a spruce top." The guitar is outfitted with a McIntyre pickup (www.mcintyrepickups.com) and a Shure Beta 98H/C microphone (www.shure.com) that clips to the instrument and plugs into a customized input on the cover plate. He runs the signals through a Rane AP-13 stereo preamp (www.rane.com). On occasion, Ickes will take an old Wabash guitar that his grandfather purchased in 1928 on the road with him to perform more bluesy material. He says, "I've raised the action a bit, and it has a real blue sound. I usually put it in a lower tuning because it's a round-neck and I don't like to put a lot of tension on the neck." He strings his Dobros with D'Addario EJ42 phosphor-bronze resophonic guitar strings, swapping a .017 for the set's .016 first string, and plays with ProPik fingerpicks, Golden Gate thumbpicks, a Scheerhorn slide, and a Scheerhorn Flux capo.

—Steve Romanoski

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Bryan Sutton

A longtime aficionado of guitars built by luthier Dana Bourgeois, who now creates Bourgeois guitars as a division of Pantheon Guitars (www.pantheonguitars.com), Bryan Sutton owns a substantial collection of choice instruments from this Maine-based luthier. But unlike his first CD, where he used a variety of Bourgeois models, he recorded Bluegrass Guitar almost entirely with a new D-18—style instrument crafted of highly figured Cuban mahogany with a master-grade red spruce top and red spruce braces. "It almost has a rosewood depth to it, but it maintains the clarity of a mahogany guitar," Sutton says. "It's an extraordinary D-18—style guitar." Sutton uses D'Addario EXP phosphor-bronze, medium-gauge strings and 1.4-mm. teardrop-shaped picks handcrafted by Dutch pick maker Michel Wegen (www.wegenpicks.com).

—David McCarty

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