EQUIPMENT PICKS FROM JANE SIBERRY, VINCE GILL, SKIFFLE PLAYERS, AND KEB' MO'
Jane Siberry
recorded her latest album, Teenager, on a couple of borrowed acoustic guitars and decided afterward that she wanted to invest in a new one of her own. "I played mediocre guitars for so long that after the session I went out looking for a sweet-sounding guitar," she says. "I'd forgotten how a great-sounding guitar is light years ahead. I bought a Larrivée to take with me to a songwriting conference Miles Copeland put on at this castle he owns in France. I figured, OK, I'm going back to writing songs on guitar, this is the beginning of a new phase, so I'll buy a new friend to pour my energy into."
Why didn't Siberry get the Larrivée 00-05 before she recorded Teenager? "Well, the guitars I played on it weren't real friends. But it wouldn't have worked with the Larrivée because it would have been like pouring older energy into something new." Siberry laughs when she tells the story of how she bought the Larrivée. It was a rainy night in Toronto before she was catching a plane to Paris. She visited a guitar shop where she tried six different guitars several times before settling on the 00-05, which she strings with a bronze light-gauge set. "I went around and around with them several times. Then this one changed. It just sang to me. I can't believe my ears or standards were that off when I had played it before. But something happened, and it just popped out and made me take it to France."
In addition, she owns a red Yamaha electric guitar (she's taken the name plate off of it), which she's played in concert for several years. "People love red guitars," she notes, then adds, "I love it because it has a whammy bar. You can't get that effect on a piano." Siberry plays her Yamaha through a baby Fender amp.
--Dan Ouellette
Vince Gill
says, "I'm not a gear guy. I think that the key to a great-sounding instrument is a great-sounding instrument. I love old instruments, and I always think they sound the best." In concert, that usually means Gill's late '40s Gibson "Bob Dylan" J-200, which is equipped with an "early" Fishman pickup. "Live, I just go direct," says Gill. "In the situation I'm playing in [big arenas], I don't play a lot of acoustic guitar, so I'm not out there trying to flatpick like I used to, and I'm not really keen on sticking mics in it or being real elaborate with it. I plug it in and play. Just point to me when it's my turn." He also praises Takamine acoustic-electrics as good-sounding "plug-in-and-play" instruments. For acoustics, he's impressed by Lowdens and adds, "Gibson's making some great new instruments."
In addition to his Martin D-28s and 000-21, Gill is also especially enamored of a small-body cutaway custom Taylor "with a little tiny neck that plays great" given to him by Amy Grant. He also has Gibson's top-of-the-line Super 400 archtop, as well as some impressive vintage electrics (Les Pauls, Teles, Strats, and his "mack daddy" ES-335 are among the dozens in his collection).
"I'm a D'Addario man," Gill says regarding strings. "I endorse them, but I always used them." He adds with a laugh that he was once turned down for an endorsement. Since he's not flatpicking bluegrass on a regular basis, he now favors light-, rather than medium-gauge phosphor-bronze sets.
In the studio, Gill says, "I lean on a great engineer a lot for knowing what sounds great" in terms of microphone selection and placement. Since he doesn't have a rack for his electric rig, it's no surprise that he also shuns most signal processing equipment for acoustics.
Outside of D'Addario strings, Gill isn't much for endorsements or "getting lots of freebies. I'd rather play what I really like," he says. "If I love it, I'll go out and buy it."
--Ben Elder
Skiffle
did not put much demand on the instruments on which it was played. Most of the amateur groups played Spanish guitars that cost only a few pounds apiece and sometimes were homemade. Even the pros do not appear to have cared that much about their equipment.
Wally Whyton was an exception. Sometime in the 1950s, the leader of the Vipers was on his way to his daytime job in a London advertising agency when from the top deck of a red double-decker bus, he gazed into the window of a music store on Charing Cross Road and fell in love with the 00-28 Martin that an assistant was hanging in the window. "I looked at it and thought, 'I've just got to have that.' It cost £28, which was a small fortune for me in those days," he recalls. "The assistant told me an American serviceman had sold it to them. I gave him a pound and asked him to keep it for me. I went to work and borrowed from all the people there, then I went home and borrowed some more, and the next day I bought it. It had nylon strings, I remember, and came with a crocodile-skin case with a red plush interior. I thought it was the most wonderful thing in the world. I stood it on my desk and people came by just to look at it."
Lonnie Donegan says he bought his first guitar from a colleague in the stockbroker's office where he first worked. "It cost me ten bob or something." ("Bob" is slang for shilling, and ten shillings equals half a pound.) He can't remember the make. Following his success with Leadbelly songs, he switched to 12-string.
Chas McDevitt mostly uses a Fender Stratocaster electric nowadays, but he also plays a Martin D-18 and an Ovation 12-string acoustic-electric. Nancy Whiskey still has the guitar she played on "Freight Train," a £5 Soria Spanish guitar with nylon strings. She says, "Alexis Korner bought it for me when I worked at the Roundhouse. I got £2 a night and paid him back ten bob a week."
--Chris Mosey
Keb' Mo' (Kevin Moore)
relies on two main acoustic guitars: a Gibson J-60 and a Martin D-1E, a version of the D-1 with a Fishman pickup and preamp installed at the factory. For his slide work, he generally uses a model N National steel guitar. The National and Gibson have been equipped with Highlander acoustic pickups. On stage, he uses a microphone-based guitar sound supplemented with the pickup output. In the studio, he uses microphones almost exclusively, except for a bit of pickup signal on his National.
For a time, Moore used glass slides, but he found they broke too often. Now he relies on a glazed clay slide called a Mudslide. At home and in the studio, he fingerpicks with bare fingers, but when he's looking for more punch and volume in live shows, he dons fingerpicks.
--Kermit Pattison
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