EQUIPMENT PICKS FROM THE ASYLUM STREET SPANKERS, WAYNE JOHNSON, PIERCE PETTIS, EARL KLUGH, TEXAS SWING PLAYERS, PETE KENNEDY, JOHN LEVENTHAL, JOHN JENNINGS, AND PHILIP HII
Guy Forsyth says, "It's unfortunate that someone as talentless as me can get paid to play these instruments in public." He's referring to his two resonator guitars, both made by National Reso-Phonic (871-C Via Esteban, Suite C, San Luis Obispo, CA 93401; [805] 546-8442). One is a Style O he purchased from Bob Brozman, the other a Delphi he bought new off the rack. "They are excellent guitars and incredibly durable," Forsyth says. "I beat the hell out of these things, and they continue to take it." He plays the Delphi in standard tuning and the Style O, which he uses for slide, in open G and D tunings. He strings both guitars with gauges from .016 to .060. Ouch.
French-born jazz guitarist and Django Reinhardt fan Olivier Giraud plays two Favinos, a late 1950s model made by Jacques Favino, who got his start assembling Selmers for a music store in Paris, and a 1995 model made by his son Jean-Pierre, who has carried on the family tradition. "You can find a good Selmer, but you can pay $10,000 for a good one," says Giraud. "You can have a Favino for a fraction of the price."
Josh Arnson, who handles the rhythm guitar duties for the band, does most of his Appalachian-influenced flatpicking on a Yamaha FG-340 that he got in the tenth grade. "It's 20 years old now, and it plays great," he says. He is also the new owner of a 1978 Martin D-28, which is currently in the shop having its bridge worked on. In the meantime, he's found a 1960s Kay. "It's a bit flat-sounding," he says, "but it's real chunky. For what I do in the band, it's great. But I can't wait to get that Martin back."
--David Gold
concertizes and records with a Grit Laskin nylon-string cutaway guitar (Grit Laskin, 26 Noble St. #12, Toronto, ON M6K 2C9, Canada; [416] 536-2135). The guitar is fitted with a Baggs pickup and an AKG mini-mic, and he routes the signals through a Pendulum stereo preamp (Pendulum Audio Systems, PO Box 339, Gillette, NJ 07933; [908] 665-9333). The particularly present tone of Johnson's nylon-string on Kindred Spirits was captured by Pendulum's Greg Gualtieri using, in Gualtieri's words, "an entirely vacuum-tube signal path, including custom microphones, preamps, and mixing board."
At the 1997 NAMM show in Anaheim, California, Johnson performed at Acoustic Guitar's booth and added a Lexicon Jam Man sequencer to his setup (Lexicon, 3 Oak Park, Bedford, MA 01730; [617] 280-0300). He used it to record a four-bar chord progression, play it back indefinitely through the PA, and improvise over the top of it. He plans to add an Oberheim Echoplex (distributed by Gibson) to his rig in the near future, which will allow him to loop more percussive accompaniments through the PA.
--Mark Hanson
plays a prototype Ovation seven-string (with a low B in the bass) that he designed with Ovation engineer Don Johnson. "David Vincent from Ovation had seen me at Telluride and approached me, because at that time I was playing one of their Collector's Series guitars," Pettis says. "I knew that Adrian Legg had designed a guitar with them, and so it seemed to me that they were open to suggestions. They liked my idea for the seven-string, which was like Adrian Legg's with the longer neck.
"At any rate," says Pettis, "Ovation said to come on up to Connecticut and talk to their guys. So I was up there touring, and I spent a day hanging out. They're really nice people. We designed this thing, and a few months later they shipped it to me. I've been playing it ever since. It's my signature guitar now. If I can only take one guitar, I take that one. Boy, the versatility is wonderful.
"For me, Ovations work real well," says Pettis, "because they're sturdy and they always sound the same when you plug them in, which is a good thing on the road. I had a Guild D-55, which was a beautiful-sounding guitar, but I played everything off of it. I played all the little stripping off and pretty much wore a hole in it. I mean, I just beat the crap out of that guitar. And Guilds are pretty steady guitars.
"When you do a lot of touring and have to deal with a lot of airlines, it's good to have a guitar that won't fall apart," Pettis adds. "Ovations are built for the stage; they're not built for the parlor. They're not built for sitting around the campfire; they're built for plugging into a sound system. The pickups are as good as you can get, they're consistent, and I like the neck. It's a lot like a Gibson neck. It's the perfect guitar for me."
--Shelton Clark
has recorded since 1988 with classical guitars built by Nashville luthier Paul McGill (808 Kendall Drive, Nashville, TN 37209; [615] 354-0070). He also owns classical guitars by John Gilbert (1485 La Honda Rd., Woodside, CA 94062; [415] 851-1239) and Greg Smallman (PO Box 510, Glen Innes 2370, NSW Australia). Bob Benedetto (RR1, Box 1347, E. Stroudsburg, PA 18301; [717] 223-0883) built Klugh an acoustic archtop that is similar in size to a classical guitar, and Klugh recently commissioned an instrument from Gary Zimnicki (15106 Garfield, Allen Park, MI 48101; [313] 381-2817).
In the studio, Klugh prefers to mic his guitars, but on stage he uses pickups. He's played Takamine acoustic-electrics, and on a recent trip to Japan he bought several Alvarez classical guitars outfitted with standard Alvarez pickups. He says the instruments sound like an Alvarez he owned and particularly liked in the early 1980s. "It's hard to take things on planes," Klugh says. "I put my instruments below, so I didn't want anything that was too delicate or too costly. The Alvarez fits the bill for that. It has a great sound, and the pickups are great. I use them on the road a lot."
Klugh plays through a wireless system with a Trace Elliot speakerless amp module, which works well with a Roger Sadowsky solid-body nylon-string Klugh also uses in concert (Sadowsky Guitars, 1600 Broadway #1000B, New York, NY 10019; [212] 586-3960). He's in the process of trying to fit a MIDI system into a guitar built by Richard Bruné (800 Greenwood St., Evanston, IL 60201; [708] 864-7730).
Years ago Chet Atkins gave Klugh a Del Vecchio resonator guitar. Klugh liked the sound but found it to be a delicate instrument with intonation problems. Klugh asked Paul McGill to build him a Del Vecchio "that worked" and, after some measuring of Atkins' instrument, McGill built Klugh several beautiful resonator guitars. "It was really a lifesaver," Klugh said. "The one that Chet gave me is really good, so I don't want to travel with it and move it around."
Klugh recently added another Del Vecchio to his collection as well. "About a year ago, I was at the state fairgrounds in Michigan, and there was a guy there who had a collection of guitars," he recalls. "He had a Del Vecchio that was just about perfect. I bought it for a couple hundred bucks. I was really lucky there."
--Jim Ohlschmidt
is almost always played on a flattop, often a large Gibson or Epiphone. Several players explained that the Gibson-style instruments tend to produce consistent volume across all of the strings, whereas the comparably large Martins may favor either the high strings or the low strings--or both--to the detriment of the notes in the middle.
With a couple of exceptions, Texas swing guitarists use fairly heavy picks on medium-gauge strings. Royce Franklin plays a 1939 Gibson J-35 with Gibson Monel steel medium-gauge strings. He uses a medium-weight, three-cornered pick. Anthony Mature plays a 1944 Gibson Southern Jumbo with a standard set of Gibson Monel mediums. He likes hard Tortex picks because "they wear real evenly and don't get a groove in the side." Gayle Hopson plays a 1938 Gibson J-35 with a hard pick on medium-gauge strings.
Joey McKenzie plays a 1943 Gibson Banner J-45, a 1940 J-35, and a 1949 J-50. All of them take Gibson 6330M nickel-wound strings. "They tend to be more balanced from string to string," McKenzie said, "where bronze strings are over-boomy on the bass side. And I like a hard pick, but one with a little give, like a nylon pick. They have better tone than plastic, and they wear smoother."
Jerry Thomason's tenor guitar is a mahogany Martin 0-17T. "I use whatever strings are around, like Ernie Ball, or just the cheapest strings I can find. I break a lot of strings because I get a little heavy with the picking. I still use an old tortoiseshell pick with cracks in it, and I have Tortex picks too. I like a heavy, thick pick. Fender plastic picks are shiny, but they break, and Tortex doesn't."
Rex Gillentine plays the Epiphone FT-79 that he bought new in 1967, but when there's another guitar player in the group he can switch to an electrified Gibson Super 400 archtop. He's used Gibson medium-gauge strings for many years. "But I'm going to change," he said, "because I have a hard time finding them near where I live." He uses a small ("the size of a thumbnail"), medium-to-hard pick. But he cautioned, "It's not the size of the pick that counts; it's the way you handle it. Use whatever you want to use, as long as you're comfortable with it and don't drop it."
--Hal Glatzer
main studio guitar is a '92 Gibson J-2000, "which is a rosewood J-185, a small-body jumbo with rosewood back and sides," he says. "But I also love Martin 00-18s, and the Taylor equivalent of that, which I think is called a 612. My favorite recording guitar of all time is a $75 Yamaha. You don't have to EQ it; it's got a great sound. I always use Takamines live--you just plug it in and it sounds right."
When wired, Kennedy picks a '91 Fender Telecaster and a '93 Stratocaster, both equipped with Joe Barden pickups. "They sound like old pickups, but they have no hum," he says. "They're stacked, but they have the highs." He plugs these into a Vox Berkeley tube amp. "I use the amp head, and I run it into an eight-inch Jensen speaker that's inside a big padded box with a Shure 58." For microphones, Kennedy currently favors the Microtech-Gefell UM-70 for Maura's vocals and for acoustic guitars, though in the past he's also used AKG 460s or 451s.
--David Hamburger
says that he relies on a handful of guitars that he uses pretty regularly. His three main acoustics are a pair of Gibson J-50s and a Martin 00-18. One of the Gibsons, he says, is "a great strumming guitar," the other is "a horrible one that I picked up really cheap. I keep it tuned down a step and a half below standard pitch and use really heavy strings on it." And of course there's his Univox with the 25-year-old strings. Electric chores are handled with a mid-'60s Fender Stratocaster, a late-'60s Telecaster, and a Gretsch 6120 reissue. In addition to these, Leventhal owns and uses six-string basses made by Fender, Jerry Jones, and Ernie Ball/Music Man, as well as various high-strung guitars, bouzoukis, and mandolins.
In terms of microphones, Leventhal says, "I really like the AKG C-60--it's a '60s mic that's real nice for acoustic guitar. But I'll use a lot of other stuff too."
--David Hamburger
says, "There are a couple of Lowdens that I have that tend to show up on everything. One is an SE2, which was the prototype for the LSE model played by Shawn Colvin and John Gorka. I just bought a 00 Santa Cruz that I've got a feeling is going to be really good." For electrics, "I'm using a Gibson Blueshawk--it's a little solid-body that really works. I've got an old Schecter-parts Strat that's pretty much been my mainstay for ten years now. I've got a Parker Fly--it's a very unusual instrument, but it's really good." Other tools include a Jerry Jones baritone electric and a one-of-a-kind baritone acoustic made by David Berkowitz of Washington, D.C. "It's the cello of guitars," Jennings raves. "This thing is absolutely outstanding."
--David Hamburger
plays a classical guitar made by Christopher Savino (208 W. Oak St., Denton, TX 76201), which he bought in 1991. The body is Brazilian rosewood and the top is aged spruce. Hii says the guitar has "beautiful sustain and tone, especially for recording." He also plays a Takamine Santa Fe steel-string, which, he says, "sounds really good when you plug it in."
Hii occasionally uses amplification in concert, especially when he's playing with an orchestra. In such situations, he uses a Crown GLM-100 omnidirectional microphone run through a Carver amp with Tannoy speakers. Although he's very pleased with the sound, Hii says, "it's a little complicated to bring four different pieces to the gig, so I'm still looking for a good, one-piece combo amp." When he plays with an orchestra, he places the amplifier in front of the conductor, but when he plays solo he tends to hide the amp at the back of the stage "in a plant or something." His use of amplification in concert sounds very discreet, as well. "It's just a little reinforcement of the real acoustic sound," he says.
In concert, Hii plays on a combination of D'Addario and Augustine strings: high-tension D'Addarios for the treble and Augustine Blues for the bass. "When I was recording my first CD, I had a lot of trouble with the strings I was using because they started fraying," Hii recalls. "So I started experimenting, and I found the D'Addario trebles especially warm after they've been broken in." In the studio, he prefers La Bella bass strings, because the Augustine Blues are a little too bright. "La Bellas have a real nice bottom when you record them," he says. "They still squeak, but not as much as other strings."
Hii has set up one of his older guitars with a Photon MIDI guitar controller, the same one John McLaughlin uses. "It's based on a laser," he explains, "and it's the only unit that works with nylon strings. Unfortunately they don't make them anymore." The Photon attaches to the soundboard of the guitar, next to the bridge, and each string passes through it. "The string has to be in just the right place for the laser to read it," says Hii, "so it took me a long time to set it up. But the tracking is very good; it responds very well."
--Simone Solondz
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