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From Acoustic Guitar Magazine, July 1999, No. 80 DAVE MATTHEWS and TIM REYNOLDS - JERRY REED
DAVE MATTHEWS and TIM REYNOLDS The Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds acoustic tour crew arrives with a truckload of road cases, but it's almost entirely PA and recording gear; the actual stuff used on stage would fit easily into the back of a Honda. At sound check, Matthews' longtime friend and guitar tech Monk Montgomery even apologizes about the simplicity of the stage setup as he walks me through it. Reynolds plays two Martin D-35s, a '96 and a '93. Both have Martin's standard Fishman pickups, which run into a Morley volume pedal, a Boss digital delay, and then a Countryman direct box. The little Boss stomp box is the source of all of Reynolds' electronic trickery. "There's one backwards mode—it plays infinite, and you can mess with that," Reynolds says. "And there are delay modes that you can go infinite. There are a lot of cool little things." For these duo shows, Matthews' main ax is a Martin HD-28, also Fishman equipped (the Gold Plus Natural 2) and running straight into a Countryman DI. "Even on the big tours we use Fishman," Montgomery says, "because it's really bright, and the way he plays so hard and a lot of low notes, it's the only thing that really captures the sound." Both Matthews' and Reynolds' guitars are miked (with a B&K 4051-A and an Audio-Technica 4021, respectively), but the signal only goes onto the night's board tape, not to the house. The Matthews crew (as well as fans) are inveterate tapers, and their archives are the source of releases like Live at Luther College and the DMB's Live at Red Rocks. Matthews' backup six-string is a Lakewood M-32, which has its own integrated AER pickup system. And for a handful of songs—"Wild Horses," "Spoon," and "The Last Stop"—he picks up a Martin D12-28 12-string. (For "The Last Stop," it's tuned down a half step.) All these guitars are strung with D'Addario lights. No funky tunings, and no capos or other gizmos except for Reynolds' slide. "Sorry, that's it," Montgomery says with a shrug. "I sit in that chair all night." For band tours, Matthews has long been playing a Gibson Chet Atkins model that has been modified with Fishman electronics and runs through API preamps, Meyer CP-10 EQs, and Eventide harmonizers. The Chet's thin, feedback-free sound, Matthews says, helps to cut through the dense band mix. —Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers Read an excerpt from the interview with Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds in Acoustic Guitar (August '99, #80). Jerry Reed's first good guitar was the Gretsch Chet Atkins signature model 6120 he was playing when he first met Mr. Guitar. Introduced in 1955, the Gretsch featured a hollow body with open soundholes, two DeArmond pickups, a Bigsby vibrato, and a kitschy western design motif that included engraved block fret markers, a steer's head inlay on the headstock, and a G cattle brand burned into its orange top. Atkins said Duane Eddy was the only player who seemed to get a good sound with this early version of the 6120, but Reed was apparently very fond of the guitar. It's unclear exactly when Reed switched to acoustic nylon-string guitar as his main instrument, but he's playing what Paul Yandell suspects is a Guild classic on many of his early RCA records. Reed phased out the acoustic nylon-string on his records after he found the Baldwin with the Prismatone piezo pickup in the mid-1960s. "Jerry doesn't seem to like good, expensive guitars," Yandell says. "His favorite guitars are those old Baldwins. He loves them. He loves the necks on them. That's what he made all those records with. Fender spent thousands of dollars making him a special guitar, and he was right back to that Baldwin." Yandell owns the original Baldwin that Reed used to record "Jerry's Breakdown" and many of his other classic instrumentals. Yandell recalls that in the '60s and early '70s, on-board EQ, notch filters, and sophisticated outboard gear were virtually nonexistent. "Jerry would just plug it into an amp, and away he went," Yandell says. "It didn't have any EQ, just a preamp to boost the signal." Yandell has high praise for the piezo pickup Baldwin used. "I think the Prismatone is the best, most balanced piezo ever made," he asserts. "It's a shame they're not making it now." Iowa luthier Dave Plummer (4008 E. 29th St., Des Moines, IA 50317; [515] 266-0773; plummerguitars@mcleodusa.net) hopes to break Reed's Baldwin obsession. After Reed met Plummer at a concert last year and played some of his instruments, he authorized Plummer to build and market a Jerry Reed signature model acoustic-electric nylon-string. Plummer says the only specs Reed was adamant about were for the neck. He wanted it exactly like—you guessed it—the Baldwin's. "The Baldwin neck is quite fat and very clubby," Plummer says, "and Jerry likes that. But the guitar will also be available with a regular neck, because there's probably a lot of guitar players who will want something slimmer. Another peculiar thing about the Baldwin is its 25-inch scale, which is smaller than a regular classical guitar. That makes quite a bit of difference. Jerry's will have 12 frets to the body. The fingerboard width at the nut is 2 inches, and the string width at the bridge is 2 ¼ inches." Plummer says there were several challenges in mimicking the feel of the Baldwin. "Jerry likes his action so low you can barely get a cigarette paper between the strings and the frets," he says. "Also, the head angle on the Baldwin is pretty severe, and Jerry uses the lightest nylon strings he can find. Making a guitar that plays very low with very light strings on a small-scale neck has been a challenge. The guitar also needs to be loud and to stand up to Jerry's aggressive attack." Plummer does not plan on installing Prismatone pickups in the new Reed guitar. "Back in the '60s, that was the only game in town," he says, "that Baldwin with the Prismatone pickup. Jerry and Willie Nelson both latched onto them. Willie, of course, took the pickups out, threw the guitars away, and put the pickups in that Martin he plays." The Jerry Reed signature guitar will be available with an amplification system designed by Richard McClish (1739 Addison #15, Berkeley, CA 94703; [510] 845-9130; www.rmcpickup.com) that will couple the RMC piezo setup with a new McClish development dubbed the "virtual microphone." McClish describes the virtual microphone as a specially designed circuit that further "woodifies" the frequency response his piezo setup delivers. "That means that when you tap with your nail on the string, you have the same feeling with the amplifier on as you do with the amplifier off," McClish says. "You turn the amplifier up, and it just gets louder. The feeling doesn't change. It basically provides the frequency response that we're used to hearing when we're listening to acoustic instruments without raising feedback susceptibility." The quarter-inch output from McClish's virtual microphone/piezo system is also MIDI friendly. "Jerry Reed gets the first one," Plummer says. The Jerry Reed signature model guitar will also feature a unique cutaway. "I've always thought cutaway guitars looked like a regular guitar with a chunk cut out of it," Plummer says, "so I make a symmetrical guitar." The signature models feature Brazilian rosewood back and sides, and the regular models will be made with Indian rosewood. The tops are cedar, although Plummer says he'll take custom orders for spruce tops. "I'm ecstatic that after 40 years Jerry's going to put his name on a guitar, and he chose mine to do it," Plummer says. —Jim Ohlschmidt
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