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Excerpted from Acoustic Guitar Magazine, October 1999, No. 82. DAVE ALVIN | CHERYL WHEELER | NORMAN BLAKE Dave Alvin tours with an early-'90s Martin Shenandoah, which he also uses in the studio for rhythm guitar. He fingerpicks on a 1957 Martin 00-18 but doesn't bring it on the road. Alvin uses Shubb capos live ("They're easy to clamp on fast," he says), but he favors a Kyser capo in the studio. He plays on medium-gauge D'Addario or Martin strings, which he picks with a Golden Gate thumbpick and his index fingernail (stiffened with acrylics). He plays his '64 Strat through a 1982 Fender Rivera amp and a Fender Vibroverb. Alvin gets those dreamy bends the old-fashioned way, without a whammy but by bending the Strat's neck. "One of these days, the guitar is going to break in my arms," he says. —Steve Boisson
Cheryl Wheeler is passionate about all of her guitars. Her collection includes an Olson, which she refuses to take on an airplane (James Olson, 11840 Sunset Ave. N.E., Circle Pines, MN 55014; [612] 780-5301; www.olsonguitars.com) and a koa Collings SJ, which is her current favorite (Collings Guitars, 11025 Signal Hill Dr., Austin, TX 78737; [512] 288-7776; www.collingsguitars.com). Her road guitars are a Martin D-28 herringbone and a custom Granata 00 that New Jersey guitar maker Peter Granata says is actually more like the old Gibson Nick Lucas models than a true 00 (Granata Guitars, 39 Cooper Rd., Oak Ridge, NJ 07438; [973] 208-9686; www.granataguitars.com). Wheeler says that these days she prefers more petite guitar bodies to the hulking dreadnoughts that used to be the norm among folkies. Gearwise, Wheeler travels light. Her guitars are fitted with L.R. Baggs saddle pickups, and the only electronics she carries (if you don't count her tuner) is a Baggs Para Acoustic DI preamp. Except for the Granata, her guitars are strung with DR Strings, specifically a Rare phosphor-bronze medium-light set, but with a .017 and .013 for the top two strings instead of the usual .015 and .011. Wheeler likes the DRs because their sound is warm and has a lot of sustain. She strings the Granata with D'Addario light bronzes. On stage Wheeler uses brass fingerpicks (either Dunlop or National) on her index and middle fingers and a Zuki thumbpick. When strumming, she mostly uses the back of her index finger rather than a flatpick. Sometimes she uses the "pack o' matches technique," holding the fat side of the matchbook in her hand and strumming with the skinny side. —Todd Ellison
Norman Blake's current favorite stage guitar is a 1933 Gibson 14-fret L-C Century. Though for years he was an avid collector of vintage Martin dreadnoughts (especially 12-fret versions) these days he's particularly fond of vintage 12-fret Gibson Nick Lucas Specials and 12-fret Martin 00s; his collection includes a late-1928 Martin 00-45 12-fret, an old 14-fret Gibson L-00, a 1944 Martin 00-40H, two late-1928 12-fret Gibson Nick Lucas Specials, and a 1929 12-fret Nick Lucas Recording King with a black finish. "I'm not a fan of the long scale anymore," Blake says, "and I don't like the dreadnought. The 25.4-inch scale doesn't make much sense for what I do. I'm not the world's largest person in stature, and I sit down to play, so a dreadnought got to seeming like overkill. Plus I got tired of the lack of snap. It's kind of like stringing up the kitchen table and playing that. I got tired of reaching a little further for everything—having to punch it real hard to get anything out of it. I like the Gibson 24 ¾ basic scale or the old Martin 00 scale, which is 24.9." Blake theorizes that the tone of a guitar has a lot to do with the size of its top in relation to the depth of its sides. "If you have a large top," he says, "you need deeper sides. For a dreadnought to really balance out, it ought to have deeper sides, but it wouldn't be very comfortable to play. The sides on a 00 are deep enough for the size of it. L-series Gibsons are between Martin 000 and Martin 00 size as far as the top is concerned, and the sides are deeper than the Martin 000. That creates a better balance and a better tone. I'm talking about the old flattop Gibsons from 1926 up through World War II: the L-00, L-1, Nick Lucas, Century. And the Nick Lucas has even deeper sides on the same Gibson top. It gives you a sort of dreadnought sound, but with a lot more snap and a lot more articulation. And that short neck is a lot easier to get around on. I like the shape of the Gibson necks from the '20s and '30s." Blake also owns a 12-fret Martin-style flattop built a couple of years ago by John Arnold (437 Ruble St., Newport, TN 37821; [423] 623-2245). "It's basically a 12-fret Martin 000 body shape with deeper sides than a 000," Blake explains. "It's not as deep as a Nick Lucas, but it's close. It's mahogany with a style-45 top and fingerboard, a handpainted pickguard, a slotted head, a short scale—24 ¾ inches—and a neck that's not as wide as the standard 12-fret guitars'. It's a wonderfully made guitar." He also plays a 1919 Gibson GB six-string guitar-banjo with an open back and a huge (14-inch) head as well as a 1922 Gibson A2 mandolin with a silver truss-rod cover and a white pickguard. "It looks good with the Century guitar," Blake says of the A2. "It looks good with brown clothes too." Blake describes the action on his guitars as "dangerously and painfully low" and admits that changes in weather conditions cause problems for his instruments. His string gauges depend on the instrument. "I very rarely use a .012 first string," he says. "That would be a heavy first string to me. I use a .011 or sometimes a .010. For a second string, I generally use a .015. I use a .024 third, and I would never ever use anything heavier than a .025 third, even on a dreadnought. I basically use .010s or .011s, .015s, .024s, .032s., and 042s, and I never use anything lighter than a .058 sixth string. I use .059s and .060s on my low strings." Blake buys strings individually, rather than in sets, and tends to use GHS strings: Boomers on the third and fourth strings and Brite Bronzes on the fifth and sixth. Although Blake likes to play guitar without fingerpicks around the house, he always uses them on stage. "I use the gold Dunlops," he says, "a heavier one on the index finger and a lighter one on what I consider the lead finger [the middle finger]. And I bend the thumbpick back under so it doesn't strike on a straight angle, but more like the ball of your thumb would—so you get a meatier, woodier tone out of it." When it comes to flatpicks, Blake has recently begun playing with the back edge of a teardrop-shaped pick, usually Dunlop 500s. "It seems like you can get more fluid with that," he says, "and I like a pick that has a bevel to it. I use two or three different weights. For playing around home I tend to use heavier ones—a 1.14 or a 1.5—because I like a woodier tone, but it gets muddier on a mic. I like the .96 for performing on stage. I don't use tortoiseshell picks very much. They never seem to work as good." Though Blake prefers the sound of microphones for most concert situations, he does use a pickup when the situation demands it—at festivals, for instance—and he prefers the sound of a magnetic pickup to that of an under-saddle transducer. "I have two or three old Bill Lawrences," he says. "I don't like under-the-saddle pickups. I don't like to hear all that body ring, electronically. That just creates a lot of overtones. I like the sound of a magnetic pickup more. It seems like the magnetic pickup is still more like a microphone. There's still air between the string and the pickup so you get more definition and woodiness than you can get the other way. And I like a lot of decay in my instruments. I like something that kind of spits out a big note real fast and dies off." —Scott Nygaard Read an excerpt from the cover story about Norman Blake in Acoustic Guitar magazine, October 1999, No. 82. |
