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Louise Taylor.
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Check out these equipment picks from artists featured in the February 2001 No. 98 issue of Acoustic Guitar magazine.
LOUISE
TAYLOR |
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Louise Taylor speaks glowingly of her custom Froggy Bottom guitars, built in her hometown in southern Vermont by her close friend and ex-husband Michael Millard (Froggy Bottom, 198 Timson Hill Rd., Newfane, VT 05345; [802] 348-6665; www.froggybottomguitars.com ). Her No. 1 guitar features a J-100–type shape with a shallower body (maximum four inches deep), koa back and sides, and a top made from a piece of German spruce that dates from the 1880s. Millard based the instrument in part on the sound and feel of Taylor’s early ’50s Martin D-18, which was stolen during one of her hitchhiking trips and was, according to Millard, "a guitar to die for." Her No. 2 guitar, which Millard designed to be an airier complement to No. 1, is a koa/Engelmann spruce jumbo with a slightly deeper body and a Florentine cutaway. She also has a one-of-a-kind 12-string (a 12-fret koa and German spruce model) and a small-body slot-head guitar built with Brazilian rosewood, Adirondack spruce, and 45-style decoration. Taylor had been playing a factory-made guitar when she got her first Froggy Bottom, and she was so bowled over by the contrast that she eventually gave her old guitar away. "It’s like the difference between a grand piano and an upright piano," she says. "Handmade guitars have so much more to offer tonewise." For the stage, her two main guitars are equipped with Fishman Matrix pickups, which she uses along with external microphones. She tried blending in an internal mic but prefers the plug-and-play simplicity of her current rig. For band gigs, she brings a Daedalus amp. On all her guitars, Taylor uses various brands of medium-gauge strings, and she capos up with a Shubb. When she started playing fingerstyle, she used a Dunlop thumbpick, but at Ray Bonneville’s urging, she eventually went completely bare fingered. "There are some places where [the thumbpick] is nice and clean and it’s a better sound," she says, "but for the bluesier stuff that I am trying to learn, the bare thumb has better tone, you are more in there on your guitar, you can pop the strings, you can do a lot more. You build a callus up on your thumb, I am told, but it hasn’t arrived yet! It’s a little bit of a different angle, so it takes an adjustment." ––Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers Despite the clamor and acclaim accorded Richard Thompson for his guitar work in both the acoustic and electric realms, he maintains a modest, workmanlike approach to his music-making tools. He owns a handful of acoustic guitars, including a mid-’60s Martin 000-18, a couple of custom Danny Ferrington six-strings (Danny Ferrington, PO Box 923, Pacific Palisades, CA 90272), a Ferrington baritone guitar, a Lowden L27F (see Great Acoustics), and a small-bodied Lowden S23 (Lowden Guitar Co., 8 Glenford Way, Newtownards BT23 4BX, Northern Ireland; [800] 872-5856; www.lowdenguitars.com ). Thompson has a long-standing association with Ferrington’s idiosyncratic lutherie, and he is shown playing Ferringtons on the covers of Small Town Romance and Hand of Kindness. He is still apt to play the Ferringtons and the Martin at home or in the studio, but for concert work he limits himself to the Lowden L27F, which he retunes as needed rather than switching between guitars for alternate tunings. Thompson’s acoustic collection also includes a mandolin, a tenor banjo, a hurdy-gurdy, and hammer and lap dulcimers. Of these, only the Appalachian-style lap dulcimer joins him on stage. Thompson amplifies his guitars on stage with a Sunrise pickup run through a Sunrise tube preamp, with a hint of Boss DD3 digital delay and Uni-Vibe stereo chorus effects. He sometimes blends in an on-board Countryman Isomax condenser mic run through an ART preamp. In the studio he employs a variety of mics and recording techniques, ranging from straight acoustic miking to running the acoustic signal through an amp. As for the plugged portions of his program, Thompson was wedded to his trusty ’59 Fender Stratocaster for decades, but more recently he’s been enamored of a Ferrington prototype electric. This aquamarine special is wired with a Fender Broadcaster pickup at the bridge, a Stratocaster pickup in the middle, and a classic Gibson P90 at the neck position. Controls are limited to three volume pots—Thompson feels that tone controls are unnecessary on an electric—and he achieves his variety of tone color through the choice and balance of pickups. He runs the signal through a Fender Vibroverb and a Line Six 2 x 10 cabinet. As with the acoustic, he uses minimal tweaking and effects and depends more on his touch and attack for effect. "I use a little Boss digital delay and a touch of the Uni-Vibe," he says. "Nothing special, really." Until recently, Thompson found himself going through strings at a furious rate, and he would often need to change to a fresh set after an hour or two of live playing. Lately he’s found that the coated winding on Elixir strings affords a much longer string life, and he can go two or three gigs before changing strings. On the Lowden his set runs from .012 to .054, and on the electrics his guitar tech assembles a custom set in a lighter gauge. Thompson sets the strings in motion with Gibson teardrop medium flatpicks, generic thumb- and fingerpicks, and bare fingers. When he uses a capo, it’s usually a Shubb. On the electric guitar he limits himself to standard and dropped-D tunings, but on the acoustic he is likely to range from standard to D A D G A D to open C and G during the course of an evening. ––Paul Kotapish Robin and Kevin Nolan play Selmer-style guitars crafted by British luthier Rob Aylward, (Unit 48, The Brewhouse 19, Bourne Rd., Bexley, Kent DA5 1LR England; phone/fax, [44] 132-255-3393; robert.aylward@virgin.net ). "On the Gypsy jazz scene, these guitars are probably the hottest thing going," says Robin, who plays an oval-soundhole model similar to the guitar popularized by Django Reinhardt. Kevin plays a D-hole model, which most players consider better suited to rhythm guitar. Both guitarists endorse the new John Pearse Nuages silk-wrapped strings created primarily for Gypsy jazz guitars. Robin’s pick of choice is an extremely thick Jim Dunlop Jazz Tone 208. Both guitars are equipped with Big Tone pickups (distributed in the U.S. by Dell’Arte Instruments, 10020 Prospect Ave., #A25–26, Santee, CA 92071; [619] 596-7739; www.dellarteinstruments.com ); the band uses AER amps from Germany (www.aer-amps.de ). "The AER’s sound just kicks, yet the amps are small and light," says Robin. ––David McCarty Joseph Arthur’s main guitar is a Lowden 012C, and he also owns a black Gibson L-45. Arthur uses Countryman DI boxes and an assortment of effects pedals, including a Moogerfooger ring modulator, Z. Vex Seek Wah, MXR Phase 100, Boss Octaver and DD5 delay, Fulltone distortion and vibrato, Electro-Harmonix Memory Man, and Line 6 DL4 delay. Sampled loops of his live playing are provided by several Lexicon JamMans. He strums his guitars with Fender medium flatpicks. ––Andrew DuBrock On his recording of "St. Thomas," Eric Lugosch played a Martin 0-16 New Yorker, which was recorded with a matched pair of Russian Oktava MC012 small-diaphragm condenser microphones. He got the guitar from a student in exchange for a custom-made maple and German spruce Martin J-65 M he never liked. "I had a student who sold and traded guitars," he says. "He got this little 0-16 New Yorker from the custom shop about eight years ago. It has a wider, low-profile neck with an adjustable truss rod. He brought it into his lesson, and I played it and was knocked out. From the start I was thinking, ‘I want this guitar.’ I was tongue-and-cheeking with him, and I said, ‘You wanna trade?’ and his eyes bugged out because he was smitten with the look of my maple Martin." Lugosch also owns a Kevin Ryan Mission Grand Concert that he uses along with the Martin New Yorker in the studio and for live gigs. Both guitars are outfitted with Fishman Rare Earth Blend pickups, which he runs through a Fishman preamp into a Fostex SP11 MK2 powered studio monitor. "I use it as a monitor when I do big gigs and as a small PA for smaller gigs," Lugosch says of the Fostex. "It’s unbelievable how good it sounds." He also carries a Shure BG 5.1 omnidirectional, battery-powered condenser microphone for use with bigger systems. ––Jim Ohlschmidt
Excerpted from Acoustic Guitar magazine, February 2001, No. 98. |
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