Mindy Smith

Mindy Smith alternates between two guitars. Her first choice is a new Martin 000C-16GTE cutaway with mahogany back and sides, a Sitka spruce top, and Fishman Prefix Premium Stereo Onboard Blender. Her other guitar is a 2002 Gibson Emmylou Harris L-200, with a factory-installed Schertler Bluestick undersaddle pickup. Onstage, she runs both directly to the house PA with no external microphone. Smith strings both guitars with D’Addario light-gauge phosphor-bronze strings, and while she often plays with her bare fingers, when she uses a pick, it’s a Dunlop .73 mm.

—Craig Havighurst

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Nels Cline

When playing acoustically, Nels Cline picks up the Yairi nylon-string for which his parents paid $200 in 1974, the Taylor 12-string he purchased in 1976 or ’77 ("I think it was $950 with case," he says, "It’s still the most expensive guitar I ever bought"), a Baby Taylor that was given to him in 1997 ("I use it only for detuning and preparation"), or a 1952 Martin 00-17 he bought four or five years ago. He tends to use D’Addario light-gauge strings on the Martin and Earthwood lights on the Taylor 12-string but says, "I don’t really have any preference. It’s best that I not spend too much money on strings because I kill them so fast. When I play live, the strings die instantly if I sweat at all. I’d love to change strings every 20 minutes." For his Yairi, Cline says, "I’ve never found the right nylon string. I used to use Augustine Blue, but they seemed a little on the soft side, tension-wise, and I always felt so bad throwing away all those pictures of Andrés Segovia, like it’s some bad voodoo. Recently, I put some kind of string set on there that somebody recommended—I don’t know what it is but I like it—so you can see it’s all very scientific." For picks, Cline chooses heavy or extra-heavy Fenders or Dunlops—"the most normal pick shape"—and uses them on all his guitars. "Very early in life, I got over the disdain and self-loathing for using a pick on a nylon-string guitar, because of people like Willie Nelson and Steve Howe. I keep my nails long enough to use my middle and ring finger for fingerstyle picking and my thumbnail and index finger for artificial harmonics, and I somehow keep the pick there in between."

—Derk Richardson

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Habib Koité

Habib Koité’s Godin Multiac Nylon SA has become his trademark. "My first guitar was an Ovation, but I didn’t care about the make," he says. "It was just the fact that it had nylon strings and I could plug it into an amplifier. I did a lot with that guitar. I still have it at the house. When I first played a Godin, I liked it. It’s got an even sound, not too sharp. Also, I love the neck. That really got me. It has a separate pickup for each string, so it gives a really true sound, and it’s very sensitive. I had a lot of problems with pickups before. I could get the sound I wanted if I played very hard, but that produced distortion. I wanted also to play softly and have a clear sound. [The Godin is] delicate enough for the way I play. But sometimes I play very hard, and I have broken a few pickups and had to replace them. But that’s the way I have to play to get some of the sounds I’m looking for. When I want the damped sound, I have to put my hand over the end of the strings. Eventually, this causes problems with the bridge."

Koité has also been using a wah-wah pedal with the Godin. "When you use that with the nylon strings and then you damp, you get a sound that I find very African," he says of the wah-wah. "I use that a lot now. It really gives the color I’m looking for, for the pentatonic songs." Other effects in his chain include a Boss DD-3 digital delay pedal and a DOD Fx 25B envelope filter. He uses a Shure T4N wireless system and strings the Godin with medium-tension Savarez strings. Filling in Bamada’s sonic space on second guitar, Boubacar Sidibé plays a Godin Multiac Steel guitar. Neither player uses amps onstage, plugging directly into the venue’s PA instead.

—Banning Eyre

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Beppe Gambetta

Beppe Gambetta has played Taylor guitars for many years, and his current model is a brand-new W10ce, a cutaway dreadnought acoustic-electric made with a Sitka spruce top and claro walnut back and sides. He had two string pins and the upper part of the bone saddle filed down to accommodate his percussive playing style.

Gambetta favors medium-gauge Elixir strings and a Dunlop .96 mm. flatpick, played with one of the rounded corners. For amplification he uses a Schertler DYN-G contact transducer in addition to the Taylor’s stock Expression System. He runs two cables from the guitar, mixes the signals with a PreSonus AcoustiQ tube preamp, and then runs them through a Lexicon reverb unit.

—Craig Havighurst

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