Gearbox
July 1996
EQUIPMENT PICKS FROM STEVE JAMES,
RY COODER, SHAWN
COLVIN, DOC WATSON, JOAN
ARMATRADING, AND DOUGIE MACLEAN
has a large and varied collection of new, vintage, and one-of-a-kind instruments, but there are three he plays the most: a Collings C-10, a 1939 National Trojan wooden-body resophonic, and a 1993 brass-bodied National Style 0.
James primary guitar is the custom-designed Collings. "I wanted to replace an old 30s Gibson, a 1934 L-00, that I was just playing to pieces," he says. Consulting with Austin guitar impresario Bill Collings, James adapted the design of a C-10--which has similar overall dimensions as the Gibson L model--with a shorter scale length, unscalloped bracing, and the typical Gibson oversize four-inch soundhole, so that the performance is more like his old Gibson. The Collings is finished in black with a white pearloid pickguard and headstock. It has a spruce top; mahogany back, sides, and neck; and an ebony bridge and fingerboard, and its equipped with a Fishman pickup with onboard preamp. "I use as little direct signal and as much mic sound as possible," James says.
James main road guitar is a 1939 National Trojan wooden-body resophonic with a Highlander IP1-X pickup installed in the wooden biscuit mounted on the resonator. He also plays the brass 1993 National Style O. "That's the nice thing about the modern world--maybe the only nice thing," he says. "You can get new guitars of a quality as good as vintage."
To fit his uninhibited playing style, James uses custom-made, heavy-gauge Guadalupe Custom strings running from .015 to .060, brass wound on a round core. "The heavier the string, he says, the more wood it's going to move and the more sound youll get out of it." His main slides are a wine-bottle neck and a piece of a shotgun barrel--12-gauge. He plays almost exclusively with fingerpicks, including Golden Gate plastic thumbpicks, metal fingerpicks by Kyser and ProPicks, and vintage fingerpicks.
On his latest album, James also plays a 1923 Gibson A-2 mandolin and a 1920s-era Vega Little Wonder guitar-neck banjo strung with very light strings and tuned a minor third above standard.
--John Herndon
Ry Cooder's
main acoustic guitar these days, according to his guitar repairman Rick Turner, is a Gibson Roy Smeck model from the mid-30s. Frets were added to this guitar, which was originally designed for lap-style playing. Cooder still owns a 1950s Martin 000-18, which Turner believes he used to record the theme from Paris, Texas. Some of the other acoustic instruments owned by Cooder include a German-made Voss plywood flattop cutaway converted from a standard six-string guitar into a mando-guitar with four double courses tuned in fifths; a Kay Kraft (made by the Stromberg-Voisinet company), which was featured in the March/April 1993 Great Acoustics department; a Kona Hawaiian lap guitar, which Cooder plays in the Spanish position; a Gibson Mastertone guit-jo from the 1930s; a custom-made Japanese Shimu auditorium-sized cutaway steel-string; an Indian tamboura, which Cooder uses for slide playing; a rudra vina, a sacred eight-string Indian instrument that is the ancestor of the sitar; and various Turkish cimbses.
--Dale Miller
uses two acoustic guitars: a Martin D-28 she has played for years and a Lowden that she acquired more recently. Both the Martin and the Lowden work well for any song, she says. The Martin is certainly the most giving and forgiving guitar I've owned. Her choice for a pickup is a Sunrise, which she runs through a tube preamp. Colvin uses D'Addario light-gauge strings and changes them before every gig. She flatpicks with a medium pick of any brand and fingerpicks using a small National thumbpick. She attacks the strings primarily with the flesh of her right-hand fingers, not the nails.
--James Jensen
Doc Watson
currently plays a Gallagher cutaway G-50 mahogany guitar. On stage he runs a Fishman pickup into an Ashley preamp with parametric equalization. He has been using the Ashley setup since his son Merle and soundman Cliff Miller put it together for Doc and Merle's use in the early 1980s. "We used it before Merle left us, and Jack [Lawrence] and I still use it now," says Watson. He played a Martin D-18 on the recording of "Black Mountain Rag" first issued on the Doc Watson album.
--Scott Nygaard
Joan Armatrading
has performed on Ovation acoustic guitars since 1973. She used to play Yamaha acoustics, but she prefers the Ovations shape. I cant go back to the box shape, she says. I like the sound of the other guitars, but when Im standing up its too awkward. I went into a shop in 1973. I was looking for a Martin guitar. I tried Martins and Guilds and Gibsons, and I wasnt coming up with the guitar that I really liked. And the chap said, Why dont you try this? which was an Ovation. I absolutely loved it, and Ive been using it ever since. I think I got my first 12-string in 73 or 74 as well.
Armatrading has a 1983 Ovation, a new Ovation Legend, a prototype Ovation 12-string from 1983, and a Gibson Chet Atkins acoustic-electric steel-string. At home, she also plays a Martin 00-18 and some small-body custom acoustics built by English guys who are no longer in the business. Her electrics are Stratocasters or Gibsons, and she recently bought a Strat copy built by English maker Tom Anderson. It's built like a Strat, but with a thing to cut out noises and buzzes, she says. You just hit the switch.
Armatrading plays all of her instruments through a custom sound system made by Pete Cornish (Its like a space ship, she quips). Cornish builds sound equipment for a long list of guitar players, including Lou Reed, Mark Knopfler, and Eric Clapton. I went to Mark Knopflers and plugged my guitar into his rig, Armatrading recalls, and it sounded fantastic. So I just said to Pete, Can I have one like that please?
--Simone Solondz
plays Taylor guitars live. "I have three, he says, a big one, a small one, and a wee one. I forget the model numbers. I love the necks on these guitars, and for the kind of fine fingerpicking that I do, they are great." He also has an old Martin D-35 that only gets used in the studio and a guitar built by Scottish luthier Peter Casey. "It was made in Blairgowrie, just seven miles from where I live," MacLean says. "It's great to be able to play a Scottish guitar made from local wood."
All of MacLeans Taylors have L.R. Baggs pickups and small AKG mics inside. He uses a rack-mounted Pendulum preamp system, which, he says, "mixes the mic and the pickup signals and has changed my life. I hate having to use pickups on such nice-sounding guitars, but this system does it and takes all the stress out of having to plug your acoustic guitar in." He uses D'Addario phosphor-bronze strings--lights on the small guitars and mediums on the big ones.
--Steve Givens