Frazey Ford

Fingerpicker Frazey Ford's main guitar is a 1974 Gibson Heritage Custom, which she strings with light-gauge D'Addario strings. Ford describes band mate Trish Klein as "the instrumental force of the band. Or at least she spends the most time practicing!" Klein's primary guitar is a J. Turser hollow-body electric, strung with extra-light-gauge D'Addario strings. Samantha Parton strings her Yamaha FG-460SA with light-gauge D'Addario strings.

—Kerry Dexter

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Thomas Fraser

Thomas Fraser played fiddle as well as guitar, and both of his original instruments came from relatives. In 1961, he purchased a new Levin Goliath, a dreadnought-shaped Swedish guitar, for the then princely sum of £60, which he used exclusively until his death. He also played banjo and mandolin. Fraser recorded his songs on Grundig reel-to-reel tape recorders using a single mic.

—James Keough

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Stephen Fearing

Stephen Fearing takes his equipment seriously, as evidenced by the lengthy dissertations in the Gear Talk section of www.stephenfearing.com. Since 1990, his main guitar has been a Manzer Cowpoke, built by Toronto luthier Linda Manzer (www.manzer.com). The deep-bodied Cowpoke was a new model when Fearing bought it to replace a Guild D-35 whose neck had come apart. He remains as smitten with the "supremely roadworthy" Cowpoke as he was when he first played it for three hours straight at Manzer's shop. He sets up the guitar with John Pearse medium-gauge bronze strings and plays with acrylic nails, often plucking with four fingers at the same time and thwacking the strings for a percussive backbeat. The intent, he says, is to get away from straight Travis picking and achieve "the kind of violent precision you think of with Michael Hedges." On some songs he grabs a medium-gauge flatpick because he finds his nails too thick for strumming.

Michael Hedges was also an inspiration for Fearing's larger-than-life amplified tone. His Manzer is outfitted with a Takamine saddle pickup and an Audio-Technica ATM35 internal condenser mic. His guitar is wired with the insides of a Countryman direct box to power the mic, and the signals leave the guitar via two separate XLR jacks. He blends the two sources with a Mackie 1202 mixer and uses an old Alesis Quadraverb and other boxes to create varied colors and rhythmic delay effects for different songs. His current amplification setup is described on his website down to the last wire, but he is always tinkering and has set his sights on revamping the EQ section.

Fearing's biggest gear quest these days is assembling a great electric guitar rig, so he can switch-hit convincingly and hold his own alongside the classic roots-and-blues tones of his Blackie and the Rodeo Kings bandmate Colin Linden. Recent additions to Fearing's collection include a '71 Gibson SG, a Morley Wah Fuzz pedal, and a '67 Fender blackface Deluxe Reverb amp that has helped him understand why electric players get so excited about vintage amplifiers.

—Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers

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James Alan Shelton

"I happen to own three wonderful guitars and I like to brag about them," says James Alan Shelton. "One is a 1946 Martin D-28 herringbone, just the sweetest-sounding guitar in the world." The others are custom-made by Huss and Dalton (www.hussanddalton.com). Shelton's first Huss and Dalton guitar was a custom-made TDR (traditional dreadnought rosewood) model. "It's Honduran rosewood and styled after the old herringbones with forward X-bracing, and right out of the box it sounded great. I used that guitar for a couple of years, and then they came up with the idea of a James Alan Shelton model. So they had me sign my name on a piece of paper and they inlaid that in pearl in the fingerboard. They were going to build 25, and I've got the first one." Shelton plays both the D-28 and his signature model on Song for Greta. He says that he was listening to a playback one day and couldn't tell which guitar he was hearing without consulting his notes. "If you can't tell a new guitar from a 60-year-old Martin, they must be doing something right," he says.

Shelton uses medium-gauge D'Addario or Martin SP phosphor-bronze strings and a medium-heavy .88-mm. flatpick. "I get those picks out of a jar at McCabe's music store in Santa Monica, whenever we play there," he says. "They have a big jar of picks on the counter, and on the picks it says "purloined from McCabe's Guitar Shop."

Onstage, Shelton always plays through a microphone. "I don't have any amplifier, no direct box," he says. "I've never plugged in and I don't want to. I prefer a good woody sound." He gets that sound through careful mic placement. "A lot of times I'll mic it under the fingerboard just in front of the pickguard. That's usually a sweet spot where it won't boom."

—Sue Thompson

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