EQUIPMENT PICKS FROM KATE JACOBS,
BROTHER OSWALD, SON
VOLT, MARY COOGAN, JOHN
DOYLE, DAITHE SPROULE, MICHEAL
O DOMHNAILL, JOAN BAEZ, AND DAR
WILLIAMS.
uses a Guild D-60 acoustic at home. Occasionally she brings it along for live radio gigs, but she prefers playing out with a borrowed Alvarez DY88BK acoustic-electric guitar that she plugs into an amp. "I don't use my Guild much because I mic it and I hate having to stand still when I play," Jacobs explains. "Plus, the Alvarez sounds great through an amp or a PA system." She used another borrowed guitar, a rosewood Taylor, when she recorded her last album.
Jacobs prefers D'Addario light-gauge strings for her Guild and mediums for the Alvarez, which she plays harder. She uses extra-light Dunlop picks, a Shubb capo, and a Boss tuner and compression pedal. She recently purchased a reissue of an Ampeg Jet tube amp. "It not only sounds wonderful," she says, "but I can also carry it easily."
--Dan Ouellette
first Dobro, which he played on many of Acuff's Columbia 78s, was stolen in the late 1940s. A fan brought him a 14-fret spruce-top, which offered two frets more than Oswald liked. "I always got lost on that thing," he recalls, so he swapped with Shot Jackson for his current instrument, one Jackson acquired in an Asheville, North Carolina, pawnshop. Bev King describes it in The Dobroist's Scrapbook as "a round-neck Model 27, serial number 7233, with a lug cone and squared slots in the head." Based on the serial-number dating provided by Mike Cass in Gruhn's Guide to Vintage Guitars, Oswald's Dobro was made in California circa 1935.
Unlike most Dobro players, Oswald uses a round bar he made for himself from stainless steel. Its dimensions are similar to those of the Thermocryonic bars of John Pearse, approximately three inches long and 5/8 inches across. Oswald had a stainless-steel rod cut to his specified length and then smoothed the tip himself on a lathe.
Oswald wears metal National fingerpicks on his right index and middle fingers and a plastic National thumbpick. He uses GHS strings with the following gauges, from first to sixth strings: .018, .018, .022 (unwrapped; "That's the old Hawaiian way," he says), .032, .042, and .042. Oswald uses a tuning referred to in the old Hawaiian method books as "high bass tuning, orchestra, or double A-major tuning," which from the sixth to first string is A C# E A C# E. Oswald believes this open-A tuning gives the Dobro a brighter sound than the G tuning (the same intervals a whole step lower) used by most Dobro players. And there was a purely practical reason for this tuning in the job Oswald held for more than half a century: "Roy sang a lot of things in A," he recalls.
--Mark A. Humphrey
front man Jay Farrar plays a new Martin D-28 and a Les Paul Special electric on stage. The Martin is equipped with a stock Martin Thinline pickup, whose signal goes through an L.R. Baggs preamp with EQ. "It helps out a lot when going from large clubs to small clubs," Farrar explains. "It's very strange: some stages feed back on a certain note, and you have to dial it out with EQ." He changes strings before every show and uses mediums on his Martin.
Farrar also has a Sigma acoustic 12-string, which he used on a couple of songs on Anodyne, his last record with Uncle Tupelo. "They're hard to keep in tune," he says. "I'd like to get an electric 12-string if I could ever find one. Roger McGuinn sort of defined the sound of using it for melody."
Multi-instrumentalist Dave Boquist plays lead on a Les Paul Gold Top guitar on the hard-rocking songs and either fiddle or banjo on the country tunes. His banjo is an open-back Alvarez Silver Princess, and he's unsure who made his fiddle. "It was sold to me in 1977 or so," Boquist says. "I don't know what year it was made. I used to work for elderly people, and I found the fiddle in a closet of a guy I was working for, next to his vacuum cleaner, and offered him some money for it. He inherited a cat and the fiddle from a 96-year-old friend of his that had died. The cat was very aloof and almost didn't like me when I'd come in to vacuum and stuff, but when I took the fiddle out and played it, it started rubbing up against me. It probably hadn't heard any fiddle playing for a long time."
Boquist praises soundman Gary Schepers for making the band sound so good live, especially on the acoustic songs. "He does a really good job making those instruments sound like those instruments," says Boquist.
--Simone Solondz
records with a 1957 Martin 00-18 that she found advertised in a local Pennysaver. "Cosmetically, it's not in great shape," she says, "but it has this really sweet tone to it." The neck is a little fragile, so Coogan compensates by using John Pearse phosphor bronze extra-light strings. On stage, her guitar is a Takamine EF-381R, which was run over by a car and rebuilt by Gary Evans. It's strung with John Pearse phosphor bronze lights and gives her "a nice, warm sound and enough volume, without the feedback." On stage, Coogan uses a Boss equalizer and occasionally a Boss reverb pedal for slow pieces. She plays with big, yellow .073-gauge Jim Dunlop Tortex flatpicks.
On Cherish the Ladies' Out and About, Coogan also played an early 1900s Model A Vega Wonder tenor banjo and a borrowed Joe Foley bouzouki ("He's a lovely instrument maker from Dublin," she says). In the studio this summer, she recorded for the first time with her 1920s Martin teardrop mandolin.
--Kenny Berkowitz
plays a Takamine EF-341, "the cheapest I could find," he says, "turned out to be the best one, too." He uses medium-gauge D'Addario phosphor bronze strings ("There's a warmer texture about them") and sends his signal through an Ibanez digital delay and a Boss EQ, which he uses as a volume pedal. He dreams of getting his hands on a Lowden, which he calls "the best guitar there is."
--Kenny Berkowitz
oldest guitar is a 1974 Martin D-28, which he uses for most of his recording. He also plays a 1990 Taylor 615 jumbo. "It's a beautiful guitar," he says, "and when you get one brand-new, you have the pleasure of playing it in and seeing it age." Just before Altan's last album, he bought a 1995 Takamine. "It's easier to handle in big rooms," he says. "There are fewer feedback problems, and it's got a lot better clarity. With five or six people on stage, it's important that everybody hear everybody else, and the Takamine has worked very well for that." Before getting the Takamine, Sproule was using an L.R. Baggs preamp and a Boss pedal EQ, but, he says, "the Takamine has simplified life completely."
Sproule uses D'Addario medium-gauge strings and Fender medium thumbpicks and flatpicks. "The crucial thing is the color," he says, with his usual dry humor. "White sounds totally different."
--Kenny Berkowitz
thinks his 1975 Martin D-28 keeps getting better and better. "It's a lot different now than it was ten years ago," he says. "It's gotten louder, fuller, clearer, and more bell-like. It wasn't a great instrument when I bought it, but it was a Martin, and I knew it would improve if I played it. I have, and it's worked." For writing and playing around the house, he has a custom-built guitar by Portland's Terry Demezas, with a slightly narrower neck and a lower action.
O Domhnaill uses medium-gauge phosphor bronze strings, shifting between D'Addario, Guild, and John Pearse. For amplification, he uses a Highlander pickup.
--Kenny Berkowitz
has two primary acoustic guitars. Her favorite is a small-bodied guitar custom built by David Wren. According to her tour manager Crook Stewart, she likes it because it has a large sound for its size. Her other main guitar is a Santa Cruz OM (Santa Cruz Guitar Company, 328 Ingalls St., Santa Cruz, CA 95060; [408] 425-0999). She uses Fishman Matrix bridge pickups on both of her guitars. Her soundman splits the signal into two channels, adding effects to one and keeping the other dry, and then mixing the two. Baez also uses a Boss volume pedal.
Baez is currently using Martin light-gauge strings but has also been experimenting with the DR brand. She switches back and forth between using a Shubb capo and a spring-loaded Dunlop. She uses a Dunlop thumbpick on her thumb and aLaska fingerpicks on her other fingers (aLaska Pik, 307 S. 18th St., St. Maries, ID 83861; [208] 245-2868). The aLaska picks slide over the fingertips and act like fingernails. Because she performs sitting down, Baez uses a device called the A-Frame (see Dear A.G., June), which attaches to the bottom of the guitar with suction cups and supports it in proper playing position without the use of a strap.
--Dan Ouellette
guitar of choice is a Martin OM-21. She uses light-gauge D'Addario phosphor-bronze strings, although she is contemplating stringing her guitar with heavier strings in the future. She uses a Kyser capo and an EMG pickup along with an exterior microphone. She prefers Shure SM-58 mics.
--Dan Ouellette