EQUIPMENT PICKS FROM DALE MILLER, DAN HICKS, BOB BROZMAN, STRUNZ AND FARAH, AND PAUL YANDELL
uses a 1994 Martin 000-16 and a 1936 National Style O resophonic guitar for recording and live performance. He also owns a black-to-gray sunburst Guild D-4, a Martin D-18 12-string, and a new National Reso-Lectric (serial number 001). Miller's acquisition of the very first National Reso-Lectric guitar occurred when he gave the company some ideas for the reworking of the solid-body that were incorporated into the instrument. He eventually bought the 001, which was also played by Keith Richards at a session in San Francisco. Remembers Miller, "Pierre De Beauport [Richards' guitar technician] called me up, and I lent Keith my guitar for the day."
As for strings, Miller prefers D'Addario J-16s on the Martin, Guild, and vintage National; D'Addario medium-gauge for the 12-string (tuned down to Db); and D'Addario J-21s for the Reso-Lectric. He plays bare-fingered with very short nails; he picks mostly with his thumb and two fingers, but on certain runs he uses all the fingers of his right hand.
--Ellen Geisel
played the same Guild F-50 from 1971 (when he recorded Where's the Money?) until 1994. "About two years ago," he says, "I retired that first one and got another one, slightly used, and they put a new dark coat [of finish] on it. I like it 'cause it has a big sound. I don't like a thin little tinny sound. Some guy had a Guild back in the late '60s, and I liked it--I think it was an F-50. Myself and my guitar player went and bought Guild guitars, and that's been the story ever since. I maybe would like to try a Gibson J-200 some time. I like the way they look."
As far as accessories are concerned, Hicks says, "I use a thumbpick and two National steel fingerpicks. I've been using GHS strings, medium-gauge, or D'Angelico strings. I don't really care that much if they're bronze or phosphor-bronze. I don't even care that much if they're a different brand. It's like, I don't care if I get a different kind of gas in the car, whether it's Texaco or Shell. It all kind of sounds the same to me.
"I've got a Baggs pickup inside of the guitar, and I've been using a DOD preamp," Hicks says. "I had a Baggs preamp, but I lost it somewhere. When I play the tambourine, I use a Ludwig brush, and I use Marine Band harmonicas, [although] I hardly ever play harmonica anymore. Then, I have an [Oscar] Schmidt Autoharp--the standard one. I think I play a pretty good Autoharp now; we just don't bring it with us [on tour]."
--Elijah Wald
primary performance National guitars are also the cornerstones of his collection: a 1933 Style O and a 1928 Style 1 round-neck. He also performs with a new, custom-made National Style 3, two 1920s Weissenborns--a Style 3 and a Style 4--and a 1931 small-bodied Style 2 National ukulele.
For bottleneck playing, Brozman uses a pre-1973 Mateuse Rose bottleneck he made at age 14. For lap-style slide, he uses a bar he designed, the Latch Lake Brozophonic. "It's a bullet bar in the manner of Sol Hoopii's," says Brozman. "I've designed in a concavity at the opposite end of the bullet in order to be able to manipulate the bar more easily." Brozman describes his plastic thumbpick as "this rainbow-colored Pick Boy thing." The fingerpicks he uses are made of a heavy black plastic, and since they're no longer manufactured to his liking, Brozman is "raiding Mom and Pop music stores" to find them.
Brozman's strings are made by John Pearse. "I use crazy gauges that shouldn't be published because people will wreck their guitars," Brozman cautions. "I use .016 to .066. For Weissenborns, .015, .017, .027, .040. .050, .066. I'm a maniac. I can't help it."
--Mark A. Humphrey
strive to get the best acoustic guitars in front of the best microphones in the studio, with no intervening electronics. For them, this means Esteso flamenco guitars, built in Spain, and Neumann microphones. Increasingly, they've been relying on cutaway flamenco guitars custom-built by Pedro Maldonado of Málaga, Spain, for both studio and stage work.
On stage, Strunz and Farah's guitars are fitted with MacLish hexaphonic pickups (RMC Pickup Co., 1739 Addison St. #15, Berkeley, CA 94703-1580; [510] 845-9130). This system has six individual piezoelectric elements running to a hexaphonic output that goes to a box with three parametric EQs and a volume knob where the six signals are premixed. Strunz and Farah have found that this approach gives them good volume for all six strings. "Most piezo pickups are a band running across the whole bridge," Strunz explains. "So it's a see-saw; you don't get even pressure. One string is always going to lose out. This isn't a problem so much when you're playing solo guitar as when you're playing in an ensemble. When you're playing with a full rhythm section and one string is lighter than another, you really feel like someone has pulled the plug on you. This pickup solves that problem. It creates a very uniform sound."
From the RMC box, the signal goes into a tuner ("With two guitars, that's indispensable," says Strunz), then into a Lexicon LXP-1 reverb, a Boss 15-band EQ, and then, via a direct box, into the house PA system. Strunz' wife Kathlyn Powell has been running Strunz and Farah's sound for a number of years, helping them to consistently achieve the EQ balance they need for their live show. Lately, they've begun placing lavalier mics inside their guitars to pick up some of the natural resonance to balance out the piezo signal.
Strunz and Farah use and endorse La Bella strings.
--Stephen Dick
recorded Going Home with a Gibson Studio Classic guitar modified with a preamp built by Ray Butts. The signal ran into a Demeter direct box and then to a Tascam DAT recorder, with Boss effects for reverb and echo.
On the Fingerstyle Legacy video, he played a modified version of the Country Gentleman guitar built by Jim Hutchins at Gibson. Yandell designed the modifications, which include a mahogany neck and a three-inch&endash;deep hollow body with a soundpost under the bridge. The soundpost, Yandell says, articulates notes more evenly above the 12th fret and helps the sustain. "That's Chet's idea," says Yandell. "He used to have two soundposts in his old D'Angelico."
Yandell's Country Gent has a Ray Butts humbucking pickup in the neck position and a regular Gibson humbucker at the bridge. He recorded this guitar with a direct line to the board and another line into a Music Man RD-100 amp, recorded with an old RCA 44 ribbon mic that he borrowed from Chet Atkins. "The RD-100 has a 'deep' switch, which helps tremendously," Yandell says.
The acoustic flattop seen at the end of the video is a modified 1958 Martin D-28, with a Sunrise pickup running through the same Music Man amp.
--Jim Ohlschmidt
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