EQUIPMENT PICKS FROM RICKY
SKAGGS, NINA
GERBER, JEFF
WHITE, CATIE
CURTIS,
MISSISSIPPI
JOHN HURT
performs with his namesake-model Bourgeois dreadnought, patterned after a traditional prewar herringbone with the addition of pearl soundhole rosette (Bourgeois Guitars, 235 Goddard Rd., Lewiston, ME 04240; [207] 786-9320; dbguitars@ aol.com). Base models are Indian rosewood with silver hardware; options include Brazilian rosewood and gold and/or engraved tuners. Skaggs' one-off Bourgeois Slope D Presentation Model has a Gibson-esque round-shouldered profile. "It sounds and plays great," says Skaggs.
"I really hadn't even heard of Bourgeois guitars until Bryan [Sutton, his lead guitarist] bought one and was playing it on the road," Skaggs says. "We happened to be playing up in Maine last year at a bluegrass festival. Dana [Bourgeois] came out and brought two or three guitars. We said, ëWow, these things sound great!' Dana said, ëYeah, they sound real good for about a week old.' We were just blown away! They sounded 30 years old, and they had that real dry herringbone sound that just records so good, without that extended woof in the low end. They sounded like they were mic-friendly for studios and even for stage."
Skaggs hoped this meeting might, at the outside, result in another instrument for Sutton, who was looking for an even bigger sound. A month or so later, Bourgeois showed up in Nashville with several new guitars in tow, which led to an endorsement deal and the two new models. "I was really, really impressed with him as a luthier and also with his willingness to learn and to be taught," says Skaggs of Bourgeois. "You find a lot of guitar makers who have arrived and know it all. If we make a suggestion, he's totally open to it and takes it back and works with it."
Skaggs' now-homebound Martins include a 1944 D-28 herringbone, another from 1937, a 1949 post-herringbone D-28, and a 1987 custom Brazilian rosewood D-45LE. Skaggs also has his late father's 1942 000-21, which, like his '44 herringbone, has a war-era ebony, rather than steel, truss rod. His Martin dreadnoughts employ Takamine pickups and electronics, which required cutting holes for installation. He's been discussing a noninvasive system for the Bourgeois dreadnoughts with TrueTone M7 electronics (TrueTone Sound, 327 W. Fayette St., Syracuse, NY 13202; [305] 463-1490).
Skaggs also owns a late '30s round-shouldered Washburn dreadnought (seen on his late-'70s Family and Friends album). On occasion, he's beefed up its string gauges and tuned down a step and a half for rhythm tracks.
A younger relative of his 1923 Gibson Lloyd Loar F-5 mandolin (discussed on page 63) is "Miss Maybelle," a 1925 L-5 guitar, the model that began the era of the modern f-hole archtop. Skaggs' L-5 is named for Maybelle Carter, whose late-'20s L-5 was her signature instrument on Carter Family recordings.
After admiring producer Brian Ahern's Guild 12-string, Skaggs found a late-'60s Brazilian rosewood Martin D-12-35. He also has a Tacoma Papoose short-scale acoustic, which he has used on Monday Night Concerts.
In addition to his Loar F-5 mandolin (he'd like to get a second one, he says), Skaggs still has two F-5s made by Tom Ellis, which he usually keeps in alternate tunings to save time on stage (Tom Ellis, 7208 Cooper Lane, Austin, TX 78745; [512] 442-4941). In his mother's custody, there's also a Gibson A-40--the one he used on Flatt and Scruggs' TV show and then for years afterward. His recently acquired and restored Emiliani violin from the 1700s "is just one of the most awesome instruments I've ever heard in my life. It's like it's been in a cave, in captivity."
Skaggs endorses D'Addario strings, using a J-74 medium phosphor-bronze set on his mandolins: .011, .015, .026, .040. He uses two different phosphor-bronze gauges on his dreadnoughts--for country, a custom set (.011, .014, .022, .030, .036, .050) and for bluegrass, the medium-gauge J-17 set (.013, .017, .026, .035, .045, .056).
He relies on classic RCA ribbon mics, the 77DX and the 44DX, whose care he entrusts to retired RCA engineer Clarence Kane (Enak, 420 Carew Ave., Pitman, NJ 08071; [609] 589-6186). He also uses a Neumann U47-2 ("the best vocal mic I've ever heard"), a Neumann M250 on bass, a Neumann KM-66 tube mic on Bryan Sutton's guitar, and recent Geffell condenser mics on the fiddles.
--Ben Elder
main guitar was built for Kate Wolf circa 1983 by David Matlin (Matlin Guitars, 43280 Little Lake Rd., Mendocino, CA 95460; [707] 937-5192). "It has koa back and sides and a spruce top," Gerber says. "It's a 00-ishñsize, smaller-body guitar. When [Wolf] died, she left it to me."
The guitar is equipped with an internal Mini-Flex microphone (Donnell Enterprises, 24 Parkhurst St., Chico, CA 95928-6856; [800] 585-7659) and an L.R. Baggs bridge pickup. She runs the signals through a Pendulum stereo preamp (Pendulum, PO Box 339, Gillette, NJ 07933-0339; [908] 665-9333) and a Daedalus speaker cabinet (Daedalus, 18 Irish Hill Rd., Newfield, NY 14867-9785; [607] 564-0000). She says her effects are limited to "a couple of different reverb settings and chorus. I go through thousands of dollars of equipment to try to get my acoustic guitar to sound acoustic, but louder."
Gerber uses light-gauge John Pearse phosphor-bronze strings. She picks with the rounded corner of a Dunlop Delrin 1.5 mm flatpick, and she sometimes uses her bare fingers in combination with the flatpick.
--Phil Campbell
has played the same Mossman Great Plains dreadnought since he bought it new in 1977 (Mossman Guitars, 1813 Main St., Sulphur Springs, TX 75482; [903] 885-4992). He's one of those musicians who finds an instrument that defines his sound and stays with it. "I heard Dan Crary playing a Mossman on Lady's Fancy," he recalls, "and the music store I was teaching at got a couple in, so I bought one. The reason I liked it so much is that I was playing in a band with a loud banjo player, and I really needed to cut through and be heard. I can hear each individual note ring distinctly on the Mossman, but it doesn't have that bass rumble on the low strings, so it's very effective over a mic." White uses medium-gauge D'Addario phosphor-bronze strings and purple Tortex picks from Jim Dunlop. "I have a fairly high action, again for the volume. I play pretty hard and barrel on through," he says. His on-stage setup consists of an L.R. Baggs ribbon saddle pickup, which he uses when playing live with Vince Gill, into either a Rane or Battaglia preamp and an Alesis digital reverb. In his bluegrass gigs, White plays straight into the microphone and uses his right-hand power and technique to make himself heard.
--David McCarty
plays a new Gibson J-30 and a Martin D-18 from the late '80s. To amplify her guitars on stage she uses a Fishman Blender system with a Highlander pickup and a Joe Mills mic in the Gibson, and a Fishman pickup and a Crown mic in the Martin. She uses heavy flatpicks, and when we spoke she was experimenting with the new coated Elixir strings, made by W.L. Gore and Associates. "What I like about them--and I haven't played them very long, so this is a first observation about them--is that they don't sound very good when you first put them on, but then they start to sound better and they sound really good when you're amplified. They're warmer and less brittle-sounding [than regular phosphor-bronze strings], and you can play on them every day for two weeks and not lose tone or break them. It's incredible. I think they might be a good thing."
--Scott Nygaard
didn't own a guitar when he broke out on the contemporary folk scene in 1963. His first sessions and early performances were done on a Gibson J-45 borrowed from Tom Hoskins and a succession of other loaners. (He's even pictured playing a Spanish-neck Dobro.) After he appeared at the Newport Folk Festival in 1964, the Newport Foundation offered to buy him the guitar of his choice, which was a Guild F-30. Tom Hoskins remembers encouraging him to select a more expensive guitar, but the parsimonious Hurt demurred. Subsequently Hurt acquired a sunburst F-30 at Israel Young's Folklore Center in New York. Marc Silber, who sold him the guitar, said, "I tried to get him to buy a Martin, but he told me he didn't like the color." Hurt sometimes used a Guild 12-string in the studio. The make and model of Black Annie, his original guitar, is uncertain.
--Steve James
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