WHAT THEY PLAY:
Cordelia's Dad, Barenaked Ladies, String Cheese Incident, Laura Love Band, Jim Croce, David Tanenbaum
Tim Eriksen strings his mahogany body/spruce top Taylor 512 with weighty phosphor-bronze strings: .056, .046, .036, .024, .024, and a plain steel .017. "It's the best gauge setup for the tunings that I play in," says Eriksen. "It makes it possible to get the range I need." For most of the guitar work on Spine, Eriksen's guitar is tuned "around C F C F F C." Exceptions are the moody "Montcalm and Wolfe" in Bb F C F G C and his delicate arrangement of "Long Island Railroad" in C F C F G C. He uses a metal thumbpick or a heavy Sharpie.
On stage, Cordelia's Dad is devotedly low-tech. Eriksen amplifies his guitar with a Donnell Miniflex mic (Miniflex Innovations, 810 W. 6th Street, Chico, CA 95928; [800] 585-7659; www.miniflexmics.com). "When you plug it in, it just sounds like a guitar," he says. "If there's a decent board, you don't have to use any EQ." Historically, the other band members have attached Radio Shack clip-on mics to their instruments. "Peter's got a fancier one on the bodhran now," says Eriksen. "But we love those microphones. They sound great, and they make it easy to move around."
The banjo Eriksen plays was made by Ellis Wolfe of Butler, Tennessee, from a native walnut beam his father salvaged from a dismantled barn. The tuning is Dwight Diller's G G D G D. The dulcimer Cath Oss plays was built by Wolfe from the same beam as the banjo; it's tuned A D D D. Oss' accordions are a Hero "hand wind instrument" (a literal translation from the Chinese) and a Golden Cup. Laura Risk plays two fiddles, one in standard tuning and one in G D G D. Peter Irvine's frame drums were made by Cooperman Fife and Drum in Bellows Falls, Vermont. One has a goatskin head, the other a Fiberskyn (plastic) head.
--Rani Arbo
Ed Robertson, the primary guitarist for Barenaked Ladies, plays Larrivee guitars. Recent concert photos show him with an elegant L-09, a noncutaway spruce/rosewood model with a custom eagle inlay. His guitars are equipped with Fishman Matrix pickups, which he runs straight into a Demeter tube DI. "I think it's one of the truest acoustic sounds I've heard, without being too aggressive in the top end or muddy or anything else," posits his bandmate Steven Page. Since regular soundhole covers don't fit Robertson's Larrivees, he uses soundhole humidifiers and "tapes them up weirdly" to combat feedback.
Page's ax is a Gibson Blues King, with a V-shaped neck that he finds a good fit for his big hands. "I'm a big fan of Gibson stuff," he says. The Blues King is wired with Gibson's stock pickup/preamp system. He also plays a 1930 small-body Martin.
Both Robertson and Page use heavy Dunlop picks and Dean Markley strings ("I couldn't tell you the gauges to save my life," Robertson confesses). Robertson capos up with a Shubb, while Page opts for a Kyser.
--Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers
The guitar ingredients in String Cheese are a Martin D-28 and a Santa Cruz H model-a small-body guitar that Bill Nershi likes as a change-up from his well-loved dreadnought.
Nershi's amplification rig begins with a Sunrise magnetic pickup and a McIntyre contact pickup, which he runs through a Pendulum preamp, a T.C. Electronics effects unit, and a five-band parametric EQ and into a Daedalus cabinet. "As long as I'm careful about all the different levels going into the preamp and out of the preamp being right," he says, "then I get a good sound. Otherwise it can get electric-edged and not what I'm looking for."
--Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers
Rod Cook plies two main guitars with the Laura Love Band: a late '60s/early '70s Guild D-35 and a c. 1930 National Duolian, which he plays in open D, open G, and standard tuning. He says of the National, "For certain types of tunes it works well--you get that banjo sound almost." Both guitars are set up with light-gauge strings. He also has a Tacoma Papoose that he plays on the new Laura Love album, Shum Ticky, as well as occasionally on stage.
The National has a Highlander pickup seated in the biscuit, while the Guild has a Highlander and a Sunrise. He runs the signals from both Highlanders into a Boss GX700 multi-effects unit and then into a Seymour Duncan Tara amp; the Sunrise goes straight into the Tara. The two guitars are EQ'd separately. He also uses a volume pedal to crank up for solos.
Cook's primary electric guitar is a '66 Fender Telecaster with Joe Barden pickups. He also has a '65 Strat, an early '70s Gibson ES-335, and a late '50s Danelectro-made Silvertone. All are plugged into a black-face Fender Pro Reverb amp.
--Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers
Although he owned many guitars over the course of his short career--including a Martin 000-28 that he had when he lived in Pennsylvania--all three of Jim Croce's solo albums were recorded with a Gibson Dove. Croce originally bought the guitar for coproducer Tommy West in 1968, but according to West, the guitar sounded so awful ("It had adjustable bridges and about nine coats of sunburst finish") that he took it to guitar maker Phillip Petillo (Petillo Masterpiece Guitars and Accessories, 1206 Herbert Ave., Ocean, NJ 07712; [732] 531-6808; fax [732] 531-3045) to have it overhauled. Petillo gave it an ebony bridge, new gears, and a new fingerboard, and he took the finish off. Later, when Croce was going through a difficult economic time and had to sell a lot of his guitars, West gave the guitar back to him. For a while, Croce used the Dove live and in the studio. He began using a variety of Ovations for live work during the last year and a half of his life, in part because of their durability.
Croce played with a plastic thumbpick and three metal fingerpicks. "He wasn't a good strummer," recalls West, "but he could really fingerpick steadily."
Croce's lead acoustic guitarist Maury Muehleisen's primary guitars were two Martins: a D-28 and a D-35. The D-28 was made sometime in the '60s, and the D-35 was made sometime between 1965 (when the D-35 was introduced) and 1969. The D-28 was strung with Ernie Ball Slinkys and the D-35 with strings made by Petillo. Like Croce, Muehleisen took to using Ovations on the road and frequently played with fingerpicks.
--Jason Zasky
Over the years, David Tanenbaum has played and recorded with instruments by John Gilbert, Jose Oribe, Deitr-Hopf, Thomas Humphrey, Greg Byers, and Greg Smallman. Currently he favors a guitar made by the French maker Daniel Friederich (c/o Guitar Salon International, 3100 Donald Douglas Loop North, Santa Monica, CA 90405; [310] 399-2181; http://classicalguitars.com/luthiers/friedrich.html). In some chamber music situations, he uses a French-made G4 microphone from FWF Systmes (Bureau d'Etudes Audios et Visuelles, 8 rue Audran, 75018 Paris, France; [01] 45-52-19-44; fax [01] 42-52-21-64) that clips onto the guitar without hurting the finish, and he also plays a Southwell guitar (Chaucer Court Workshop, Chaucer St., Nottingham NG1 5LP, England; [44] 1159-473-633; fax [44] 1159-859-422) that he can plug directly into a good acoustic amplifier for concertos.
--Scott Cmiel
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