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| From
Acoustic Guitar Magazine, May 1999, No. 77
THE HENRYS - PAUL GALBRAITH - THE FREIGHT HOPPERS - JUDITH EDELMAN - MANUEL BARRUECO - FRANCO MORONE
Don Rooke's first slide guitar was a Hilo student model that "looks like koa but isn't," he says. He has since settled on his present ax, a Sunrise pickup– equipped Kona made by Weissenborn, the legendary prewar builder of Hawaiian-style flattops. He uses phosphor- bronze strings gauged .022 (wound), .042, .032, .024, .018, .016, and tunes it (high) A B D G B D, an adaptation of the standard Dobro tuning G B D G B D. For Desert Cure Rooke captured his Kona's sound with a pair of Sanken condenser mics. The band recorded live to get as good a feel for the basic rhythm section tracks as possible; working in the ADAT format made it possible to take the tapes into various home studios to wrap things up. "We run into this problem of wanting to play together but getting more snare drum than Kona in the Kona mic," says Rooke. "So I end up replacing things. Not totally, but on some tunes I definitely do it over, usually in somebody's bedroom or whatever. There's no leakage from the Kona to the drums so I can always do my parts over, but there's a lot of drums in my mic. Sonically it's going to be much better if you can isolate the acoustic." Fellow guitarist Monte Horton primarily played a 1929 Martin 0-28. —David Hamburger
English luthier David Rubio built Galbraith's eight-string guitar with Brazilian rosewood back and sides, an ebony fingerboard, and a Bosnian spruce top with very straight grain. Rubio solved the technical problems posed by the additional strings after studying the ophereon, an extinct Renaissance instrument that had a slanted bridge to provide longer string length for the bass notes and shorter string length for the trebles. The varied string lengths give the lowest bass string a little more tension and the high treble string a little less. The guitar has a very futuristic appearance with its bridge slanting upward on the treble side and the nut slanting downward on the treble side. The frets are not parallel but fan outward from about the fifth fret (for more on fanned-fret instruments, see Gear Profile, May '94). An endpin protruding from the bottom of Galbraith's guitar mounts onto a rectangular resonator box that is slightly smaller than a cello body. The box increases the volume and density of the instrument's sound. A Brazilian craftsman made the box from spruce and Brazilian rosewood, and Rubio later cut two f-holes into its face. To play it, Galbraith sits in a high chair straddling the box and rests his feet on footstools. Galbraith uses a low A string made by D'Addario with fine windings to reduce finger noise. For the high string, he has used fishing line, which blends with the other trebles, which are Savarez carbon-fiber strings. Galbraith says the guitar has a remarkably quick response, though the outer strings are a bit stiffer than the inner six. —Mark L. Small
Cary Fridley of the Freight Hoppers primarily plays a Gibson J-45, circa 1939. She also has a mail-order 1930s Kay that has a bassy sound similar to the Gibson's. She uses John Pearse bluegrass-gauge strings (John Pearse, PO Box 295, Center Valley, PA 18034-0295; [800] 235-3302; www.jpstrings.com): light gauges for the top three strings and mediums on the bottom. Frank Lee plays sweet Carter Family-style guitar solos on his 1943 Gibson LG-2, which he strings with Pearse medium-light strings. Lee's banjo is a new French walnut neck on an old metal-clad, 11-inch banjo pot, strung with Pearse banjo strings. Fridley and Lee strive for a pure acoustic sound when they perform, and they both use the Soundhole Mic from MiniFlex Innovations (810 W. 6th St., Chico, CA 95928; [800] 585-7659; www.miniflexmics.com), which they mount on the outside of their instruments, pointed at the fingerboard. The Freight Hoppers usually don't use stage monitors; they prefer to stand close together to hear each other. When monitors are necessary, Lee uses a Trace Acoustic TA-50 amp. Fiddler David Bass plays a German violin from the 1900s as well as a 1920s Chicago-made violin. James O'Keefe bought his psychedelically painted bass from a Russian rockabilly musician in Denmark. Bass and O'Keefe use D'Addario strings. —Leah Weiss
Judith Edelman's main guitar is a mid-'60s Martin D-21, which she strings with D'Addario J-17 phosphor-bronze mediums. The phosphor-bronze alloy does a good job for her of balancing clarity and brilliance with the guitar's natural warmth. Through trial and error Edelman has settled on Dunlop Delrin 1.14 picks. "The hot pink ones," she says. "I always flatpick the guitar, and these seem to have a softer feel in the hand, but they are real rigid and give a clean, accurate attack." On the road Edelman uses (partner and musical collaborator) Matt Flinner's matching D-21 from the same period. "I like the sound of playing through a good microphone on a stand," says Edelman, "but I move around too much when we're playing live, so I need to be plugged in, and Matt's guitar has a great setup for that." The on-board electronics on Flinner's D-21 include an L.R. Baggs saddle transducer and a MiniFlex studio condenser microphone mounted inside the instrument. The two signals are carried via stereo cable to a Rane AP-13 combination preamp, EQ, blender, and DI for some minor tweaking before going to the house and monitor mixes. Edelman experiments with open tunings like D A D G A D when working on new songs at home, but on stage she finds the retuning process too time-consuming so she performs most pieces in standard tuning or dropped-D. A Shubb capo helps her negotiate quick key changes and keep her guitar sounding wide open even in treacherous F# territory. —Paul Kotapish
Manuel Barrueco says that although guitars have become more powerful in recent years, many lack beauty. In concert, he plays a guitar by German luthier Mathias Dammann (Rotthof 104, D-94152, Neuhaus, Germany) and in recording situations an instrument by American luthier Robert Ruck (37676 Hood Canal Dr. N.E., Hansville, WA 98340; www.maui.net/~rtadaki/ruck.html). He says the Ruck is a more perfect instrument with better balance but without the power of the Dammann. Barrueco believes that the natural sound of an unamplified instrument is best, but that audiences need to hear the music without strain. He uses amplification only for playing concertos and in pop settings, not for chamber music. He says that for a concerto to be successful without amplification you need a great conductor, a great orchestra, a great hall, and a soloist with strong technique playing a well-written piece on a good day. Barrueco travels with a Neumann KM-84 microphone. He tells the story of arriving with rock artist Steve Morse for their first joint appearance. He was carrying his mic in his pocket, and Morse came with a van full of equipment. —Scott Cmiel
Franco Morone plays a Taylor 812-C on his CD Melodies of Memories and its predecessor The South Wind, but, he says, "I have many different ladies in my home: a couple of Larrivées, an old Lowden, a Martin D-18, and a 12-string Taylor Kottke signature." On his fall 1998 U.S. concert tour, he played a new Indian rosewood and Engelmann spruce instrument he had just bought from California luthier Kevin Ryan (see Gear Profile, April). "I like the definition, balance, and sound: rounded basses and pure trebles," Morone explains. "This is my first guitar with an Engelmann spruce top. It's so light and full of vibrations." In the Ryan, Morone uses a B-Band pickup (EMF Acoustics, distributed in the U.S. by the Music People, [800] 289-8889, fax [860] 223-6888), and the Taylor has a Baggs Dual Source (L.R. Baggs Co., 483 N. Frontage Rd., Nipomo, CA 93444-9596; [805] 929-3545;) www.lrbaggs.com. On stage he runs his guitar through a Baggs Para Acous-tic DI box and into a German AER amplifier (AER, Christine-Englerth-Str. 30, 45665 Recklinghausen, Germany; fax [49] 2361-891791; 100547,2451@compuserve.com), which serves as his monitor. He says that in the studio he normally uses a combination of 30 percent piezo/mic output and a couple of external mics. "I like to take out high frequencies from the piezo and leave just bass frequencies—it's more balanced and consistent. I keep more natural highs and sounds from the external mics." Morone maintains his guitars himself. "I need to know everything about my instruments, so if something happens before a concert I know what's wrong," he explains. "After a while it became necessary for me to set up my instruments—compensate or adjust saddles, nuts, frets, and so on—to make the little improvements that you can do easily and fast. Anyway, when it's needed, I like to do a little maintenance, and I feel in tune with woodworking." —Russell Letson |
