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Excerpted from Acoustic Guitar magazine, January 2000, No. 85. GORDON LIGHTFOOT | ANNIE GALLUP | BOB BROZMAN | TOSHI REAGON | BRUCE COCKBURN Gordon Lightfoot plays a pair of 12-string Gibson B-45-12s from the 1960s. He uses two of them on stage: one in standard tuning, the other capoed at the third fret with the lowest pair of strings dropped to D. The instruments appear on Lightfoot album covers stretching back to the '60s, although the guitar seen on the Sundown cover was lost on the road many years ago. The cover of Lightfoot's earliest LP, Lightfoot, shows a Martin D-28 that was subsequently stolen. He acquired a later model D-28, which he keeps at home along with an ornate custom Brazilian rosewood dreadnought (seen on the cover of Dream Street Rose) by Ed McGlincy (220 Delsea Dr., Westville, NJ 08093; [856] 742-8604), who has retired from guitarmaking for health reasons. On stage, he also plays a Martin D-18 from the '30s or '40s. In the last decade or so, Lightfoot added pickups to his acoustic guitars, a change from the mic-only stage setup he described in a 1985 Frets magazine interview. His pickup of choice is a Fishman Acoustic Matrix II, which he mixes with a Shure SM-57 microphone and feeds into a direct box and then into the mixing board and a Fender Twin Reverb amp he uses as a stage monitor. Lightfoot's preferred flatpick is a Yamaha ("the older model you can't get anymore") that's a little thinner than Terry Clements' D'Andrea medium, and his capo is a Shubb Deluxe. He uses Ernie Ball Earthwood Bronze strings, but substitutes a D'Addario .053 11th on the "straight" 12-string, "because [Ernie Ball] doesn't make the odd .053." The other 12-string takes the same configuration but with an .054 on the dropped 11th string. He also substitutes a phosphor-bronze low G (fifth) on the 12-strings because "it makes it easier to hear." For his Martin, "the medium-light Ernie Ball set really gives a lot of snap," says Lightfoot. "I raised my gauges on the low end a little bit, and I found that it helped." Although he was at the Newport Folk Festival when Bob Dylan committed his legendary plugged-in heresy, Lightfoot also keeps a couple of electrics: an old Fender Telecaster ("My 17-year-old son learned to play guitar on that one") and a Gibson SG seen on the back of the 1983 Salute album. Terry Clements, Lightfoot's longtime lead guitarist, relies on two 1964 Martin D-18s and two Gretsch electrics (a 1964 Tennessean and a 1976 Country Gentleman, the latter his primary stage ax) that have infused themselves into the Lightfoot sound. The Gretsches have a warm bass sound and sparkly treble that work especially well with folk music, but with chorus and distortion they can also sound the Edmund Fitzgerald klaxon/siren wail. On stage, Clements uses a Roland JC-120 amplifier for the electric, and a Fender Deluxe Reverb for the acoustic. He uses a Boss pedalboard for both the Martin (chorus and a Boss TU-12 tuner) and Gretsch (delay, chorus, fuzz, tuner), and his Martins are fitted with Fishman Acoustic Matrix II pickups. Like Lightfoot, Clements favors Ernie Ball strings. "They're great strings," he says. "In my many years, very few times have I ever come up with a lemon. They hang right in there, too." He favors gauges .050, .040, .030, .022, .015, and .010, very light for something like a Martin D-18, but, he says, "I have to use a lighter set because I do a lot of bends." Clements uses nickel-wound electric strings on the Gretsches. "The Country Gentleman's neck is so long," he says, "that I can't use a .017 unwound. Instead I use a .020 wound, which is fairly heavy for an electric." His capo is a Hamilton, which he describes as an "orthopedic device" compared to the sleek modern designs. Clements has a 000-size McGlincy that is identical in appointments to Lightfoot's dreadnought. He also keeps a Martin 0-18 strung in Nashville tuning--with the bottom four strings an octave higher than standard--and a couple of gut-string guitars in his studio, complemented on the electric side by a '60s Rickenbacker 360-12 (as played by Roger McGuinn), a '59 Stratocaster, a '79 Telecaster, a Fender bass, and a Gibson Les Paul. —Ben Elder For the past several years, Annie Gallup has used Breedlove SC and C2-R guitars. She also played a 1959 Epiphone Windsor and a 1968 Les Paul on Steady Steady Yes. In addition, she has ordered an Indian rosewood Froggy Bottom K-12 with a spruce top, cutaway, and 12-fret neck. Her Breedloves are fitted with Dana Bourgeois pickup/mic combos, though she has replaced the standard EMG pickup with a Fishman Matrix. —Ron Forbes-Roberts Bob Brozman performs on several acoustic guitars made by Weissenborn, National, and Bear Creek. He also plays a Chandler electric baritone guitar. He uses John Pearse strings, Highlander and Fishman amplification gear, and Dunlop heavy plastic picks. —Dan Ouellette Toshi Reagon has had a long-term romance with Taylor guitars but only recently had the pleasure of acquiring a 414CE—just in time to record The Righteous Ones. "I always loved them but could never afford one," she says. She strings the Taylor with GHS medium-gauge strings and uses heavy flatpicks. Reagon's other favorite guitars include an electric 1930s Tiei (made in Soho, New York). On the recording, guitarist Adam Widoff plays a vintage Stratocaster, and Widoff and Reagon both play 1962 Les Paul Juniors. Reagon has a soft spot for vintage amps, including the old Voxes. "There were lots of old vintage amps in the studio where we recorded [Iiwii Studios in Weehawken, New Jersey]," she says. She tends to be spontaneous with the equipment she chooses, using whatever works. "We plugged things in," she says, "and if they sounded like what we were looking for, we went with it." —Karen Iris Tucker Since 1988 Bruce Cockburn has played guitars built by Linda Manzer (Manzer Guitars, 65 Metcalfe St., Toronto, ON M4X 1R9, Canada; [416] 927-1539; www.manzer.com). For 11 years he sported a Manzer flattop with a blue top that became something of a trademark. "It's not green, as many people believe," says Manzer. "It looks green because the top is cedar, from a log that rolled up on the beach on Vancouver Island that I got 18 tops out of. And it's a bit deeper than my usual Manzer model." This guitar has custom Mayan inlays made of abalone, mother-of-pearl, and silver. In early '99, Cockburn traded in "Blue" to get a new spruce-topped Manzer, because he preferred its slimmer neck profile and also liked her more recent wedge design—an ergonomic tapering of the body that makes it narrower where the right arm stretches over the guitar but wider below. Manzer is building more and more guitars with this subtle and very effective design, which makes the body feel smaller than it actually is. Cockburn's new guitar, equipped with a Fishman on-board pickup system, is now his stage companion. When recording Breakfast in New Orleans, Dinner in Timbuktu, Cockburn felt the Manzer sounded a little too new for studio use and opted for his Brazilian rosewood Collings D-2H. Also heard on the album is his metal-body Dobro, which he's been playing for about ten years. "The way I use that Dobro live," he says, "it's got a Tele pickup in it and a microphone built into it as well, and the audience gets to hear the microphone and I get to hear the Tele pickup. That's the system, so that I can get the volume I need without it screaming at me. But sometimes we'll mix them up, you know, because the pickup sounds pretty nice, particularly through old vintage amps that are not designed to such high tolerances as modern ones. On the song 'Use Me While You Can,' we were recording both of them. You'll hear it start with more of the Dobro sound, and the pickup comes in as it goes along—you start to become aware of the tremolo and the extra sustain that the pickup gives it. And we fool around with that kind of thing live sometimes, too." On the Manzer, Cockburn uses 80/20 bronze strings, a standard light set except for a slightly lighter first and second (.011 and .014 instead of .012 and .016). The Dobro has steel strings (because of the Tele pickup) in the same gauges except for a .056 sixth "to get a bit more punch out of it." His capo of choice is a Kyser. Cockburn's electric collection includes three blue Manzers: a charango and two Strat-type guitars, a six-string and a 12-string. On the new album, he finds his thrill on "Blueberry Hill" with a Charvel Surfcaster (he keeps one in standard tuning and a second in dropped-D). He also has a well-traveled National Resolectric, a two-pickup Jerry Jones, an early '70s Strat, and a Telecaster Thinline reissue. —Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers |
