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Excerpted from Acoustic Guitar magazine, March 2000, No. 87. DENNIS CAHILL | MICHELLE MALONE| SUGAR RAY | DAVID CROSBY | PETER FINGER Dennis Cahill plays a Collings OM-2H or a Running Dog ORRC parlor guitar (made by Rick Davis, RD 2, Box 57, Richmond, VT 05477; [802] 434-4399; www.vtguitars.com). He prefers light-gauge Martin SP or John Pearse phosphor-bronze strings and uses both a Fender heavy-gauge flatpick and his fingers. For amplification, he uses a Sennheiser MKE 2 omnidirectional microphone and a Fishman Matrix bridge pickup, mixing and shaping the signal through a Pendulum SPS1 stereo preamp. He uses a Rane FME 15 graphic equalizer to adjust to different PAs and rooms and adds reverb with an Alesis Microverb. —Sue Thompson Whether she’s in the studio or on the road, Michelle Malone favors her Martin D-28 (fitted with a Fishman pickup). "I’ve been incredibly satisfied with it," she says. To avoid the disruption of tuning during her acoustic sets, she uses other guitars, including a Gibson J-180 Everly Brothers jumbo reissue and two Hamer DuoTones for different tunings. The Hamers have three pickups: two electric pickups that connect to an amp, and one acoustic, bridge-mounted piezo pickup that goes to a separate output. The combination allows Malone to play exclusively acoustic, exclusively electric, or a combination of the two. In addition, she speaks lovingly of her Supro Super amp, which fits in airplanes’ overhead bins. She prefers D’Addario phosphor-bronze medium-gauge strings—not just for their pleasing tone but for their environmentally friendly packaging. —Katie Isenberg Sugar Ray’s lead guitarist Rodney Sheppard has a lot of guitars to choose from when he’s recording. "I have about 25 guitars," he says, "so when we’re in the studio, between my arsenal of guitars and our engineer’s—who also has a huge collection of guitars and vintage amps—I really have any kind of instrument at my beck and call. Our producer owns a 1954 Fender Broadcaster from before they even made Telecasters, and it’s in mint condition. I have the greatest instruments in the world!" In the world of acoustic guitars, Sheppard favors Martins. "We’ve done all of our recordings of acoustic guitars with Martin DMs," he says. "Stan [Frazier] has an old Gibson Hummingbird acoustic as well, and I have an old ’63 Harmony acoustic that looks really cool. But the most functional and best-sounding guitars are the Martins. Next week I’m getting my first 12-string guitar, a Martin DM-12, and I’m making a vow to use it on the next record." Sheppard uses Ernie Ball strings and custom flatpicks sporting the Sugar Ray logo. In live settings he runs his acoustic guitar through a Rivera amplifier. —Andrew DuBrock David Crosby owns about 30 guitars, including approximately 20 acoustics—five Martin D-45s (including three 1971s and a one-of-a-kind 12-string), a Collings dreadnought, a prewar Martin 00-45, and a 1964 Ramírez classical. Although he dearly loves his vintage Martins, as well as his one-of-a-kind Brazilian rosewood Gibson J-200 and his other collectible beauties, Crosby’s current favorite is undeniably a Brazilian rosewood and German spruce six-string built by independent luthier Roy McAlister (40 Eucalyptus Dr., Watsonville, CA 95076; [831] 761-2519; mcaguitars@aol.com). "I was fooling around with Santa Cruz guitars," Crosby recalls, "which I think are really good guitars. I would notice that every once in a while there would be a stellar one, one that stood out from all the others. Come to find out that there was a guy there, Roy McAlister, who was building them who left there and went out on his own. He just came to me with this guitar and said, ‘Here, try this.’ And I’m telling you, man, this thing sings! It’s a bell. And he doesn’t charge a million dollars for the guitars. He just really loves doing it. He just made me a 12-string that’s as good as the six-string. He came down here with three guitars, and I wanted to buy all of them. I gave this one to Nash, and he played it for 15 minutes and said, ‘OK, give me the guy’s number’ and immediately ordered one." Crosby’s love for the McAlister is all the more surprising considering the fact that it’s a concert model and he’s always played dreadnoughts. He describes it as being "sort of like a 000 with a large lower bout" and says that "it’s a delight to play." McAlister says of the instrument, "The air volume and surface space of the top is along the lines of an OM or 000. That was kind of the starting point. But I changed the basic design and appointments. I call it a concert model, but it’s more of a grand concert. I stayed away from herringbone and ivoroid bindings. I like an all-wood look. I bind the fretboard with cocobolo. I also like to stay away from the glues you have to use with plastics. "The bracing is completely changed," McAlister explains. "It’s still scalloped and I use maple bridge plates, but it’s basically my own bracing pattern. I worked at Santa Cruz for four years, which was a really great place to learn. All I did was voice tops for two years. The neck is a single piece of mahogany with a dual-action truss rod and an ebony fretboard. It’s dovetailed . . . nitrocellulose lacquer . . . pretty traditional." McAlister, who describes himself as a "home dad," builds between 15 and 20 guitars per year in his home shop and is currently back-ordered by about a year. Crosby gets most of his acoustic guitars through Fred Walecki of Westwood Music (10936 Santa Monica Blvd., Santa Monica, CA 90025; [310] 478-4251; www.westwoodmusic.com). "Fred is my guitar guru," he says. "He really knows guitars. He’s struggling to stay open in the onslaught of the chains, where nobody knows squat about acoustic guitars. It’s very dangerous to go into Fred’s! I do have some guilt about having guitars sit unplayed, so I try to play them all. Sometimes I give away guitars now that I love dearly. I had a Martin dreadnought, a D-28 herringbone, that was one of those exact replicas of the old ones. It said right inside it, ‘Don’t string this up with anything more than light gauge or it will collapse.’ They made them with really light bracing, and they were like cannons. I had one of those, and I gave it to Jeff Pevar, because it should be played! I often thought of giving a guitar to Michael Hedges, but he already had ones that were as good as anything I could give him." When it comes to amplification, Crosby is not afraid to install electronics in any of his guitars, including the vintage Martins. His primary consideration is playing a guitar that "thrills him" on record and in performance. [For the reunion tour with CSN&Y, however, he is using microphones as his primary amplification source (although he’ll probably set up a monitor feed via one or more of the pickups in the guitars he plays).] One of his Martin D-45s is set up with a Trance Audio transducer, and two others with Highlander under-saddle pickups combined with Sunrise soundhole pickups. "Between the really clean primary that you get off the Highlander and the overtones and stuff that you get off the Sunrise," says Crosby, "you get a pretty amazing guitar sound. "It’s a long search for the Holy Grail of the unbelievable acoustic performance guitar. The beloved and mighty and wise David Lindley is our great leader. And Jackson [Browne] is right on his heels. And Michael Hedges certainly was, and Neil [Young], with the help of Larry Cragg, who’s his guitar guy—an unbelievable guitar guy. But David and Jackson have been the banner bearers of this tribe of guys who are trying to make the ultimate acoustic performance guitar." —Simone Solondz Peter Finger currently records and performs with two Kevin Ryan Mission grand concert guitars (Kevin Ryan Guitars, 14211 Wiltshire St., Westminster, CA 92683; [800] 311-1527; www.guitarnotes.com/ryan). One is made of koa and spruce, the other (which he used to record Open Strings) of rosewood and cedar. "Kevin Ryan’s guitars are incredible," says Finger. "The neck is like it’s made for me." Finger likes to perform without amplification, but if necessary he uses a Fishman Blender system with an Acoustic Matrix pickup, a Crown mic, and a Fishman Rare Earth Humbucker. If he needs to bring his own amp, he relies on an AER Acousticube (AER, Christine-Englerth Str. 30, 45665 Recklinghausen, Germany; fax [49] 2361-891791; 100547.2451@compuserve.com), a product he endorses. For overseas tours, he sometimes brings his Lakewood signature model guitar (Lakewood Guitars, Zum Bahnhof 6a, 35394 Giessen, Germany; fax [49] 641-491398; www.lakewoodguitars.com). Lakewood is equipped with a Fishman Prefix On-board Blender system. "I like [the Fishman Prefix] because I can dial out problem frequencies that I get because of my picks," he explains. Finger’s arsenal also includes a guitar made by German luthier Knut Welch, a couple of Lowdens, and a six- and 12-string double-neck made by Roland Oetter, which Finger last used on Between the Lines. "I rarely play it now—only if I’m looking for new ideas," he says. "You can keep a chord ringing on one neck and improvise on the other or experiment with different capo positions. But the instrument is so heavy, it doesn’t sound very good acoustically." Earlier in his career, Finger built his own guitars, and he is looking forward to the day when he can find the time to do so again. "The first ten pretty much went straight to the fireplace, but after about 20, I made one that was really good, and I played it in concerts for a long time," he says. Finger strings his guitars with D’Addario phosphor-bronze strings with custom gauges matched to his tuning: .014, .018, .026, .032, .042, and .059. He uses a plastic thumbpick and metal fingerpicks, which he tapes on with surgical tape. Like other Acoustic Music Records albums that were recorded in his studio, Open Strings was recorded direct to hard disk on a PC using Soundscape software. Finger raves about his tube microphone that was handmade by Dirk Brauner, but he also has a collection of AKGs and Neumanns at his disposal. —Teja Gerken |
