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Excerpted from Acoustic Guitar magazine, April 2000, No. 88. BEN HARPER | LUKA BLOOM | EDDIE AND MARTHA ADCOCK | ROBYN HITCHCOCK Ben Harper is a serious guitar fiend—so much so that every one of his albums includes a credit for A.G. contributor Ben Elder as "official researcher and advisor on Weissenborn and related instruments." In the lap department, Harper has a major collection of ’20s and ’30s hollow-neck Weissenborns. The instrument heard all over Welcome to the Cruel World and Fight for Your Mind is a koa style 4. But ultimately, his Hendrix-goes-Hawaiian experiments with feedback and distortion (using an Ibanez TS-808 Tube Screamer run through a Demeter amp and a 4x10 Marshall) led him to search for alternatives to the old guitars, especially for stage use. "In the studio, you can bring up the volume, but live, you don’t have that luxury," he says. "You need the immediate volume to get on top of your band. And way before I would get to 12 o’clock, the [Weissenborns] were just blowing up, basically. They were getting an uncontrollable, unusable feedback that was so loud. It was like a bucking bronco. They were made with hide glue, and the sheer volume was rattling the ribs loose. Plus I slap them around a little bit—that doesn’t help." Harper’s solution was to commission a new instrument from Bill Asher (Bill Asher’s Guitar Traditions, 1003 Broadway, Santa Monica, CA 90401; [310] 393-4420; fax [310] 393-7994; www.guitartraditions.com). A cross between a Weissenborn and a solid-body electric, Asher’s guitar is built with solid Honduras mahogany that is cut with eight hollow chambers and capped with koa. The Ben Harper model, now in limited production, has custom double-coil pickups wound by Tom Anderson (www.andersonguitars.com). Harper’s collection of Ashers includes several other pickup variations—one with two Seymour Duncan humbuckers, one with a Sunrise, and one with a humbucker and a Fernandes Sustainer. Harper also plays a custom hollow-body lap steel made by Maton (Maton Guitars, 9–11 Kelvin Rd., N. Bayswater, Victoria 3153, Australia; www.maton.com.au) that is equipped with a saddle pickup and an old Rickenbacker pickup—saddle for a clean acoustic-electric sound, the Rick for crunch (on the new song "Forgiven," he switches back and forth on verse and chorus). For pure fuzz, he’s been playing a Rickenbacker Electro. His slide of choice is a Scheerhorn (Tim Scheerhorn, 1454 52nd St., Kentwood, MI 49508; [616] 281-3927). As for round-neck guitars, Harper’s vintage favorites are a 1958 Martin 00-18 (used heavily on his first two albums), a ’40s Gibson LG-2, a ’50s Gibson J-160, and a Guild 12-string (the last two are heard on Burn to Shine). His current stage acoustic is a custom Maton ECW80, a maple-bodied herringbone dreadnought with a built-in AP5 pickup/preamp system that Harper says is "phenomenal." All these instruments are strung with D’Addario phosphor-bronze lights. The electrics heard on Burn to Shine include a ’50s Gibson Melody Maker, a ’57 Fender sunburst Strat, and a ’50s Gibson Les Paul Junior. Harper’s current stage show also includes a cameo by a Gibson EDS-1275 double-neck—originally a six/12 setup but now adapted with one six-string neck for slide and the other for standard playing. —Jeffery Pepper Rodgers "Some people are in love with electric guitars, some people are in love with acoustic guitars," says Luka Bloom. "Me, I adore electro-acoustic guitars—but there are very few that work for me." Bloom performs all of his gigs solo and travels with a pair of matching acoustic-electric Alvarez-Yairi DY88s (named Rudy and Judy) and a single amp: the Fender Bass Chorus. At home, he also plays an acoustic Lowden 32, an acoustic-electric Takamine cutaway classical, and an acoustic 1963 Gibson B-25. He strings all of his guitars with Martin Marquis lights and uses gray Jim Dunlop .60 mm flatpicks. On the road, Bloom likes to collect percussion instruments, especially rattles, drums, and bowls from Morocco and Algeria. But the most important musical purchase Bloom has made this year is a metronome, which he uses to steady himself before recording his rhythm tracks. "It’s all very well to have your timing all over the place when you’re on your own," he says. "But if you want to play with other musicians, it’s not much help if you’re playing in six different tempos over the course of one song." —Kenny Berkowitz Eddie Adcock’s main guitar is a Gibson Advanced Jumbo, a recent reissue that is no longer being built. "I love it," he says. "I still play my Martin D-35, my old Telecaster, and my Gitbo, but that’s mostly for fun jamming." Martha Adcock uses two 1985 Martin D-35s that she "picked out blindfolded." The Adcocks both prefer D’Addario phosphor-bronze medium-gauge strings, although Eddie sometimes substitutes lighter gauges on his first and second strings (.012 and .016). Eddie uses the same picks for both banjo and guitar: two metal Dunlop fingerpicks and "just a good hard plastic thumbpick." Martha uses D’Addario or Dunlop Tortex picks, .050–.061 mm. —Stephanie P. Ledgin If the progression that kicks off Jewels for Sophia has a familiar ring to it, it’s probably not the chords—it’s the guitar. Robyn Hitchcock has been hammering away on his old Fylde acoustic since 1984’s I Often Dream of Trains, and it shows. "It’s a bit battered now, but I still love it," attests Hitchcock, who used the guitar for the bulk of the Jewels rhythm tracks (alternating with a borrowed Martin D-28), even running through a distortion box for "You’ve Got a Sweet Mouth on You, Baby." Hitchcock also took advantage of engineer Ethan Johns’ vast collection of guitars, including a vintage Gretsch Tennessean (apparently the property of David Crosby during his Byrds tenure) for "Dark Princess." —Dave Simons |
