| My Main Instruments etc. I often get asked about the instruments I playthe usual questions, who made them? how old are they?and so I thought I'd do up a 'guitar porn' page for the curious. |
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| 1962 Martin D28 aka My Favorite Martin I acquired this one in the early 1990's while living in Brooklyn, NY. Got a call one day from a fellow Brooklyn musician named Hank Bones saying he had a D28 for sale that was pretty beat up but sounded good. He was right on both counts: the thing was trashed, but also had the sound. I decided it was worth getting at the price he was asking, but was initially thinking of it more as an invest-ment than as my primary guitar. But a year or so later I was playing it some and did an earnest comparison with the '67 D28 that I'd been playing for yearsand had to admit that it had a certain something over my other guitar. Around that same time I also realized that I preferred the sound of light gauge strings. I'd been leery of using lights since, playing as hard as I do, I figured thatI'd get buzzing. But with the action on this guitar they seemed to work well and so I've been using lights ever since. (John Pearce or D'Addario phosphor bronze.) |
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| 1956 Martin D28 aka My Oldest Martin In keeping with our theme of cosmetic degradation, I present to you Old Mel. (Just came up with that; if BB King can have Lucille, then shoudln't I have at least one guitar with a name?). I acquired this one from a guy in New Hampshire when I was living in Boston. The price was right because the top was a mess but it sounded great. (Ironically the back is pristine.) This was my main guitar for a number of years, and the one that I played when I won the National Flatpicking Champion-ship in 1976. I can't recall why I stopped using it as my main guitar, but for the past two decades it has mostly been in an open dul-cimer tuning (with a second G-string in place of the B-string) that I like to play in sometimes. Recently I had it completely redone (neck reset, new bridgeplace, bridge and saddle, fretjob) because it needed the work and because I wanted to use it on a few things that I'm recording for my new CD. (It's currently in open D tuning, with a normal string set.) One setup note: if you look closely at the photos you can see that a shim has been added to the saddle on the low E string on both guitarsin order to move the saddle back to correct the sharp intonation I'd been getting on each of them. A not uncommon problem in my experience. |
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| 12/07 Update: a few months back I purchased Bryant #7 (1975) and have been using that as my main instrument. (I've also started playing my Rose #29 again around the house after a recent repair and it's sounding very good too.) 1980 Vern Bryant F5 #18 (Gibson reproduction) . Vern's a cool guy and really fast and reasonable repairman. Whenver I'd go over we'd pick a few tunes and he'd usually have one of the mandolins he'd made on the wall for playing. I tried a few and was impressedbut not knocked outuntil #18 appeared one day. (He'd been holding it for a guy who could not finally come up witht he money and decided it was time to realease it into free agency.) Glad he did; this mandolin has given me much pleasure. (People often ask "how can he put Gibson's name on itisn't that copyright infrignement?" Truth is for years there was a cottage industry of doing Gibson reproduction necks for tenor banjos toconvert them to 5-strings. And Gibson didn't mind as long as the maker didn't try and pass their stuff off as original. The label inside this mandolin, for instance, is Vern's own (cf below) and clearly not Gibson's. More recent- ly Gibson has gotten agressive about use of their name and almost all luthiers have stopped making reproductions like this one. (Vern's mandolins now say "The Bryant" on their headstocks.) |
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| 1975 Allison (Gibson reproduction).
I almost never carry a banjo when I perform solo or duo But I do. And whenever I'm fronting a band, there's always some banjer. |
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Accoutrements
CAPO FLATPICK FINGERPICKS |
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