Early Guitars

Over the years I have gigged and recorded with a fair number of guitars, most of which I thought were the best in the world at the time. Much as you cherish and try to look after them though; things happen - they get stolen, damaged or simply worn out and eventually have to be replaced. Those that do survive are hard to part with and usually wind up hanging on the wall.

My first recordings were made using an English dance band guitar - a Scarth, - something of an oddity with maple back and sides, arched top, round soundhole and tailpiece. It came my way for a fiver (£5) in the back streets of Guildford in the early sixties. With frequent adjustments and running repairs it played nicely in the main and lasted up until 'Another Monday'. That one earned its keep on 'John Renbourn', two albums with Dorris Henderson as well as the first tracks with Bert Jansch.

How well a guitar plays depends a lot on the way it is set up - the adjustments to saddle, nut, string spacing and so on. It takes an experienced eye to spot the potential in a used instrument, but there are plenty of pretty nice guitars out there that only need a bit of work to put them into good playing order - a point worth considering before popping off to Harrods. Repairs are always best left to a qualified luthier. Not that we all listen to our own advice!
In the mid sixties my guitar idol was Davey Graham. Davey had an LP out called 'The Guitar Player' and he was holding a Gibson on the cover. I heard through the grapevine that an American serviceman on an airbase had one for sale and I had to have it. It was a J-50, nearly the same as Davey's and that was it for the old Scarth - musical considerations overruled by blind fanaticism. I found out later that Davey wasn't playing his by choice, he had owned a very nice Martin, gone to a party and come away with the Gibson, possibly without realising it! However, for me, it was a transformation. From 'Another Monday' right through into Pentangle it did the job - both acoustic and amplified.

In those days the choice of pickups was DeArmond or DeArmond - magnetic, metal bar pickups that clamped tenaciously across the soundhole. The old DeArmonds spawned an industry founded on the concept that anybody could improve on that. When they became passe they became very passe - only to become highly sought after again for their unique old metal bar sound!

Trying to turn an acoustic guitar into an electric guitar only works in a limited way - feedback is the main problem, but it is possible to get a good and rather individual sound. When Pentangle started to play in bigger venues the DeArmond set-up proved to be impracticable and I began using a semi-acoustic Gibson 335 - one of the old dot necks. It was a very nice guitar, good for fingerstyle as well as lead lines. At the height of Pentangle's popularity, someone in the management had the idea of billing us as an 'all acoustic ' band. Why? I don't know, since I was using the same type of guitar that Freddie King was renowned for. The 335 began making appearances on my own recordings, mainly for overdubs but also solo for a Bach Saraband on 'The Lady and the Unicorn'.

The J-50 has lasted well, only one major repair as I recall. The back was smashed, courtesy of an airline - guitars into Airlines do not go as I have learned (to my cost) over the years! A friend of mine, James Flynn of the Flynn Brothers, has it at the moment and I heard it in action at the Troubadour in London recently and it still sounds good.
The 335 had a relatively short run. It was stolen out of the equipment van in Liverpool - a dependable place for getting separated from your gear in the late sixties. I was sickened , but bucked up enough to look for another - of course, by then, dot neck Gibsons had become 'vintage' collectibles and that was that.

The J-50 was my main guitar on the solo Transatlantic records up to 'The Hermit', by which time it was ready for a re-fret and a rest. The recording studio can be a cruel judge of things that go unnoticed on the road.

I picked up a Guild D-55 which I liked very much. It was already played-in, (another point in favour of a used instrument), which meant that I didn't have to wait to hear how it was going to open up. A few modifications took place, like taking the varnish off the table and slimming the neck down slightly to play along the length of the fingerboard easily and that was it. I used the Guild on 'The Black Balloon' and for touring and recording with Stefan Grossman.
Later Guitars
When I was working with Stefan Grossman, playing the Guild, which by that stage was showing signs of road fatigue, Stefan discovered a guitar maker named Nick Kukich whose workmanship really impressed him. Stefan is the most discerning guy I know when it comes to guitars and he certainly liked Nick's instruments. The story that I heard was that Nick started out in Chicago and based his designs on old Martins that he had worked on. He started the Franklin company as a one man concern.

The model I have is called a Franklin OM after the Martin OM or orchestra model - the first guitar, I believe, with 14 frets to the body rather than 12. The back and sides are Brazilian rosewood and the top is spruce. The neck is a little wider than standard for a steel string - but not as wide as a classical - which I find helps with the fingering, particularly around the lower frets.

From the point of view of workmanship, Nick's guitars must have something really special - other makers have picked it up, full of the joys of Spring, only to lower it slowly down in brooding silence! From my point of view, I love the overall balance. It is not loud but it projects well due to its clarity. The sound is rather dark, but you can play all over the fingerboard and the response is clean and even. A lot of music I like revolves around the interplay of the parts - lines that need to be distinct. A simple keyboard piece, for example, can involve a lot of shifts on the guitar. Overall response is what is needed and the Franklin OM has that!

The old Franklin has really suffered at the hands, or more likely the fork lift truck prongs of airline freight handlers, over the years. Quite a while back the lower bout and table were totally smashed, which meant a new top and bridge. The neck has had to be rebuilt, the fingerboard refretted and recently, on a trip to Alaska, the headstock was sheared off.

So gradually, section by section, practically the whole instrument has been replaced. All that is left of the original is the back and the fingerboard - but it still sounds and plays wonderfully. The headstock is being reset at the moment in London by Tom Mates, who does fine work. Tom has, no doubt, got more repair work than he can stand and he makes beautiful guitars as well.

Close to the Franklin in design, but quite different in character is another OM, made by Ralph Bown of York (UK). Also made with a rosewood back and sides and spruce top, Ralph made this one for me in 1985, and again the string spacing is wider than standard. The sound is bright with a quick response. It 'speaks well' as the expression goes - although not always of me! Ralph's OM has done it's share of recording and travelling too. It makes an appearance on the cover of 'Keeper of the Vine' the recent Shanachie compilation of tracks with Stefan Grossman. There isn't really very much in it between the two OM's - one is dark and the other is bright and for recording 'overall balance' has it. A new book 'Custom Guitars a Complete Guide' published by Stringletter Press contains some examples of Ralph's work.
Pickups and Strings
Stefan and I tried out various types of pickups for stage work mostly the undersaddle or contact sort, like Barcus Berry's. Nowadays the choice is wider but all, in my experience, need a certain amount of  equalisation- that is the external adjustment of 'out front' sound. They are rarely evenly balanced in volume across all the strings and are certainly not feedback proof. Most players were obliged to use something of this sort throughout the seventies, so it became a bit of an occupational hazard. Pickups that claim to faithfully reproduce an instruments sound characteristics need careful consideration. Often, not only do they amplify the musical qualities, but the unmusical ones as well - string squeaks, fret buzz, extraneous percussive effects and all the rest. You are usually better off with a pickup that sounds good in its own way, and magnetic pickups still seem to be the best option. A magnetic pickup blended with an internal or external microphone being optimum.

One of the best in recent years has been the Sunrise, a fairly hefty soundhole pickup which can be wired in permanently - although, to me, it seems preferable to be able to unclog my instrument when  I am not touring. The individual magnetic poles under each string are adjustable for a good overall balance - an essential point that can drive you to distraction with the under -saddle contact  types. For quite a while, I used a Sunrise in combination with nickel strings - which sounded cleaner to me. In fact, I preferred the sound of nickel to bronze, acoustically, as they seemed to have  a little more definition. The bronze may have been a bit louder, but they were also a bit 'boomier' and the nickel certainly gained in balance and clarity in the bass higher up the fingerboard. The Sunrise is still a good bet and a lot of professional players use it.

Another nice pickup of a similar type but less bulky, and to my ears rather more sensitive, is one developed by Mike Vanden in Scotland. Mike originally called them Mimesis, but has since passed the distribution on to the Fishman company who have re-christened them Rare Earth. There are now several models available, including a basic single bar  and  a combined pickup and internal microphone. Fishman are producing them using good components at a competitive price.
The Mimesis/Rare Earth pickups are specifically designed for use with  bronze strings which means that I have had to revert to these. The nickel strings that I used for years were a custom set of D'Addario round wounds which were really consistent, tightly wound and smooth under the fingers - good strings! I guess that the D'Addario family have been leading the field for at least three generations and they produce an exceptional range.

In my search for the  clearest set of bronze strings, I tried some old Rotosounds in black and red packets that I had somehow managed to hang on to for years. They sounded really good, bright and well balanced but with a rich tone. The company were amused to hear that anybody should still have strings going so far back but assured me that, several packet designs later, their new strings were still the same quality. Rotosound bass strings have a high profile world-wide which may have overshadowed  their guitar strings. James How, who founded the company in the fifties, engineered a new type of string-winding machine that was a step ahead of the industry and all the strings are produced to the same degree of precision.

In addition to the phospher-bronze  round wounds, Rotosound also make guitar strings in the piano string design. That is with the wrap wire stopping short of the ball end so that a section of the core wire is exposed and only the core wire comes into contact with the saddle. These strings are called  'Country Gold'. It is actually an old idea and I  have a feeling that the very first steel strings used on the guitar in the 1800's were like that. The gauges for both types of string are 060 to 018 covered, and 026 to 008 plain.
Pre-Amps and Cases
If you are going to be playing on stage a lot, it is an idea to have a measure of control over the sound that is going out and maybe the monitor sound as well. It may not endear you to the soundman but you will need it anyway. There are a number of useful little pre-amps available, to adjust the sound of the pickup and boost the signal to the board. I like the L.R. Baggs Para Acoustic D. I. Box which has an exceptional tonal range plus a sweep to notch out offending frequencies.

Of course, you can buy an acoustic guitar with a fair amount of this equipment built-in - but that means having to live with an instrument with an assortment of wires, batteries and ironmongery inside when you are not on stage. I prefer keeping the two separate and I like to travel with as little as I can get away with. That is one guitar, two Mimesis/Rare Earth pickups - a single bar and a dual/mic (for a spare) - and the Baggs box. Increasingly, players are carrying their own instrument mics, which is a good move, as specialist, quality acoustic guitar mics are unlikely to be included in the average soundman's kit. I have not got to that stage yet. I am content to work with a fair amount of pickup with a touch of external microphone added to brighten up the top-end. In fact, I like the mic on its own to sound cheap and trebly which can usually be achieved. Live sound and studio recordings are not the same, except in rare instances, two quite different approaches are required and it makes life easier to keep it that way.

As for guitar cases, all things being considered, I should really be taking advice on that subject rather than giving it out! What is needed is something that is airline proof but also portable. ( A lightweight bank vault containing the Holy Grail, perhaps) Purpose built metal framed flight cases with acres of foam padding are recommended for air travel. They may possibly withstand rough treatment, but not the extremes of temperature and they are hopeless to lug around.

Strong cases which are still relatively light and have been around for a while with a proven track record are those designed by Keith Calton. Keith's cases have a hard fibreglass shell, thick internal padding cut to fit the instrument and a raised support to cradle the headstock , which is the most vulnerable spot when a case is dropped . As part of the service, I believe that Calton will overhaul an old case when needed. Come to think of it I have had a number of Keith's cases badly mangled but with no damage to the instrument inside.

After years of being worn down by the airlines, I got so sick of opening my guitar case only to find a prized instrument reduced to a mass of jagged fragments that I went out and bought myself a touring guitar, fully equipped with built in pickup and onboard controls. The more I played it the less I liked it. Needless to say that one has remained - so far - totally and utterly unscathed.