Neko Case

Neko Case's "main love is definitely the tenor guitar." She still plays her first tenor, a vintage Gibson TG-O, but she wanted something with a deeper tone, so she commissioned a custom tenor with an Engelmann spruce top, Indian rosewood back and sides, and mother-of-pearl deer fretboard inlay from Don Windham (Haymaker Guitars, [602] 243-1179, haymaker72@hotmail.com). Both guitars are outfitted with B-Band pickups. Case also plays a circa 1959 Gretsch Tenor Jet electric and a 1958 Gibson Les Paul Special. Her main amp is a Vox Pacemaker that Jon Rauhouse says sounds like "jellied bread," but she also brings Garnet Revolution I and Revolution II amps into the studio. Case's standard tenor tuning is D G B E, but she also uses an Eb tuning and one with "lots of B's." She strings all her guitars with ".011s of whatever" and favors the "papery sound" of .60 mm. Dunlop picks.

—Nicole Solis

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Anouar Brahem

Anouar Brahem plays an uninscribed Egyptian oud purchased for him 30 years ago by his teacher, Ali Sriti. A few years ago, Sriti, also an oud maker, rebuilt the instrument and replaced the soundboard with one from an older oud. On his 2002 U.S. tour, Brahem used a Schoeps MK4 condenser mic to amplify his instrument.

—Danny Carnahan

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George Harrison

George Harrison loved guitars. As a man of modest means in the late '50s, he started small, procuring a Höfner President; a Höfner Club 40 hollow-body; and a 1958 Resonet Futurama, a Czech-made Stratocaster knockoff that, by Harrison's own estimation, "was a dog to play." In 1961, Harrison managed to scrape together the $75 asking price for his first Gretsch electric, a 6128 Duo Jet purchased from an American sailor on the docks in Liverpool.

As the Beatles' popularity grew, so did Harrison's guitar inventory. By 1964, he'd acquired a '62 Gretsch 6122 Chet Atkins Country Gentleman as well as a '63 Gretsch 6119 Chet Atkins Tennessean (which provided the characteristic country tones on "Baby's in Black," "I Don't Want to Spoil the Party," and many others).

At the same time, Harrison began his celebrated Rickenbacker collection with a 1962 "fireglo" 425 (purchased on a pre-Beatlemania visit to the States in the fall of 1963), followed by a "fireglo" 360/12 12-stringÐthe ax that put the phrase "jangly guitars" on the map. Perhaps the most notable guitar in the Harrison collection was "Rocky," a '61 Fender Stratocaster first deployed (at top volume) on 1965's "Nowhere Man" and later painted in Day-Glo to mark the arrival of psychedelia. The Strat eventually became Harrison's main go-to guitar (particularly for slide work), sticking around long enough to be included in Tom Petty's "I Won't Back Down" video (as played by guitarist Mike Campbell) several decades later.

Harrison favored acoustics made by Gibson, beginning with his 1962 Gibson J-160E and later adding a Gibson J-200, the jumbo model made famous by Don and Phil Everly.

—David Simons

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David Grier

For years, David Grier's signature acoustic guitar tone came from a treasured 1955 Martin D-18 given to him by his father, bluegrass banjo player Lamar Grier. But sadly "a neck reset ruined that guitar," says Grier. Today he tours, performs, and records with two modern guitars, one built for him by Marty Lanham of the Nashville Guitar Co. (www.nashguitar.com) and one made by Jim Merrill at Merrill Brothers Guitars (www.merrillbros.com). Both guitars have Brazilian rosewood backs and sides, tortoiseshell plastic binding and pickguards, and relatively thin neck profiles. "I don't like a neck that's as wide or as deep as some," Grier says. "My '55 had a thinner neck and it was great. When someone hands me a guitar with a thick neck, it's like trying to wrap your hand around a telephone pole and play." Like his '50s Martin, both guitars feature unscalloped bracing, a design decision that Grier says reduces the dreadnought guitar's tendency to sound boomy and bass-heavy over a microphone.

For stage amplification, Grier shies away from any sort of pickup system. He likes the sound of the large-diaphragm AKG C 3000 microphone so much that he bought one while on tour in Japan, but in most cases he doesn't specify any particular microphone, preferring to let the sound crew work with whatever they're comfortable using. Grier's pick of choice for many years was a rounded plastic triangle, but bassist Todd Phillips converted him to natural tortoiseshell picks when they started playing together, and Grier says it made a noticeable difference in his guitar tone. He uses D'Addario medium-gauge 80/20 strings on the Lanham and medium-gauge phosphor-bronze strings on his Merrill.

—David McCarty

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Tim Sparks

On At the Rebbe's Table, Tim Sparks used a custom Lakewood 12-fret cutaway auditorium guitar made with Indian rosewood back and sides and an Engelmann spruce top (see "Less Is More," August 2002). Sparks has recorded with a nylon-string requinto in the past, but his last several recordings have all featured steel-string guitars. "The thing I really like about the steel is the string bends," Sparks explains. "There's a lot of that in this music. It's a really nice expressive device you can only do on steel strings. I also like the contrast on the tracks with Marc Ribot playing nylon-string." On his previous CDs of Jewish music, Neshamah and Tanz, Sparks used a 1954 Martin 00-17. For live amplification, he uses a Sunrise magnetic pickup and a Highlander under-saddle pickup run through a stereo jack and into two house DIs. He strings his guitars with John Pearse "slightly light" (.011, .015, .022, .030, .040, .050) phosphor-bronze strings. In light of his classical training, Sparks plays with his fingernails, which he sometimes reinforces with glued-on artificial nails.

—Dylan Schorer