Gearbox
December 1995
EQUIPMENT PICKS FROM JODY STECHER,
KATE BRISLIN, RORY
BLOCK, AND JACQUES STOTZEM
NEW GEAR
has played an 1860s Martin 1-21 for years. Recently he began playing another guitar, a reworked version of an instrument originally made by Peter Biffin and Greg Smallman of Australia. Stecher says, "I realized I had to retire my Martin from the road. The cracks would open up in weather changes, the tuning would go berserk. I made this new album with it, but it doesn't leave home anymore. I had this Australian guitar with a cedar top, two soundholes, and a carved back sitting in the closet. I thought, 'What if I get a standard Sitka spruce top on it and see?' Paul Hostetter [2550 Smith Grade, Santa Cruz, CA 95060] replaced the top, bridge, saddle, fingerboard, frets, and nut, and came up with a great-sounding instrument. "It's a very punchy, explosive guitar," he says. "I can string it heavier than I could the old Martin. It has more bass. Of course it doesn't have the fine, fine detail that a 140-year-old guitar has, but it's a fine instrument and any microphone seems to like it."
Stecher uses phosphor-bronze light-gauge strings on the Biffin-Smallman-Hostetter guitar, and on the Martin he uses a silk and bronze compound. He uses his fingers, white plastic thumbpicks, metal fingerpicks (the heaviest gauge), and a wide variety of flatpicks to attack the strings. "I'm always changing." he explains. "The heavier the pick, the stronger fundamental I can get. The thinner it is the more clarity I get. The same thing goes for strings. The heavier the string the more oomph I get. The thinner it is, the more ring I get. I'm always compromising, never satisfied. I use the pointed part of the picks about 25 percent of the time and the rounded part the other 75."
For banjo work, Stecher either plays the Reiter or a banjo with a Vega 12-inch pot, a goat-skin head, and a fretless five-string neck made by Paul Hostetter. Stecher strings this banjo very heavily and tunes it low. He explains, "The big pot gives it a roaring bass, and the goat-skin head gives it clarity because it's thinner than cowhide. The neck is a piece of rosewood that was originally going to be for a marimba key blank, so the neck itself is very resonant."
Stecher's mandolin was made by Stan Miller. He has three fiddles, two of which were made in America, the other in a German factory. Of the American-made fiddles, one has no signature and the other was made by "Doug." Their names are Old Brownie, Little Reddie, and the Yellow Screamer.
--Scott Nygaard
Kate Brislin's
guitar is a 1945 Gibson J-45 that she strings with a brass D'Addario Bluegrass set. She has two banjos, an S.S. Stewart Universal Favorite and a Bart Reiter Grand Concert model; on both instruments she uses nylon strings. "I love the sound of nylon. It's like I've found my niche. My ideas come out the way I want them to, finally," she says.
--Scott Nygaard
plays a customized Schoenberg Soloist acoustic guitar, designed by guitarist Eric Schoenberg and luthier T.J. Thompson in collaboration with Martin (Schoenberg Guitars, 38 Shore Dr., Concord, MA 01742). She uses Martin medium-gauge bronze-wound strings. "Not Marquis," she adds. "I purposely don't want the fancy ones; I want the utilitarian ones, the strong, heavy-duty, proletarian strings. They ring out nicely and last for a long time."
Block uses a Fishman Acoustic Matrix Hot pickup, mostly because she can't stand having a microphone in front of her guitar. "I bang into it with my hand," she says, laughing. "With the best intentions, microphones are put like a foot away from me and at a funny angle up above me and before you know it, clank, I'm right into it. Plus, it constrains me; I see it out of the corner of my eye and it distracts me."
--Elijah Wald
plays a Martin OM-21 and a Dana Bourgeois OM cutaway, which is currently his favorite guitar. "The OM shape with a spruce top and a rosewood body is the best sound, I feel, for my style," he says. He also occasionally plays a Taylor 712.
All of Stotzem's instruments are equipped with a Fishman Natural Matrix pickup and a Crown internal condenser microphone. He uses the Fishman Performer Pro acoustic amplifier. "I used the Blender for two years until Larry Fishman showed me the Performer Pro amplifier," he says. "Now I use only that. It is so easy to use: you just have the guitar, the amp, and a chord." Stotzem uses one or two amplifiers in performance, depending on the size of the room. To record Two Bridges, he ran the signals from his internal mike and Matrix pickup through the Performer Pro amplifier and into the console, and mixed them with the signal from an AKG condenser microphone placed in front of the guitar.
Stotzem uses Martin regular bronze, extra-light strings (.010–.047), plastic fingerpicks, and blue nylon Herco thumbpicks. "I like Gibson medium, plastic fingerpicks," he says, "but they are difficult to find in Belgium. It is very difficult to find any good fingerpicks here, so when I do find some, I always buy all that the shop has. I prefer a nylon thumbpick, because it doesn't become loose when your hand heats up." He never uses a capo.
--Dylan Schorer