The
New Melville TM Custom:
This is my second
guitar from Australian master luthier Chris Melville.
It arrived in October 2004 and will be my main touring
and recording guitar for the foreseeable future.
I met Christopher
in September 2000 in Brisbane, Australia. He had come
along to a concert of mine in the Brisbane Guitar
Centre and he brought with him two of his guitars.
One was a 000 size but very different to the Kelday
guitar I was playing. This guitar had 14 frets to
the neck join and a large quantity of beautiful inlay.
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The
inlay work was very impressive but likely to put the
guitar beyond most peoples reach as it is very labour
intensive and therefore very expensive. Chris told
me that it was really just the presentation model,
not for sale and hence he had gone to town with the
inlay. You can see the guitar in question on his website.
Both of my Melvilles
are 000 size (small body) and have wide fingerboards.
This guitar has Brazilian rosewood sides and 3-piece
back and a German spruce top. The binding is flamed
maple and the fingerboard is ebony. The guitar also
has a pearl nut! Chris tells me this is the optimum
material in terms of coefficient of friction- I just
think it looks fabulous.
The machine heads
are gold Gotoh 510s imported from Japan - the smoothest
I've ever come across.
This new Brazillian
guitar is one of the most amazing sounding instruments
I've ever had the good luck to get my hands on. It
has balance and clarity from the open the bottom string
(a low C in some of the tunings I use) all the way
to the highest frets on the top string. Played fingerstyle
it handles dynamics beautifully; I can go from the
gentlest ballad to really wail on a fast reel and
it goes with me. The sustain of this guitar, as well
as the custom string spacing, really lends itself
to my playing. The bass response is wonderful, the
highs are crisp and clear and the mids present and
correct. It handles a flatpick with ease too!
Chris Melville's neck design makes
this a joy to play. The slim profile eases the left
hand positioning and the soft cutaway gives total
access to the 20th fret. Construction throughout is,
as usual, flawless and the restrained ornamentation
just adds to the impression of class. |
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This was my main
machine from October 2001 till November 2004; a relatively
short lifespan for an instrument but given the amount
of playing and travelling it’s done over the
last three years it deserves a rest. However it’s
not for sale and Chris Melville’s not getting
it back!
It has cocobolo back
and sides, a German Spruce top, flamed maple bindings,
ebony fingerboard and a graphite nut. It has a very
distinguished ding on the front where the mayor of
Nashville bumped into me in the dressing room at the
Ryman Auditorium on his way out to the stage to present
a framed citation to Les Paul. The sharp corner of
that citation left its mark on my guitar!
You can hear this guitar on
the Men of Steel album- probably any session I did
between the above dates.
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This was my first
world class guitar and was my main instrument from
1993 late 2001. It was used on the three solo albums-
in fact it’s the only guitar on “Ceol
More”- and the album with Alasdair Fraser and
has travelled the world with me.
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Bill was the first luthier with
whom I established a working relationship- he has
now built three guitars for me. His attention to
detail and care for the wishes of his customers
was a revelation to someone used to picking a guitar
of the wall in a store.
As well as being one of the finest
builders of classical guitars in the UK, Bill, increasingly
now, is in demand for his steel-string acoustics.
These are mainly what C F Martin would call 00 size
- small-bodied guitars where the neck joins at the
twelfth rather than the fourteenth fret, though
he has also produced some stunning OM size instruments.
Each guitar is unique and is built exactly to the
customer’s requirements and specifications.
Have a look at his website
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My instrument has highly figured cocobolo sides and
(bookmatched) back, a European spruce top, a Brazilian
rosewood fingerboard and a mahogany neck. It also
has a wider than normal fingerboard, which suits my
hands, and a lovely old-fashioned slotted headstock,
which doesn't! Bill also does some tasteful inlay
work specific to each guitar - mine has a mother-of-pearl
and engraved copper head, though on his guitars these
days it's mostly our beloved Scottish thistle.
It has been
played and admired by many of my favourite guitarists
- John Renbourn (Bill also does maintenance for John's
Franklin guitar), Martin Simpson, Isaac Guillory,
Tony Cuffe, Pierre Bensusan, Stefan Grossman, Archie
Fisher, Dick Gaughan, Steve Cooney, Duck Baker, Arty
McGlynn, Soig Siberil ... and Billy Connolly, who
declared it "a thing of great beauty" (we
were both at a Duck Baker gig in Glasgow). |
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In 1996 Bill Kelday
made me a Baritone Guitar. It has a longer than average
scale length at 720mm and again a wide fingerboard.
It has a spruce top, Brazilian rosewood back and sides
and an ebony fingerboard. It was designed to play
roughly a fifth below standard and I've had it tuned
to GDGCEA which is essentially drop-D tuning taken
down to G, also GDGCDG which is a lot harder to say
than DADGAD, though the intervals are the same. I've
also tried FCFCFG which is the "de profundis"
version of Cadd9 or CGCGCD.
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The guitar made
its recording debut on Kate Rusby's Hourglass album,
on her version of As I Roved Out and it doesn't
seem to present any major difficulties in the studio,
despite the very different frequencies it produces.
It has also been used on the Linn Records series
of The Complete Songs of Robert Burns and the solo
CD of Ossian singer Billy Ross.
You can hear it on A Tune for Frankie on the second
solo CD and on recent albums by Gordon Duncan and
Cathy Ann MacPhee.
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The
whole essence of this guitar encourages a very measured
approach to playing. If you go too fast for it, you
will lose the melody in an avalanche of low end noise,
but if you take time to learn its responses you can
really wail on it. The strings are not for the faint-hearted!
I use the D’Addario EXPs on this guitar. They
make a set specifically for this type of guitar- EXP23
(they seem to make strings for just about anything-
including ouds!). The gauges are .016 to .070- lighter
that the gauges I had been using on this guitar but
it still manages to get to all the tunings I need. |
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Bill recently made
me a guitar at the opposite end of the spectrum to
the baritone. The terz was originally a small classical
guitar tuned a minor third higher than normal. Bill’s
guitar is a steel string version of that. Its tone
is clear and bright and quite different to that of
a normal guitar capoed at the third. It is also very
loud for its size!
This guitar has a
spruce top and Canadian Birdseye Maple back (3 piece)
and sides and a Brazilian rosewood fingerboard and
headstock overlay. Bill changed his usual inlay from
a thistle to a maple leaf just for this guitar (made
as I was moving to Canada) and used a very distinctive,
multi- coloured binding throughout. It also has a
beautiful old fashioned Martin style “pyramid”
bridge.
It is strung
with D’Addario Super Light bronze strings (.009
to .045) which, when tuned up, sound as strong as
the medium gauge strings I normally use.
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John Slobod is a
young luthier who divides his time between working
for Dana Bourgeois in Lewiston Maine and building
his own guitars under the Circa name. These are vintage
style instruments and are individually made to the
highest standard and only available through his website.
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My
guitar is a 28 style dreadnaught with cocobolo
back and sides and a red spruce top (which
is not the least bit red!). I’ve been
around lots of incredible flatpickers in the
last few years- mainly through teaching at
Steve Kaufman’s Kamps and wanted a guitar
specifically for that style of playing. I
feel incredibly lucky to have this guitar
and feel sure that John’s instruments
are going to be much better known in a couple
of years. My “Men of Steel” colleagues
Dan Crary and Beppe Gambetta were both blown
away by this guitar and I recently heard that
my buddy Mark Cosgrove (a national flatpicking
champion) is now playing one of John’s
instruments. |
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Mermer Sage
Based in Sebastian, Florida,
Rich Mermer is one of the great luthiers who exhibit
at the Chet Atkins festival in Nashville. Over the
last five years he's become a good friend whise
work I admire enormously. His guitars often feature
offset soundholes, beautiful turquoise inlay and
Koa either as the top wood or as binding. He makes
some wicked instruments designed for slide playing
and his Weissenborn style lap guitars are really
sought after. The 'Sage' is Rich's contemporary
design for nylon strings. Here's his description.
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The
bracing pattern features a modified Torres pattern,
with a flying buttress brace below the soundhole.
This modification allows the outer tone bars
to pass into the upper bought, thus enhancing
the transmission of vibrations into the upper
bought. The result, a more dynamic instrument.
This particular instrument features a master
grade cedar top; Brazilian rosewood back and
sides; mahogany neck with two graphite support
rods; ebony fingerboard and bridge; turquoise
rosette and tie block; 'monitor' hole on the
bass side of the upper bought (for improved
projection towards the 'player'); and high gloss
nitro-cellulose lacquer finish. |
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Fylde Magician Custom:
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In
January of 2000 I took delivery of an instrument from
Fylde Guitars. I've admired the work of Fylde luthier
Roger Bucknall for many years - in fact since I heard
Gordon Giltrap back in the 70's. More recently, Archie
Fisher has been playing these fine guitars all over
the world, when not too busy broadcasting for BBC
Scotland. Nic Jones, who is a major influence on many
of today’s traditional singers, is also a Fylde
user.
After a flurry of emails last year between Roger Bucknall
and Simon Wallace at Fylde and myself we settled on
a customised Magician with, no surprises here, a wider
than standard fingerboard. The body is large and the
cutaway gives access to the dusty end! The top is
cedar, as are many of the company's guitars, and the
sides and three-piece back are walnut. Bridge and
fingerboard are ebony.
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One slightly unusual feature of Fylde instruments
is the use of a "zero fret", right after
the nut in the strings path. This helps with intonation.
The guitar has been fitted with a Headway saddle pickup
which drew a great response from the sound engineer
when I gave it a live test-drive (see Fylde's website
for more details). It has a very bright, warm sound,
which is already improving, and feels really comfortable
to play - it even has a strap button so I can play,
believe it or not, standing up!
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Avalon is the successor
company to the Lowden Guitar Company. The relationship
between Irish luthier George Lowden and the company
bearing his name is a complex one. His guitars have
a great reputation and have been hugely popular in
Europe particularly in the traditional and acoustic
music scene- as played by Pierre Bensusan (though
he now plays a Kevin Ryan guitar), Soïg Sibéril,
Paul Brady and Richard Thompson.
For a time they were made in Japan but after a few
years the company moved back to Ireland and George’s
involvement decreased.
When I first met
George, at the Derry Guitar Festival, he was mainly
making classical guitars at his own workshop while
the factory produced “Lowden” guitars
nominally under his supervision. The situation four
years later seems to be that most of the folks at
Avalon are former Lowden employees and George Lowden
is now making Lowden guitars at a different factory.
Steve McIlwraith
was for many years in charge of production at Lowden
and is now the CEO at Avalon. I met him at the Ards
Guitar Festival and we talked about the new nylon
string guitars they were making at Avalon. It duly
arrived at the start of 2004 and I’ve been playing
it at home ever since. I’m looking forward to
trying it out in the studio or in an appropriate live
situation.
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Larrivée
L-10-12
Every home
should have a 12 string!
I bought a Larrivee on my first trip to Canada back
in early 1995 from Rufus Guitars in Alma, Vancouver-
a great store! It was a great guitar- very plain and
simple, and can be heard on the two slow airs on my
first album. At some stage it developed a mystery
illness and Larrivée agreed to replace it.
At this stage I didn’t really need another six
string guitar (but then again, is it about “need”?)
so I asked if they would replace with the equivalent
12 string. They went one better and sent the deluxe
rosewood version.
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