JOHNNY JAZZ HOMELESS GUITARIST: January 2011

DAVID RAWLINGS after a GEORGE BENSON show!

David Rawlings achieves his signature guitar sound flatpicking a small archtop guitar. The 1935 Epiphone Olympic that has been his primary instrument was a mid-priced guitar for its time, with a carved arched solid sprucewood top, carved arched solid mahogany back and mahogany sides.[1] It sold for about $35 in 1935.[2] The guitars lower bout measures 13 5/8 inches wide, and it has three piece f-holes.[1]GILLIAN WELCH AND DAVID RAWLINGS

Gillian Welch’s main guitar is a ca. 1956 Gibson J-50 with a factory-installed adjustable bridge. "It’s pretty much just like a J-45," she says. "It’s blond, and it’s got a big ugly pickguard on it." A couple of years ago, she picked up a five-string Vega Senator banjo, which she’s specially modified "with a little bit of bubble wrap shoved under the head."

David Rawlings gets his signature, midrangey guitar sound from a 1935 Epiphone Olympic archtop with a carved top and plywood mahogany back and sides. He likens its sound to that of a resophonic guitar. "I bought it without a bridge," he says, "and had a one-piece mahogany bridge made for it. I think with a top this small it really behooves you to get as much stuff touching the top as you can, because the top doesn’t have that much flex to it." He says his guitar is unique in that every note on every string plays at the same volume. "It doesn’t have any dead spots or any high spots—which is very, very strange," he says. "It makes it fun to play lead, because you don’t have to worry where you’re at. It’s not much of a solo instrument, but I can’t really play by myself worth a darn, so it doesn’t make much of a difference."

Welch and Rawlings switched their stage amplification rig in 1996 from pickups and DIs to external microphones. Rawlings explains that the change has made setting up for shows easier, although they do need to be a bit more hands-on during setup than they used to be. "We carry Shure SM-58s and SM-57s," Welch says. "Fancy microphones can be very difficult. The one thing that’s nice about the Shures is that their quality control is low enough that they are all different. They’re like snowflakes. If we carry a complement of eight microphones, we can go into a hall and find the right one for the room and the system. We play the microphone game; we swap them out." "And it’s easy to control volume by changing the proximity to the mics," Rawlings adds.

—Simone Solondz

TAJ MAHAL

Taj Mahal has always loved guitars. "Any book that had a bunch of guitars in it, I could just look at them for days," he says. His first instrument was a Silvertone: "One of those Sears models with the round hole." In high school he made enough money to buy himself an Epiphone Texan. "That was the first guitar that I had around for a long, long, long time," he recalls.

Mahal got into resonator instruments early on with their "ringly, tingly sound." The brown National Duolian he used on his first records was a long-term loaner from a friend who was sent to prison. "He said that I deserved this instrument more than he did."

Today he confesses, "I don’t know how many guitars I have. It’s probably about time for me to count. I’d probably say about 25 or something like that. I’ve got a ’50s Gretsch Eldorado, a couple of Dobros (a signature Dobro that Dobro made for me), a really nice Guild 12-string that I love." He also owns three black McPhersons (McPherson Guitars, PO Box 537, Sparta, WI 54656; [608] 269-2728; fax [608] 269-3120) that have three soundholes: a small-body model "built like a 00-18," and a six-string and 12-string, both "built almost on the J-200 size." These instruments feature spruce tops and mahogany backs and sides.

As for string gauges, Mahal says, "Generally I use an .011 to a .047 or .012 to .052 on the bigger guitars, the necks and bodies that can hold it."