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Old 09-04-2010, 08:03 AM   #4
Jesse Joe
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Canada
Posts: 6,862
Default Re: Canadian Astronaut also a folk singer

"Larrivee Guitars" (Canadian Company from Vancouver BC.)

I believe Valdy plays a Larrivee, others include the late great Stan Rogers, Bruce Cockburn, aso...

http://www.notableguitars.com/Morgan.htm






Aside from Larrivée himself, the most important pioneer in Canadian guitar-building is Linda Manzer. Manzer worked with Larrivée from 1 974 to 1978, when she, like Laskin and Wren before her, went to Toronto. Since then, Manzer has demonstrated courage similar to Larrivée's in her willingness to experiment and break new ground.

Her most lauded accomplishment to date is a 42-string guitar built for the United States jazz musician, Pat Metheny. The instrument, appropriately dubbed "Pikasso," supports more than 450 kilograms of pressure from the strings, for which Manzer, like Larrivée before her, designed an entirely new bracing pattern. The guitar has three necks. Its layers of piano-like sounds and its unlimited tunings push even the most accomplished players into uncharted territory (Revkin, 66).


Canadian singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn, who has commissioned four
instruments from Manzer, says, "After I played this guitar from Linda, I got rid of all my other acoustics. I didn't need them anymore," and Pat Metheny says, "She has a very advanced sense of what makes an instrument in the broadest sense of the word. There is something more happening than just the wood and the strings and the bone" (Revkin, 66).


Manzer now makes several types of guitar, including arch-top jazz guitars and classical guitars. In addition to Metheny and Cockburn, she has made guitars for Gordon Lightfoot, Carlos Santana, and Canadian classical guitarist Liona Boyd (Miller 1992a).
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