Gord's musical equipment

[garyh]

I'm curious to find out what Gord uses
for both a vocal mic as well as a guitar
mic and for what reasons. I'm sure he's
changed his preferences over the years as well.

[Bill]

In recent years he's made the consession of using a plug-in pick up on the guitars in addition to mixing in the mic. There are two articles...an old Frets magazine article, and a more recent Acoustic Guitar magazine issue in which these issues are discussed.

[mytoyota@earthlink.net]

Gary,
Subject: Guitars, guitars, guitars

Thought this would interest you:

Excerpted from Acoustic Guitar magazine, January 2000, No. 85.

Gordon Lightfoot

Gordon Lightfoot plays a pair of 12-string Gibson B-45-12s from the 1960s.
He
uses two of them on stage: one in standard tuning, the other capoed at the
third fret with the lowest pair of strings dropped to D. The instruments
appear on Lightfoot album covers stretching back to the '60s, although the
guitar seen on the Sundown cover was lost on the road many years ago. The
cover of Lightfoot's earliest LP, Lightfoot, shows a Martin D-28 that was
subsequently stolen. He acquired a later model D-28, which he keeps at home
along with an ornate custom Brazilian rosewood dreadnought (seen on the
cover
of Dream Street Rose) by Ed McGlincey (220 Delsea Dr., Westville, NJ 08093;
[856] 742-8604), who has retired from guitarmaking for health reasons. On
stage, he also plays a Martin D-18 from the '30s or '40s.

In the last decade or so, Lightfoot added pickups to his acoustic guitars, a
change from the mic-only stage setup he described in a 1985 Frets magazine
interview. His pickup of choice is a Fishman Acoustic Matrix II, which he
mixes with a Shure SM-57 microphone and feeds into a direct box and then
into
the mixing board and a Fender Twin Reverb amp he uses as a stage monitor.

Lightfoot's preferred flatpick is a Yamaha ("the older model you can't get
anymore") that's a little thinner than Terry Clements' D'Andrea medium, and
his capo is a Shubb Deluxe. He uses Ernie Ball Earthwood Bronze strings, but
substitutes a D'Addario .053 11th on the "straight" 12-string, "because
[Ernie Ball] doesn't make the odd .053." The other 12-string takes the same
configuration but with an .054 on the dropped 11th string. He also
substitutes a phosphor-bronze low G (fifth) on the 12-strings because "it
makes it easier to hear." For his Martin, "the medium-light Ernie Ball set
really gives a lot of snap," says Lightfoot. "I raised my gauges on the low
end a little bit, and I found that it helped."

Although he was at the Newport Folk Festival when Bob Dylan committed his
legendary plugged-in heresy, Lightfoot also keeps a couple of electrics: an
old Fender Telecaster ("My 17-year-old son learned to play guitar on that
one") and a Gibson SG seen on the back of the 1983 Salute album.

Terry Clements, Lightfoot's longtime lead guitarist, relies on two 1964
Martin D-18s and two Gretsch electrics (a 1964 Tennessean and a 1976 Country
Gentleman, the latter his primary stage ax) that have infused themselves
into
the Lightfoot sound. The Gretsches have a warm bass sound and sparkly treble
that work especially well with folk music, but with chorus and distortion
they can also sound the Edmund Fitzgerald klaxon/siren wail.

On stage, Clements uses a Roland JC-120 amplifier for the electric, and a
Fender Deluxe Reverb for the acoustic. He uses a Boss pedalboard for both
the
Martin (chorus and a Boss TU-12 tuner) and Gretsch (delay, chorus, fuzz,
tuner), and his Martins are fitted with Fishman Acoustic Matrix II pickups.

Like Lightfoot, Clements favors Ernie Ball strings. "They're great strings,"
he says. "In my many years, very few times have I ever come up with a lemon.
They hang right in there, too." He favors gauges .050, .040, .030, .022,
.015, and .010, very light for something like a Martin D-18, but, he says,
"I
have to use a lighter set because I do a lot of bends." Clements uses
nickel-wound electric strings on the Gretsches. "The Country Gentleman's
neck
is so long," he says, "that I can't use a .017 unwound. Instead I use a .020
wound, which is fairly heavy for an electric." His capo is a Hamilton, which
he describes as an "orthopedic device" compared to the sleek modern designs.

Clements has a 000-size McGlincey that is identical in appointments to
Lightfoot's dreadnought. He also keeps a Martin 0-18 strung in Nashville
tuning--with the bottom four strings an octave higher than standard--and a
couple of gut-string guitars in his studio, complemented on the electric
side
by a '60s Rickenbacker 360-12 (as played by Roger McGuinn), a '59
Stratocaster, a '79 Telecaster, a Fender bass, and a Gibson Les Paul.

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paperback dreams . . .

[Westernstar9]

In more recent interviews, using a capo seems to have fallen in disfavor with him even though he says "I guess I'm kind of stuck with it now". In an interview in the mid-70's he said "I have no qualms with capos". The first time I saw him in concert was in October, 1972. He played a Martin D-35 and a Martin D12-28S, as his regular gear had either been stolen or was being worked on. Personally, when I saw him on the cover of his first UA album, he was holding a D-28. I bought a D-28 because I didn't like the D-18. Mainly because I love an ebony fingerboard. It's so damn easy to play! I remember seeing him in 1983 with that Gibson electric, which from a distance resembled an SG model. Pete Townsend was the only one I ever saw that could do justice to an SG. But maybe that's for another column. I read many of the same interviews but beyond the guitars, I never paid much attention to his PA system.

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