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STUCIRE
Aloha
1 Posts |
 Posted - 11/29/2003 : 10:58:49 AM
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I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW WHAT KIND OF GUITAR RAY KANE USES,STRINGS?STRINGS GAUGES.OR SOMEONE LIKE MARKHANSON OR YOUR OWN SETUP.THANKS
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Admin
Pupule
USA
4551 Posts |
Posted - 11/29/2003 : 3:31:10 PM
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Uncle Ray plays a Lowden dreadnought. I do not know the specific model. Strings? I kind of remember that he plays GHS but I'm not sure on that. |
Andy |
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waveriderjon
Aloha
USA
20 Posts |
Posted - 11/30/2003 : 12:39:48 PM
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I use a Seagull guitar. It's made in Canada, has mahogony back and sides and a solid mahogony top. It rings like a bell,and more knowlegable people than me, who own Gryphon Music in Palo Alto, have told me mahogony is a popular choice of many fingerpicking stylists. The strings I use are D'Adderio lights(high e-11) only because I get them free from my brother-in-law but I like them fine...my brother-in-law too If I could have any guitar of my choice, though, I'd get a Santa Cruz Guitar Co. all mahogony with a round bottom instead of a dreadnaught.
Aloha and welcome to Taro patch
Jon the waverider |
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Russell Letson
`Olu`olu
USA
504 Posts |
Posted - 11/30/2003 : 3:30:54 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by Admin
Uncle Ray plays a Lowden dreadnought.
To be precise, Uncle Ray's Lowden is a jumbo--looks like an O-25, cedar over rosewood (Brazilian, I think). (See the O-25 photo on the Lowdenguitars.com site for one of its siblings.) If I recall correctly, he bought it with the proceeds from his National Endowment award, and he says it's "da best!" I think before that he played a dread, probably a Martin--I blush to admit that even though I saw him play back in '87 or '89, I can't recall the details of his gear. (I do recall Elodia's singing, though.)
My own setup (as if anyone in his right mind would want to emulate me): Just for slack key, I put medium phosphor bronzes (GHS or Pearse or D'Addario, 56-13) on my Guild D-40. And if I'm going to do a George Kahumoku workshop, I might even go to heavies, since I wind up tuned down to C to match George's 12-string. Even for normal concert-pitch playing, I sometimes bump the low E up to a 58, in case I want to drop down to a C tuning and not have the low string flab out.
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Edited by - Russell Letson on 11/30/2003 3:39:47 PM |
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cpatch
Ahonui
USA
2187 Posts |
Posted - 12/01/2003 : 02:22:43 AM
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Aunty Elodia told me that at one time George Winston gave Uncle Ray a really nice Martin, but at the time Ray was really sick and afraid he wasn't going to live much longer. He had Elodia sell it to pay for funeral costs.
On a happier note, in one of Ray's videos he mentions that it is, in fact, a Lowden that he plays with a Brazilian rosewood back ("the best there is!"). Says it cost him around $5,000 IIRC. The funny thing is he uses a relatively inexpensive magnetic pickup but man do I love the sound it gives him! |
Craig
My goal is to be able to play as well as people think I can. |
Edited by - cpatch on 12/01/2003 11:08:15 AM |
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Stringbreaker
Akahai
USA
62 Posts |
Posted - 12/01/2003 : 5:05:34 PM
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| I use a custom made guitar by John Mello ( www.johnfmello.com )(Think classical style w/ short scale neck, Rosewood w/ cedar top) with GHS Silk and Bronze light, but with the top 2 strings thickened up from .014 to .016 and .010 to .012 which settles it down nicely. I also use the identical string setup on a mutilated (ahem, adapted)Washburn ladies parlour guitar from 1897. This particular instrument has a walnut plate on the inside to strengthen it (orig. made for nylon strings but sounded awful) and the saddle angled for good intonation. It is a cannon with a neck as narrow as most electric guitars. Best ever for sofa playing. The guages for Silk and Bronze lights are .049, .039, .029, .023 and my substituted .016 and .012 and it slacks well from -4 to +2 without complaining. Occasionaly I can push it w/o buzzing but then again, there's a reason I call myself stringbreaker ;0) |
Crazy Man Tuning |
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David
Akahai
92 Posts |
Posted - 12/03/2003 : 6:39:53 PM
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I recently found information relating to strings which validated suspicions I've had. Apparently in the US we are all probably playing on music wire manufactured by the same singular company, Mapes Wire Company.
This information was discovered on a 5 string banjo site ... another other musical passion. The banjo does employ four unwrapped round core strings and only one wrapped (sometimes with a hex core), so the wrapping process is less important than with guitar. I do know that the number of companies actually wrapping strings is limited, and the wrapped strings are sold to various companies for packaging, hype and marketing magic. I'll try find out who has wrapping capability, other than GHS and D'Addario. Perhaps someone in the Taropatch ohana knows.
Here's some of the conversation I'm referring to:
"Okay folks this is from the horses mouth, so to speak. I had a nice conversation with Tammy At Mapes Wire Co. & here's what she told me about music wire, or mandolin wire as they call it in the industry. As I said before, they make the wire for the string suppliers, I.E., Gibson, Martin, GHS, D'Addario, Black Diamond,etc. We will only talk about banjo strings here cause as will become obvious, Guitar strings are a different ball game.
Lets take the sizes I use, .010, .012, .014,.024, .010. First, they take a piece of round bar stock of, say 1" in dia. & run it thru a series of smaller & smaller dies untill it gets to the desired diameter of, say .010 with a tolarence of plus or minus .0002. They run off thousands of feet of this onto spools & put it in a warehouse. When GHS calls in for that size, the go to the warehouse & pick up a spool & send it to them. When Black Diamond calls in for that size, they go to the warehouse & pick up a spool & send it to them.The point is, there is no special mix of metals for each company, they ALL use the same stock. So you could mix & match strings from all the co's. Mapes makes strings for & it wouldn't make a bit of difference.
Now we are talking about what they call plain or core wire here. Mapes also makes the wrap wire for the wound strings, or in our case, the fourth string. It is made out of several different metals. So, the GHs fourth .024 string that I use could consist of, say a core wire of .010 with a wrap wire of say, .014 thousands to make a wrapped fourth string of .024 thousands. D'addario could use a core wire of .014thousands & a wrapwire of .010 thousands to get a .024 thousands fourth. They both might use bronze wrap wire, but cause of the different wire configuration, they might sound totally different. Also Mapes does not wrap the strings, but sends the core wire & the wrap wire out seperately to it's customers & they do the wrapping, cutting to length, looping, & adding the "caterpillar",at least
some still use.
So, except for the fourth, I guess we are not using Gibson, GHS, Black Diamond, D'adderio, Etc. We are using Mapes strings <G>. Except for me. I'm still using core, or mandolin, or piano wire off rolls I bought way back in the early Eightys from a company in Germany, Schaff Piano Supply. Oh yeah, Tammy also told me the Schaff family of Germany, since last year, now owns Mapes, so I guess we are all using Schaff strings, go figure."
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cpatch
Ahonui
USA
2187 Posts |
Posted - 12/03/2003 : 7:21:12 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by Stringbreaker
Best ever for sofa playing.
My favorite kind of playing! |
Craig
My goal is to be able to play as well as people think I can. |
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Reid
Ha`aha`a
Andorra
1526 Posts |
Posted - 12/04/2003 : 09:22:06 AM
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David,
According to the rmmga posts of John Pearse, his manufacturing facility draws the core wire and wrap wire and wraps the strings that they make. He is very proud of the research, development and manufacturing processes he devised. There was one short period, when he was undergoing cancer treatment, when D'addario did the work for him - that led to the urban legend that D'addario makes Pearse's strings. And urban legends die hard (like the fact that my Avanti was made in Canada - I could not convince some yo-yo at an auto parts store that it was untrue, even after I showed him the build plate that stated South Bend :-)
I would also query the string companies if I were truly interested (but I am not, really :-)Anyway, one data additional data point to add to yours.
...Reid |
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Curtis Takahashi
Akahai
USA
62 Posts |
Posted - 12/04/2003 : 6:47:49 PM
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Aloha All,
I play on 2 guitars that quite truthfully, I got for free. One is a Japanese made Granada that I have set up with D'Addario classical strings (but I'm thinking of trying out the Aquila Alchemy Nylgut set, as I have had good results with their 'ukulele strings). The other is a big baby taylor with light guage elixer strings. Seems to work well but I only play at home. For gigs, I use my Graziano tenor uke or Graziano Tenor guitar with regular DGBE tuning with light guage elixers.
Just my 2 centavos worth,
Curtis |
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