21/01/2010

Artist Guitar Blog #1: Mat Martin & Kirsty McGee - Part 2

Mat Martin & Kirsty McGee are guitar nuts, as many of you are, and here we give them ample room to wax lyrical about their personal loves when it comes to four-strings (and six: see part one)

... on 4-string guitars

Mat also plays a tenor guitar, probably more than the 6-string now. He first saw and heard one being played by Portland, OR based songwriter Myshkin, whose characteristic dark sound was perfectly accompanied by her 1920s all mahogany Martin model. They were popularised much later by more famous musicians, and now everyone's got them, but it was back before then that Mat got the bug for these things.

He had a Martin for a short while, won by a friend on his behalf in a fraught eBay war. It was fine, of course (it must have been; Seth Lakeman bought it off us in the end), but it somehow wasn't right. He's been playing a Don Franklin tenor now for a good few years and although it perhaps doesn't fit the purist's definition of a tenor guitar it is just perfect.

Don's tenor guitars (of which only a handful exist) are based on the old Robert Johnston style Gibson body shape, and have a much more solid construction than the classic Martins and Gibsons from back in the instrument's heyday. Mat's is made of Wenge (a very dense and brittle hardwood with a fantastic capacity to reflect sound) and Engelman Spruce, with a Mahogany neck and details in Bird's-eye Maple. It's a very simple instrument to look at (neither of us are into ornate guitars), but it has quite a story...

It's quite well documented that Kirsty built a few instruments early in her career. In fact the 00 model guitar she made was used by us on the road for several years. Her interest was in making instruments out of sustainable timbers, to highlight the issue surrounding tropical hardwoods and conservation. Her guitar was made of Walnut, Spruce, and Holly, rather than woods such as Mahogany and Ebony. Don's approach to the same problem when building Mat's tenor guitar was a little different. The tenor is built (as much as possible) of re-claimed timbers, which used to be other things. As follows:

Back & Sides: Wenge, from an old piece of furniture found in a factory in Hyde, Cheshire.

Neck: Mahogany, an ex pub handrail from (we believe) the North East.

Detailing: Birds-eye Maple, from the boards of a Memphis, TN dance floor.

The perennial post-show question about the tenor is about tuning. We tune Mat's in a variety of ways - his approach to open tunings is developed on a need-to-play basis. Tune the instrument to the song, not the other way around. Variants on GDAD, ADAD, ADAE are the most common for us. Again, Mat favours heavy strings (.013, .024, .034, .044). which the vintage models just wouldn't cope with. The Franklin is slightly bigger, has more depth, and is ideal for these gauges and tunings. There's something about the sound of that guitar that enchants everyone but no-one can describe. The Spanish call it duende.

Whenever we go to visit Alister Atkin in Kent, he makes us dig the Franklin out of the car so he can look at it. I'm looking forward to the tenors he is making as a result.

Check their site for lots more about the duo...

http://www.kirstymcgee.com/home.html

bookmark this story with::