Guitars: Guy Clark plays one of his own guitars, a 000 model. “When I started building guitars, I made nine flamenco guitars first, because that’s the kind of guitar I started playing,” he recalls. “I love the way they feel and the way they sound. I need a steel-string guitar onstage, but I want it to be more like a flamenco guitar, so I built a 000 12-fret slot-head guitar that pretty much fills that bill. I used Indian rosewood for the back and sides, old German spruce that a neighbor gave me for the top, cedar for the neck (it’s very light and very strong), scrap from the back and sides for the headstock, and ebony for the fingerboard, faceplate, and binding. It’s the best guitar I’ve ever played. Just about everybody who comes in and plays it feels the same way.”
Amplification: RMC pickup system (rmcpickup.com), with individual pickups under each string and onboard tone and volume controls.
Strings: Medium-gauge D’Addario phosphor bronze.
Capo: Shubb, which he sometimes uses on the top five strings (leaving the E string open) to create an effect similar to dropped-D tuning.
Picks: A custom combo of a flatpick and thumbpick. “I originally played with fingerpicks and a thumbpick, and tried to learn to play Elizabeth Cotten style,” he explains. “But I didn’t like metal fingerpicks, and I cut off the end of my thumb on my right hand, and I couldn’t get nail that would work as a picking nail. Plus, my thumbs are double-jointed at the first joint, so instead of sticking straight out, where you could grow a good nail on there and pick with it, my knuckle makes a right angle, an L. So you make stuff that adapts to what you need. I put a thin, lightweight flatpick onto a Herco blue thumbpick to strum with. I cut off the end of the thumbpick, so it doesn’t stick out too far, do the same with the flatpick, and drill little holes in both and brad them together.”
September 03, 2020, 06:10 PM
bendable
sorry, I should have mentioned the fretless guitar in the second video
Safety, Situational Awareness and proficiency.
Neck Ties, Hats and ammo brass, Never ,ever touch'em w/o asking first
September 07, 2020, 08:11 PM
jjkroll32
Some good info. Thanks for that fellas!
_________________________ An unarmed man can only flee from evil and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it. - Col Jeff Cooper
NRA Life Member
Long Live the Super Thirty-Eight
September 08, 2020, 08:04 PM
NK402
I miss Guy, have been a fan of his for years. I met him briefly once at the Grammys, when they were held at Radio City Music Hall back in the nineties. My wife and I were walking in and he was coming out, probably for a cigarette. He was wearing a tux shirt and coat, Levis and cowboy boots. I recognized him and said, "Good evening, Mr. Clark". He looked startled and I said, "Bet you didn't think anyone would recognize you in New York City". He smiled and kept walking. My next thrill of the evening was coming out of the men's room and while waiting for a commercial (it was being telecast live) realizing the guy waiting beside me was Art Garfunkel.
