The Acoustic Guitars of Jackpot! Recording Studio
Why they were chosen, how they got broken, where they came from, and more! -by Larry Crane
As soon as I opened Jackpot! Recording Studio, I brought all the instruments I had at home down for clients to use. Since then, the collection has grown. This is part of a series of posts about many of these instruments. ——————
I would imagine most every recording studio has at least one acoustic guitar laying around. Even if you’re working with the heaviest of heavy bands, there’s likely a moment when an acoustic guitar can provide an alternate sound to an electric guitar in a mix, or just bolster up notes for a certain part. Plus, I can’t tell you how many times an acoustic guitar gets pulled out to demo a song or try out an idea while we’re hanging out in the control room.
A lot of these instruments come from Trade Up Music. It is only three blocks from Jackpot! Recording Studio, so it’s a great resource for us and is perfect when a session needs drum heads, strings, and more – although we have much of this already covered via our D’Addario and Evans endorsements.
In my previous post on the bass guitars of Jackpot!, I mentioned buying and selling two Fender Precision Bass guitars that I never enjoyed playing. The second one I owned I traded to a guy for this acoustic guitar above, an Ibanez M310. The M310 was apparently only ever offered for sale in 1982, though it looks like they are still affordable if one pops up for sale. Looking at the prices now I think the guy I traded with got a better deal! But this guitar has proven to be a real workhorse, and has a clear but not too bright tone. It’s been used on a lot of albums, and was even on some Elliott Smith recordings way back, and (to my recollection) is the acoustic guitar on his Oscar-nominated song, “Miss Misery,” that I co-produced with him.
You’ll see a few Ibanez items in this post, as they make fairly decent and affordable acoustic instruments.
Yup, like this Ibanez AW250-RTB acoustic. One day I was playing the Ibanez M310 in the control room while waiting for a song to upload or something. I leaned the guitar against the producer’s desk, turned back around to work at the console, and heard a crash – the guitar had slid from the desk and fell over. It didn’t look like anything was wrong, so I picked it up and put it on the couch and kept working. The next time I wanted to take a break, I grabbed the guitar and started playing. Imagine my shock as my left hand slid into a batch of splinters – I had broken off the headstock! I immediately walked down to Trade Up Music and found this “rustic brown” Ibanez for about $250 – we needed something right away to have on hand! It’s an amazing guitar for this price, and does have a different, maybe darker-ish tone than its fancier sibling above. The original Ibanez M310 was soon repaired by East Side Guitar Repair, and plays as well as it ever did thanks to the fine luthier there, Ryan Lynn, who’s also recorded here on numerous occasions.
This Yamaha F325 acoustic guitar was also picked up used at Trade Up Music. This acoustic was set up by East Side Guitar Repair for Nashville/Angel/High-Strung tuning. This means that the typical lower strings of the instrument are replaced with thin gauge strings that can be tuned to the same notes but an octave higher. When people don’t know the sound of this, I refer to Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’” and they get what I’m talking about – a nice, bright strumming sound without any bulky low end information or cluttering notes down there. This gets used A LOT on my sessions, and when put in the right spot of a song can work magic. As noted in the Electric Guitar post, we have a fake Telecaster setup like this as well. The P-Touch label is there to keep clients from restringing it with “normal” strings and ruining the nut that East Side Guitar Repair cut especially for the smaller gauge strings. Like Ibanez, Yamaha makes a lot of affordable and decent guitars. Elliott Smith famously played one (a nicer model than this one) and they’re easy to find when you’re in a pinch, like below:
Inspired by Willie Nelson and Calexico, I picked up a nylon string classical guitar for the studio many years ago. It seemed fine, and made its way onto a number of albums. One day I was mixing/finishing a record by a Norwegian artist who had flown over to finish his album with me. One song needed a classical guitar overdub, so I suggested he grab it from bathroom (where these guitars live!), take it to the live room, and try it out while I was mixing. He spent a while fumbling around with it, only to eventually come in and inform me that he thought the guitar was unusable. He was right, as the neck was warped and too many strings buzzed like crazy. We walked down the street to Trade Up Music (yet again), and I had him try out a number of classical-style guitars. He picked the Yamaha G231, we came back and tracked the part, and it’s been here ever since. I swear he even paid for the guitar or maybe we split the cost! I don’t recall what I did with the broken guitar! (poster art by Mike King)
After we moved into Jackpot!’s second (and current) location, our manager at the time, Kendra Lynn, did a bit of searching on Craigslist, sourcing couches, furniture, and a few instruments. One item she found for a great price was this Ibanez M522S mandolin. I’m not really sure if it gets a lot of use, as a “real” player would likely have a much nicer special mandolin, but this is here if anyone needs to add those high trills or special arpeggiated melodies only a mando can do! (note that CDs we’ve worked on are also stored in the bathroom)
Last but not least, this is a tiny (1/2 scale?) acoustic guitar that my wife and Jackpot! co-owner, Jenna Zine, purchased in Mexico one day while we were venturing across the border to Nogales. It’s strung with funny little nylon strings, and Ryan at East Side Guitar Repair had to take it to the shop and spend a bit of time restringing it after Lewi Longmire snapped a few strings during a session! There’s no guarantee of the intonation being on or such, but it certainly has a unique sound!