Squonk wrote:
They are good, but notice the difference in their Rigs. The first dude has a pedal board that is pretty hectic, Laurence uses just a preamp, James Nash runs through his computer and programs everything digitally.
There's one thing that interests me about the average (haha!) top acoustic player: They have really good guitars. Despite the electronics they rely on to some degree or other, the guitar still counts for something.
When I saw Martin Simpson in Hampshire in 2010 he was kind enough to show me his gear after the gig. I remember him showing me one of his Stefan Sobell guitars (he had two with him that night) and telling me that I could have one like that for eight thousand pounds! When I saw him in 2012 he was playing a PRS - I didn't ask, but I'd bet it doesn't come cheap. Bruce Cockburn plays Linda Manzer guitars. Richard Thompson plays Lowdens. Martin Carthy only (only) plays a Martin. Guys like Bruce Springsteen (hardly the worst player in the world) tour with Taks (from, I'm sure, the high end of that range) but despite the amplification and the effects (in some cases - Thompson, Cockburn) the serious guys all start off with a top notch guitar. Even Loudon Wainwright (a great performer, not a great player) tours with a D28.
The extent to which you are at the mercy of circumstance is an interesting question. Usually if a guy is touring solo then it's not a big scale tour and so they don't have pantechnicons lugging sound systems around. Richard Thompson takes his own sound guy on the road (every gig) but they still need to work with the sound system that the venue provides. Martin Carthy has a small scale rig (he has a little box that he clips onto his mic stand), generally plays small gigs and for solo shows doesn't retain a sound guy. I've seen him twice. The first occasion was in a pub basement in London and he had fantastic, magical sound that night. I saw him a couple of years later at the Southbank Centre - bigger, posher venue with a lot more gear - and his sound was... not bad but not what I'd previously heard. At that same gig Thompson appeared to play just two songs, his sound guy took the desk over and suddenly the sound was much better - and stayed better even after he handed the desk back to the venue staff.
Effects can work well. It might not be "pure", but often the intent is to perform a SOLO show, not an ACOUSTIC show. Delay and modulation effects seem to work well. I have a live John Martyn CD on which some rather rude noises suggest that he was using overdrive as well. (it is my belief that Martyn pioneered the delay sound that first Gilmore and then The Edge later made good use of).
