One unexpectedly warm autumn weekend in the Oxfordshire Costwolds, I found myself singing along as Lowden's marketing director Steve McIlwraith knocked out 'I'll Tell me Ma' on a newly-finished box from rival makers Northworthy while the £5,000 25th anniversary Lowden sat quietly in a comfy armchair.
This unlikely scene was shared by a dozen enthusiastic guitarists, and some of their partners, when two of Internet's RMMGA (rec.music.makers.guitar.acoustic) newsgroup's British members, Chris Rockcliffe and Nigel Tucker, organised their second UK international 'meet'. For the price of a single night's stay in any normal British hotel, we got three nights in an Oxfordshire country farmhouse with a copious supply of West Country micro brewed beer, wines, d-i-y breakfasts and professional catered dinners. We also got George Lowden coming over from Belfast in person.
George sat and talked through the history of Lowden, and explained the construction of the guitars. He showed the 25th Anniversary model, and told us how for all 101 examples he was personally carving the interior struts. Then he stayed with us till late as everybody played individually or joined in whatever they knew. George doesn't really play himself, although he can; he thinks it's funny how people expect all guitar makers to be guitarists, and he keeps to making rather than playing!
Steve, who is George's second in command at the Belfast company, said they had made the trip partly out of curiosity to meet guitarists whose discussions, arguments and obsessions they had followed with interest through RMMGA and the Internet Lowden email group. George is the most enthusiastic, natural and down-to-earth person you could hope to find making instruments.
The first evening, Chris Rockcliffe joked that Lowdens were dominating the weekend - one of the 'delegates', Julian Templeman, reckoned he counted no fewer than 10 Lowdens. By Sunday night, that reduced to my own two! The 25th anniversary model left on Saturday night. We had the latest Fylde instruments to see, plus personal visits with guitars from Alan Marshall (Northworthy Guitars) and Rob Armstrong of Coventry (who makes under his own name).
Alan's guitars got a thumbs-up from every player for their neat mini-jumbo bodies and silvery clarity. Alan is a Derbyshire, England, luthier selling at the top end of the British market, and came along for the whole weekend, proving himself a fine player and singer as well when it came to the singaround session. I seem to remember he did 'Spencer the Rover' (always a bit of a joke with us, because Shirley is from Rotherham and I spent twenty years from child to man in that fine Yorkshire borough - in which you can't find anything resembling a 'mountain', let alone a clear crystal spring...)
Rob Armstrong's most coveted guitar was the tiny mandola sized model, which makes a Tacoma Papoose look big, but plays with outstanding volume and ease as George Harrison, Eric Clapton and Armstrong guitar evangelist Gordon Giltrap will confirm. He says they cost £700 and the waiting list is around nine months. That's Rob 'modelling' it for me above. His medium-bodied cutaway model in sycamore and spruce was greatly admired/desired as well.
Alan Marshall believes that brass locking bridge pins increase sustain and volume, and his new guitars are fitted with these, plus Gore Elixir strings. Strings featured often in general discussion; RMMGA member Pat Martindale had ordered John Pearse strings from the USA for several of us, as they haven't been available in Britain. I ordered their `New Standard' set which is phosphor bronze with extended weight range, from a true light top 11 gauge to a chunky 58 6th. I fitted them straight away and they work well enough, but the very light 13 gauge B string is strange. Overall the action stayed the same as a regular 12-54 set, especially with the bass dropped to D. Personally I think the set is fine but I would swap that B for a 15 gauge.
I also ordered their special Thomastik-John Pearse 'Folk' set for restringing vintage guitars or classical models not capable of bearing steel string tension, and a set of their new Silks, yet to be tested. I put the Folk set on my Lowden S25J, a nylon string guitar. The result is very strange. The top E has a 'weight' of 16, and seems to be a 9 gauge steel string wrapped in clear nylon tape. The B and G are technically almost the same in weight - 0.24 for the B, 0.25 for the G, and the B actually looks fatter to the eye. Both have finely stranded steel rope cores, wrapped in clear plastic tape. The bottom three strings are just medium tension classical. All the strings have a concert pitch tension of around 14 lbs, with very little variation.
These strings really sound strange (MP3 files now available). The top E is almost like a steel string E. The B and especially the G sound like an old Irish steel string harp, entirely unlike any normal guitar - nothing like a nylon string, and hardly like a steel string. The G is a bit like an unwound G on an electric in tension but much throatier and kind of resophonic or sitar-like in sound. I am not sure I really wanted my nylon-string instrument to sound like an old parlour guitar but I'll see how long these strange strings last anyway... I thought I was buying polyester-wound nylon, like the Savarez wound top strings or the old Picato set, and had no idea these strings actually encased fine steel and steel rope inside nylon sheaths. They are quite unlike anything else made. After a day of playing they have mellowed a bit. I am not really sure I like them at all, and they were expensive ($20.50).
The handmade Newtone strings, another British product (fitted by Rob Armstrong as standard) got many favorable comments - at £5.50 a set in the UK they are cheaper than D'Addario PBs. Lowden's main Spanish outlet in Madrid restrings all incoming guitars with these round-core, slack wound strings that require lower tension for their weight but vibrate with unusual elasticity. You can hear a track recorded using Newtones in MP3 form on my mp3.com album.
For a small group, with one player flying over from Boston, two from Scotland, one from Dublin and one from Germany, the assembled guitars may have amounted to £50,000 worth of woodwork, with just a stray £100 Tanglewood and a spare Yamaha intruding on high-end serenity!
Apart from the demonstration models from Lowden, Fylde, Northworthy and Armstrong there were players' Lowden, Northworthy, Fylde, Larrivee, Taylor, Collings, Lakewood, Martin, and various one-offs. Guitars were freely passed round. The 25th anniversary Lowden was there to be played at any time. When Steve from Lowden was forced to give us a song he was photographed playing a Northworthy - we wouldn't let him play his own make!
Scottish traditional singer George Duff played his country-style Larrivee dreadnought - a $7,000 limited edition model - in DADGAD capo'd far up the neck. George had a particularly good 'Celtic' singing voice which went well with the accompaniment. Guest professionals included recently gone-pro fingerstylist Doug Smith, with two handbuilt Simon Birkett guitars, and mandolin and mouth-organ player from the band Lindisfarne, Ray Jackson. My new Freshwater Scottish bouzouki got its first public airing, tuned a full octave below his mandolin. They're both great instruments to play in a group of guitars.
Doug Smith's performance, of his own material together with Martin Simpson etc, revealed a man combining the best aspects of Renbourn, McManus, Duck Baker and Simpson - with a great singing voice and a sense of humour! His rendering of an Irish air using a combination of fingerstyle with delicate bottleneck slide was especially memorable.
Doug also had the most perfect set of nails. He explained that they are built up from acrylic powder by Samurai Nails in Hampton Court, London, and that before he went pro he did not have them. He had to get used to not breaking or catching the extremely long, rigid right hand nails which are permanently part of his hand. Doug's attack is powerful and well as precise, especially for fast percussive bass runs, and he uses a 13-56 string set. Check out his 1998 CD 'Diving for Pearls' (Sabre Records SR01/2).
During the weekend, we had unusually fine autumn weather and people visited Oxford, Stratford-on-Avon, Blenheim Palace and the lovely Cotswold villages. Nights were long and the sessions didn't end until after 3 in the morning. We were all privileged to do a great deal of singing, and playing, on some great guitars in great company. The best thing was how we were all trusted entirely with the luthiers' instruments, including the anniversary Lowden. A larger group might have made that impossible, as would a hotel venue or somewhere without the (lockable front door) security and privacy of the self-catering converted farm stead.
I for one would certainly go to another RMMGA meet like this - even Shirley, coming along without knowing exactly what it was and generally avoiding my folk club activities, really enjoyed the company and the music. She and others were frustrated that the house was no-smoking, and they had to stand out in the cold night air, but I was pleased that for once my guitar cases did not smell of stale pub smoke when opened on returning home!
There's a small song I have written about RMMGA which is available to hear or download on my mp3.com page, but needless to say, not included on the CDs! Just look for the title R, M, M-G-A...
DK