Making Plans

What materials do you generally use for your guitars and from where do you source your timber?

I use a mixture of traditional timbers and whatever I can get my hands on. My latest guitar (a 000-12 Martin copy) has a Sitka Spruce soundboard and Ebony fretboard which are both traditional timbers. The sides and back are Blackwood, which is now a contemporary and common option for instruments, due to its fantastic and unique tone. The timber I used for my latest guitar was grown in the Otways and sourced through a good friend of mine who is a luthier. The bracing is Oregon sourced from some old bed rails I found in my dad's shed. In the past I've used Blackwood and Western Red Cedar sourced from Mitre 10.

How many instruments have you produced?

I've built a Martin-style dreadnought, a disastrous 12-string, four lapsteels, a Weissenborn slide guitar, a square-neck dobro, a backpacking travel guitar and a 1920s-style 000-12 Martin copy. It's taken me anywhere from 20 hours to 200 hours to build a guitar depending on how involved it is.

Are you building an instrument at the moment?

At the moment I'm pretty busy with releasing my new album Black Crow, so unfortunately I don't really have much time at the moment to be building guitars. I'm hoping to start building my next guitar over summer, a Martin-style 0-12 next. It's basically a smaller version of a 000.

Over what period of time was the album recorded and how long were sessions?

Black Crow was recorded over three days. The sessions were about six to eight hours per day but with some breaks throughout the day. I spent time in the night recording the quieter songs that didn't require full instrumentation.

How did you mic the acoustic instruments and what kind of mics did you use?

I left the mic selection to Mick Wordley. The vocal was a beautiful 1946 chrome-top Neumann U-47 – an original, so it was a real treat. I've used that mic with Mick before and it really suits my voice. My guitar had stereo-matched Shoeps pencil mics, Dan's mandolin had a Neumann KM84, Kat's fiddle and viola had a Royer 141 ribbon. Andy's bass had a AEA ribbon mic and we had a couple of Neumann room mics. With the back-up vocals, we had a couple of Sennheisser dynamic mics. It was recorded dry to Pro Tools and then mixed in Adelaide at Mixmasters. Mick ran it through all his analogue gear to give it that 'tapey' retro sound.