Martin Taylor Talks Gear and his Simplified pedal DI Live Setup

[Navdeep_Singh]

Martin Taylor, after a lifetime of touring, playing, explains his simplified, elegant sound setup for his particular style of playing, which he describes as “pianistic-fingerstyle solo jazz guitar”. Instead of the tube amps (or amps of any type), with its attendant emphasis on midrange-y, plummy dark, flat wound derived “jazz box” ecosystem, Martin goes DI into the PA, with a few pedals, all made by LR Baggs. LR Baggs pedals are designed more for fundamentally acoustic instruments, as opposed to electrics. From Martin’s perspective, a jazz guitar is more of an acoustic instrument, despite the magnetic pickup. This dovetails with Jack Ceccini’s thoughts on amplification-we want the ability to be heard, with clarity and warmth. Moreover, a good amount of time is spent dialing in the optimal settings, but once these are defined, it’s purely “plug-and-play”, you don’t have to think about the gear. Finally, given Martin’s propensity as a fingerstyle solo “pianistic” approach, he de-emphasizes the midrange for clear and pounced bottom end in the bass as well a bit more sparkle at the top end.


Of the 3 pedals referenced in this video, the LR Baggs Session pedal stands out to me. Martin compares it to the the difference between a mastered recording and an un-mastered record.

[Navdeep_Singh]

Metheny has a long standing dual output jacks on all his guitars—one for a magnetic pickup, one for a mic pickup. In his case, he uses a DPA-4099 mic placed INSIDE the guitar. This is also my dream setup, at least having two output jacks, one for a magnetic pickup and one for a mic pickup. In my case, the mic pickup of choice is made by James May, the musician-engineer based in Grass Valley, CA, and his “UltraTonic pickup”.

[Navdeep_Singh]

I think, overall, MT has the right big picture analysis, especially for solo guitar. Where I would differ: (1) I would use a 2 channel amp head-the best dual channel amp head for this music is made by Buscarino, the Chamelon-it has a “Fender Black face” channel AND a (2) acoustic image type of acoustic instrument/mic channel. I would have 2 outputs, like Metheny does, and plug the acoustic mic channel to the Buscarino acoustic channel and the regular pickup into the Buscarino Fender channel. Covers all bases!