Musician Gear & Tech Discussion

Friday night went to see Carbon Leaf - Virginia band I have seen a dozen times, at least, in the last 2 years. http://www.carbonleaf.com if you want ot check out their music, which varies from celtic-flavored to americana to acoustic-pop and more.

Anyways ... talking to carter Gravis, the lead guitarist after the show about his instruments and he said he uses so many because of the different sounds each provides. For a while he was only using a few when playing love, but he decided to go back to using the ones that made the tones he wanted.
This guy switched out almost every song all night long - and he can PLAY everyone one
His line up:
3 electric guitars: Les Paul, Telecaster, Stratocaster
2 acoustic guitars (one with pickup in sound hole, the other piezo)
acoustic/electric mandolin
acoustic/electric bouzouki
5 string electric octave mandolin (extra course removed, but high B added)
pedal steel
lap steel
violin
guit-cello (small cello body with wide fretted neck, 6 string played with a bow)
Two huge pedalboards with A/B choices, going to two Marshall heads feeding one stereo Marshall cabinet (double mic-ed), so he can switch sounds/FX effortlessly.
Best part of it - no guitar tech, he tunes, sets up and maintains and switches out everything himself.

You can see some videos of Carbon Leaf on my extra youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/fflbrgst - many videos going back a couple of years scattered through the channel.

I watched some of the video earlier that band is pretty good!

too funny. up to now i always thought they were a hard rock stoner band! thanks for straightening me out.

so, in your list i see "Bouzouki". i checked out a few of their vids and i did see him playing a long neck octave mandolin.. often misleadingly referred to as "bouzouki" (aka"irish bouzouki") .....does he also play greek bouzouki?

i know it's silly but i'm one of those folks who thinks calling an octave mandolin that's tuned in fifths a "bouzouki" is kinda silly. since the greek instrument that preceded it and bears that name is tuned differently and has little resemblance other than it's 8 strings.

ok...then, there's my rant for the day! lol

thanks for posting.

There are Irish and Greeek bouzoukis - you're right, they are tuned differently. Irish Zouks can be tuned G-D-A-D or G-D-A-E, I imagine those who also switch over to mandolins and octave mandolins regularly use the G-D-A-E tuning.

Octave mando - 20-23" scale
Irish Bouzouki - 24-27" scale

For good examples, see Lark In the Morning's website: http://larkinam.com/IrishStrings.html

There are Irish and Greeek bouzoukis - you're right, they are tuned differently. Irish Zouks can be tuned G-D-A-D or G-D-A-E, I imagine those who also switch over to mandolins and octave mandolins regularly use the G-D-A-E tuning.

Octave mando - 20-23" scale
Irish Bouzouki - 24-27" scale

For good examples, see Lark In the Morning's website: http://larkinam.com/IrishStrings.html

i've been jonesin' for a decent (greek) bouzouki ever since i played about half a dozen or so at some very cool ethnic and world music store in SF. their name escapes me. they're tuned like the top 4 strings of a gtr only a whole step down....

CC FF AA DD.

they were all set up as total shredders very, VERY low action and wow do they BARK! super ornate and decked out w over the top bling..triple bindings, abalone inlays, and mosaic patterns. the big bowl back might take some gettting used to.

awhile back a friend of mine gave me a garage sale gtr he picked up for $15. a cheapo Hondo thinline full hollowbody. absolutely horrible as a gtr 'cos the fingerboard is too narrow. but the zero fret on it got me thinking. i added two more tuning machines to the headstock, cut a new nut to accept four double courses, replaced the brdg w a mando brdg, and bought a $10 hollowbody style bass tlpc from Subway Gtrs that i modded to accept 8 strngs.

I tune it as an octave mando gG dD AA EE w octaves on the two low courses and it is the sound of gawd! plays great and on a gig people always come up to ask what in the world i'm playing. oh, and i changed the "H" in HONDO to an "M" so the instrument is lovingly referred to by those who know it as The Mondo.

Picture and audio of the Mondo, please!

Picture and audio of the Mondo, please!

in the works. i'll see if i can scrounge some audio, othewise i'll have to record some.

some pics up here: http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default ... os&id=5922

a friend asked me to overdub some stuff on his techno/ambient trks. i might drop some Mondo onto something and post that.