HEART
Nancy Wilson
NANCY WILSON
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Nancy Wilson depended on six- and 12-string Ovations to get her through the early years of melding acoustic playing with hard rock, and she still uses a 1992 Ovation she calls Burley. "I had to have an Ovation for big, live shows," she says. "There was no feedback; I was able to turn up the volume all the way and let the soundman tweak it."
Takamine guitars became another staple while Wilson was on the road with Heart. "I saw Pete Townsend using one and loved the sound of it," Wilson recalls. "I was looking for something other than an Ovation, because I craved that more acoustic sound. The Ovation is great for a more percussive sound, but it has its own distinctive place. The Takamine is really an all-around stage guitar. I just run it flat and all the way up." She currently uses an NP18C and an NP15C, both cutaways built of Indian rosewood with Sitka spruce tops.
When she recorded her premiere instrumental, "Silver Wheels" (Dog and Butterfly), Wilson played a "big, fat-bodied" Guild owned by Heart's then-producer Mike Flicker. In 1976, Vancouver-based luthier Ed Myronyk built Wilson a steel-string called the Libra Sunrise, on which she recorded "Mistral Wind." Reminiscent of a Martin D-28, the Sunrise guitar is made of Brazilian rosewood with a bear-claw spruce top. It's equipped with a Fishman pickup, and Wilson still takes it on the road (though reluctantly). "My Sunrise just gets better and better," she said.
Wilson also has a 12-fret Martin 12-string, model D12-45, made in 1974. Sometimes she strings the top E and B strings with double courses and leaves the rest of the strings as singles—a trick she picked up from Nashville. Her extensive guitar collection also includes the Lady, a small-bodied classical made in 1975 by German luthier Hermann Hauser; a small-bodied acoustic-electric built by Danny Ferrington; a wood and a steel National; and vintage Fender and Gibson lap steels.
Wilson runs her acoustic guitars into a Juice Box (a tube direct box made by Retrospec) and then straight into the mixer. She uses a Trace Elliot amplifier at home and on stage as an acoustic guitar monitor. She plays with heavy Dunlop Tortex picks and medium-gauge D'Addario phosphor-bronze acoustic strings.
Her well-worn collection of vintage electrics includes a Gibson ES-330 hollow-body, an original Flying V, a 1965 Fender Strat, and a late model Fender Thinline Telecaster. "The electric guitar is a totally different instrument to play, but you can get away with a somewhat similar feel to an acoustic if you play a Tele with heavier strings," she says. Her favorite electric is a vintage Les Paul Jr. modeled after an instrument built for Les Paul's wife. "It's a lady's size and has a lot of personality," Wilson says. Her preferred electric amps are a Marshall stack and a Mesa Boogie. "In the studio I like to use a Fender Twin Reverb and a Marshall combination," she says, "because you can get all of that drama and the fattest of sounds without playing so hard."
On the 1999 Ann and Nancy Wilson tour, Nancy is playing Takamines equipped with Fishman Matrix II under-saddle pickups as well as a 1979 Japanese-built mandolin, a close copy of her vintage Gibson mandolin, which stays at home. On some songs she used a flanger effects pedal on her guitars. A new addition to her touring rig is an Atomic Boot Box (built by her nephews Tohn and Reed Keagle) similar to the stomp board used by Chris Whitley, which provides a bass drum sound.
—Julie Bergman
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Note personnelle : il y aussi des baffles Orange sur scène.
