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Kelday 000 12 Fret:
This was my first world class guitar and was my main instrument from 1993 late 2001. It was used on the three solo albums - in fact it's the only guitar on 'Ceol More' - and the album with Alasdair Fraser and has travelled the world with me. My instrument has highly figured cocobolo sides and bookmatched back, a European spruce top, a Brazilian rosewood fingerboard and a mahogany neck. It has been played and admired by many of my favourite guitarists - John Renbourn (Bill also does maintenance for John's Franklin guitar), Martin Simpson, Isaac Guillory, Tony Cuffe, Pierre Bensusan, Stefan Grossman, Archie Fisher, Dick Gaughan, Steve Cooney, Duck Baker, Arty McGlynn, Soig Siberil ... and Billy Connolly, who declared it "a thing of great beauty"
Kelday Baritone:
In 1996 Bill Kelday made me a Baritone Guitar. It has a longer than average scale length at 720mm and again a wide fingerboard. It has a spruce top, Brazilian rosewood back and sides and an ebony fingerboard. It was designed to play roughly a fifth below standard and I've had it tuned to GDGCEA which is essentially drop-D tuning taken down to G. The guitar made its recording debut on Kate Rusby's Hourglass album, on her version of As I Roved Out and it doesn't seem to present any major difficulties in the studio, despite the very different frequencies it produces. It has also been used on the Linn Records series of The Complete Songs of Robert Burns and the solo CD of Ossian singer Billy Ross.
You can hear it on A Tune for Frankie on the second solo CD and on recent albums by Gordon Duncan and Cathy Ann MacPhee.
Kelday Terz:
Bill recently made me a guitar at the opposite end of the spectrum to the baritone. The terz was originally a small classical guitar tuned a minor third higher than normal. Bill's guitar is a steel string version of that. Its tone is clear and bright and quite different to that of a normal guitar capoed at the third. It is also very loud for its size! This guitar has a spruce top and Canadian Birdseye Maple back and sides and a Brazilian rosewood fingerboard and headstock overlay. Bill changed his usual inlay from a thistle to a maple leaf just for this guitar (made as I was moving to Canada) and used a very distinctive, multi- coloured binding throughout. It also has a beautiful old fashioned Martin style 'pyramid' bridge.
~ Tony McManus
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