[atlantaprog] More on Steve Howe's guitars

My name is Wheat, and I'm a guitaraholic.

I now see more details about Steve Howe's guitar setup on this tour.

http://www.stevehowe.com/sh_guitars.html

Steve's Equipment List

Yes 35th Anniversary Tour - America 2004

Guitars

Fender Stratocaster
Fender Telecaster
Gibson ES175D
Gibson ES175D/SH (that's the Steve Howe reissue model, currently in production)
Gibson ES345
Gibson Les Paul / VG 88
Gibson Les Paul Junior
Gibson Chet Atkins
Martin 0018 SH (again, that's the Steve Howe reissue model from Martin)
Martin MC 28
Martin Style C
Martin J12-65M
Kohno Model 10 (classical nylon-string)
Fender Dual Pro' Steel
Steinberger 12 String
Portuguese 12 string (acoustic)
Line 6 Variax

He is finally touring with one of the new Steve Howe reissue ES-175s from Gibson, although he still has his original 1964 guitar in reserve (!). He is now using a new Steve Howe reissue Martin OO-18 and not his original 1957 guitar, which must be at home. Also, he is playing his Gibson Les Paul with the Roland VG-88 AND the Variax guitar on the same song, at one point, from what I've gathered from some posts I've seen on discussion boards.

The interesting point for you tone hounds is that he's using the Les Paul with its GK-2a magnetic transducer into the VG-88 primarily for modeling electric guitar/magnetic pickup sounds. He's using the Variax with its piezo hexaphonic pickup (L. R. Baggs) primarily for modeling acoustic guitar sounds--although the original Coral Sitar, which he replaces with the Variax for "Close to the Edge", is an instrument that uses magnetic pickups.

Another significant surprise is that he is not using his Steinberger 6-string tremolo guitar (the Mike Rutherford model)--then again he only used it to record some songs on "Keys to Ascension," "Open Your Eyes," and "The Ladder" and I don't believe they are playing any songs from those albums at this point.

Steve used an old Danelectro electric 12-string and Rickenbacker 12-string electric guitars ("Awaken") until he got the Steinberger electric 12-string in the 90s. He violated his usual rule and used the Steinberger on all recordings and live performances thereafter because the Rickenbackers were fragile and hard to keep in tune--the Steinberger seemed to solve those problems. Incidentally the Steinberger 12-string is long out of production and examples are quite valuable on the used guitar market.


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