Gearbox sidebar on
Kenny Smith's instruments

Acoustic Guitar Magazine
AG - Gearbox column
by David McCarty

Kenny Smith's unrestricted flatpicking guitar tone originates with the choice mahogany dreadnought guitars he prefers for recording and stage work. He strings his instruments with D'Addario medium gauge phosphor bronze
strings and uses a stiff tortoiseshell pick, although he recently experimented with a pick made from the same material used to create false teeth. "I'll try anything that gives you that sound," he say. 

Smith's prime instrument these days is a gorgeous 1935 Martin D-18 which he convinced a collector to sell him. "It has the red (Adirondack) spruce top and the big vintage neck on it. I pretty much sold everything I had to get it," he says. 

His other main instrument is a new mahogany dreadnought built by Randy Lucas (Lucas Custom Instruments, P.O. Box 1404, Columbus, IN 47202, 812-342-3093). "Acoustic guitar is a monster as far as getting the sound and volume out of it, but this Lucas guitar is something else. It's the best old-sounding new guitar I've heard," he reports. The guitar is a meticulous reproduction of Kenny's '35 Martin, right down to using an original C.F. Martin steel T-bar instead of an adjustable truss rod for neck support. To capture that vintage vibe as closely as possible, Lucas even air-brushed the modern ivoroid tuner buttons to age them and custom-ordered tortoise shell binding material that perfectly matched the pattern of the binding used on the original guitar.

One interesting variation is that the guitar does not have scalloped braces. "It's pretty neat because it has that broad sound because there's more tension on the top," Smith reports. Deciding to stay away from scalloped bracing also gives the guitar a more balanced voice, eliminating bass wolf notes and overtones when the guitar is played into a microphone on stage or in the studio.