| Rich
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Rich plays a Taylor 415 jumbo guitar. Although he is basically the strong, silent type, at random intervals he bounds to the front of the stage and rips off a flatpick lead that blows everybody's hair back. In fact, looking at our recent pictures, it appears he may have blown some of our hair clean off. Rich also doubles on bass guitar, using his Gibson (at right) to produce some tasty bass lines.
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Rich has built a number of Class-A instruments. These are a pair of electric guitars he built over the past several years. On the left is a solid curly-maple body axe and the one on the right is a hollow-body cutaway jazz style. Although the Delivery Boys usually frown on electric instruments, these are too cool so we had to put them here.
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Occasionally, Rich gets in a fiesty mood and pulls out this matched set of flamed koa ukes that he built. Not content to build just one, he did two at the same time. We have yet to see him play both at the same time, but sooner or later...
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| Larry
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Larry plays a Stelling White Star 5-string banjo. He uses a clear head so he can keep his goldfish inside. He is very fond of his goldfish and takes them on all our gigs, introducing them as Earl, J.D., and Larry Jr. After a rousing round of Foggy Mountain Breakdown played at Mach 2, they tend to get just a bit agitated. When Larry really gets rolling, menfolk start to shout, women tend to swoon, and children mess themselves. Larry also plays this Starfied 12-string on the ballads, when we hide his banjo.
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Recently, Larry has begun playing this Gold Star Banjola on some of the slower stuff and on many of the old-timey dance tunes, just to add some variety and confuse people.
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| Scott
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Scott plays an F-5 mandolin he built in 1996. This came about for three reasons: 1. Because he was too cheap to shell out the exorbitant amount it takes to buy a decent one 2. He had no clue how much work was involved, and 3. Because he was too pigheaded to give up once he started. An L.R. Baggs pickup is installed. Some of the celtic tunes require special treatment. For that, we bring out the foreign artillery. To the right is a Petersen Level 2 Irish Bouzouki that both Scott and Rich play.
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A relatively recent fiddler, Scott wishes to thank his family for enduring the endless hours of basement pig-strangling (practice) over the past couple of years. This is an American-made fiddle with an L. R. Baggs piezo bridge. He occasionally resorts to the anglo concertina at right when a song needs something a bit different . This concertina was built by Mr. Frank Edgely, using some of the same curly maple wood that went into Scott's mandolin and guitar.
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Once in a while, to the conternation of the other band members, Scott falls back on the guitar. Unfortunately falling back on it has not broken it yet. Since there are 3 other terrific guitar players in the band, this action is seldom called for. He plays a Washburn D-28, but is building a new guitar that eventually wil replace this one. See peghead inlay to right.
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OK, so what the heck is that thing? It's about 5 feet tall, 2 feet wide, and 10" deep. It's called a marimbula, or rhumba box. It's basically the world's biggest thumb piano, played like an upright bass, and takes the place of the bass guitar on some of our stuff. This one was designed by Scott and is built from birch, spruce, maple, and wenge woods. The rhumba box is a common Carribbean alternative to the doghouse bass and many of them are really shaped just like an orange crate. Since this one is shaped like a rowboat, we call it the bass-boat. You play it by plucking the wooden "twangers" and it sounds just like a good upright bass fiddle.
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| Richard
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Richard, or "Richard" as we like to call him, plays flatpick and fingerpick-style guitar and doubles on bass. He also plays keyboards, but we don't allow those to infiltrate the group. Richard is the main (only) proponent the little-known Scottish Highland guitar method. This approach calls for the player to go into a deep trance while beating on the strings with an inflated sheep's bladder. We don't mind this idiosyncracy, it's just, well.... the smell.
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| Jim
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Jim likes to pound on things. He really, really likes to pound on things, so, to save wear and tear on the furnishings, we got him this bodhran to beat up on. He is also a tremendous harmonica player with a harp collection that would stock a brigade of angels. He also doubles on the tin whistle and assorted bizarre sound effects for some of the tunes.
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