Photo by Jeff Baird. Check out these equipment picks from artists featured in the February 2001 No. 98 issue of Acoustic Guitar magazine. Engelmann spruce jumbo with a slightly deeper body and a Florentine cutaway. Taylor had been playing a factory-made guitar when she got her first Froggy Bottom, and she was so bowled over by the contrast that she eventually gave her old guitar away.
Handmade guitars have so much more to offer tonewise.
For the stage, her two main guitars are equipped with Fishman Matrix pickups, which she uses along with external microphones. For band gigs, she brings a Daedalus amp. On all her guitars, Taylor uses various brands of medium-gauge strings, and she capos up with a Shubb. When she started playing fingerstyle, she used a Dunlop thumbpick, but at Ray Bonneville s urging, she eventually went completely bare fingered. It s a little bit of a different angle, so it takes an adjustment.