J O H N   H A L L

John Hall has a split personality as a guitar player, one part electric funk and one part acoustic with classical and folk underpinnings. The electric side is based around the Fender Stratocaster. John's main axe is a 1956 Fender Strat that he bought at Mountain Music in Woodstock in 1973. It was stripped already at that time, and by now looks like a piece of driftwood. All original except a five position switch and tele knobs. These John finds easier to grab when his hands get sweaty. Backup and road duty is by a custom made Strat knock-off given to John by Japanese guitarist Yoshi Sahashi.

On "Recovered" and "Love Doesn't Ask", the Strats did ninety percent of the electric work, the rest being performed on a Citron and a Paul Reed Smith, plus a1955 Telecaster with a Joe Glaser B-string bender which is the featured guitar on the song "Home".

Amplification is by a Boogie, a Matchless, and John's trusty old Fender Princeton (the one that you hear on the original recording of "Still The One"). An assortment of stomp boxes are present: Boss DDL and Compressor, Marshall Blues Buster, TC Stereo Chorus.

The acoustic duties are handled on the road by a Taylor 510 with a Fishman pickup. In the studio, John also used a Martin D-18 and HD-28. John uses D'Aquisto strings on all of his guitars.  The old strat is strung with "The Edge" #335 nickel plated strings, a skinny top heavy bottom pattern that runs from 10 to 52. The D-18 is strung with Extra Light Bronze Masters (#720), the Gurian with Light Bronze (#730). Both "Love Doesn't Ask" and "Recovered" CDs were recorded on an Otari MTR 90 MK-II, with Dolby SR noise reduction. The console is a Soundtraks Megas, and mixing was done through a Studer interface or Apogee A/D converter into Digidesign's Sound Tools on a Macintosh Powermac 9600-233.

In between gigs, John unwinds on a Mistral Equipe board with Gaastra sails. When the touring season winds down and the snow flies, he switches to Dynastar Speed SX skis, K2 Merlin V's, Salomon X-Mountains and Snowblades, and other winter toys too numerous to mention.

More details and pictures of equipment will be posted soon on this page.