Hello. We're talking acoustic guitars here and, although I live in the UK, my two main guitars are made in the USA.

My main musical style is fingerstyle and, for the majority of the time, I play using a thumb pick a-la Martin Simpson, Ralph Mctell and many others. From time to time I do find myself playing with a flatpick (usually in traditional sessions) but I soon get bored with that!

For a long time my main instrument was a Martin J 40M, known as 'Martine' (it was acquired just a few days before I embarked on a long trip to France). Martine is now about 14 years old and has seen more than her fair share of action and no longer goes out much.

MARTIN J40

The J40 features a spruce top and indian rosewood back and sides. The body (still relatively new to the Martin line) is oooo sized and of dreadnought depth. This guitar has found favour with flatpickers, bluegrass players, etc., but I've found it a good fingerstyle guitar, particularly on Rev. Gary Davis, Blind Blake style rags and blues.

SANTA CRUZ OM

I was searching for an OM style guitar for quite a long time and played many different guitars, but this Santa Cruz OM E (pre war model OM) seemed offer the best combination of sound quality and price. My guitars are working instruments and certainly not collector's items. This is also spruce and indian rosewood and is a great all purpose guitar which works well for fingerstyle melodies, blues, ragtime, etc. This model is now six or so years old and playing in nicely

I've never got around to settiling on a name; suggestions welcome.

Both guitars are strung with D'addario EJ16s. phosphor bronze, which seem to me to be pretty good all-round strings. From time to time I play around with alternatives but seem to always end back with the EJ16s.

Both guitars are also equipped with Fishman under-the-saddle pick-ups. The signal from these is usually fed into a 10 year old Fishman Pro-Eq which effectively gets rid of the sharp piezo sound of the pick-ups. On the rare occasions I get to play instrumental fingerstyle guitar properly I'll mix this signal at the desk or PA with my AKG 1000s condenser mic.

When I'm singing and playing I'm not a great one for effects, although I do sometimes use a Bose stereo chorus pedal.