Audio Clip

- “Desert Song” composed by Eric Johnson Interpreted by Benjamin Pegg

I went to visit David Schmidt, who has a small collection of custom built guitars and 3 of Kevin’s earliest, and perhaps, most important historical builds– The Brazilian Rosewood Wooden Roundback, the Calico Balmoral, and the first Quilted Maple A-wedge®. All the guitars were built in the 90’s while Kevin was inventing some of the processes and ideas that he uses today. I visited Mr. Schmidt, in response to a modification that he wanted.

David Schmidt

First David Pulled out the Wooden Round-Back. This was the first acoustic guitar that Kevin built while he was the lead repair man for Ovation Guitars. Ovation wasn’t interested in the concept of a fully wooden bowl, and he began to produce his own prototype models that incorporated some of the building and design concepts and techniques that he learned while building this guitar. Combined with what he had learned about the structure and durability of all the product lines that Kamen Music Corp. Sold, Kevin sought to create a guitar that would take advantage of the integrity of all of his improvements on traditional guitar building and incorporated them into his very first [deep] Wedge®, which was the precursor to the A-Wedge®.

David Brought a small practice amp to fire up the on board  EMG electronics with a graphic-EQ that Kevin originally installed to control 6 individual bone piezo pickups.

Next Dave Drug out his other early A-Wedges, the Calico Balmoral®, and a Quilted Maple A-Wedge®.

Calico Balmoral:

Quilted Maple:

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Blondie:

Flamed Maple & figured Koa Back & Sides, 3 piece maple, walnut, and myrtle neck, quarter sawn flamed maple fingerboard. Scionic Soundhole, 14 fret-to-body; 20th fret deep cutaway.

-Photos taken along the Oregon trail, Massachusetts -> New York -> Pennsylvania -> Ohio -> Michigan -> Indiana -> Illinois -> Iowa

INDIANA

SAVILLE

IOWA // MISSISSIPPI // ILLINOIS

Kevin’s Been redesiging his brace pattern and introduced a new model in April 2009, which Featured a larger upperbout than his traditional brenivere model, as well as a completely redesigned brace pattern. The Guitar went over so well with Kevin and there owners that Kevin has implemented the brace pattern into the Cedar Brinivere which he’s building alongside  4 other guitars. The Brinivere will be available for sale in late July. Please contact Kevin for availablility or inquiries for a similar order.

Features include:
Indian Rosewood Back and sides
Red Western Cedar top
Sagerow Neck
Rosewood fingerboard
Psuedo Gothic Cut-Away

Full Gallery

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Please Use the General contact sheet to send your own pictures of your Kevin Clark Guitar, or set up an appointment with Kevin’s photographer to come out to do a shoot for you.

Kevin and Ben have been working together on this design for 2 years. Since they met in 2006, Ben has been dedicated to Kevin’s guitar building, craftsmanship, and personal philosophies, “It’s still exciting to walk into stores that stock high-end and privately commissioned guitars and play them all; Lutherie is full of fresh ideas, new designs and experimental woods… after all the guitars I’ve owned and played there’s nothing that sounds alive like Kevin’s instruments do. Each one is different. That’s why I’ve bought 4, This double 7-string prototype that he’s building me is a replacement for the doubleneck that was stolen in Easthampton Massachusetts a year and a half ago, and I’m already planning on asking him to build me a mandolin, a dreadnaught, a 7-string, a classical and hopefully someday an electric …” Pegg has been making creative use of Kevin’s instruments with the all kinds of techniques that he’s  fused and fashioned together into his songwriting from his rather odd and diverse influences. guitar hero’s like Michael Hedges, Eric Johnson ,Pat Metheny, Pierre Bensusan, Erkan O?ur,  to name several. Over the last few years acoustic guitar music and techniques  that had originally been pioneered by players like Bert Jansch, Davey Graham, John Renbourne, Martin Carthy, Eric Shoenberg, Stefan Grossman, and Ry Cooder; later advanced by Pierre Bensusan, Michael Hedges, Preston Reed, and Tommy Emmanuel have inspired another generation of acoustic guitar players like Andy Mckee, Kotaro Oshio, Justin King, Antione Defour, and Eric Mongraine. Ben’s been doing it right along side them. “I really enjoy playing guitar music, but using techniques or coming up with new ones is only as useful as creating context for an expression that’s already in your heart. You can’t make it up. It’s about being real, and getting it out of you… I’m really more concerned with whether it’s lyrical or not- [the] words and the meaning are far more important”. said Pegg.

Ben and Kevin met  in 2006 after Ben played a Koa double neck that Kevin had made for himself and sold to Guitar Center in Orange CT. An employee from the store contacted Kevin while he was playing it and insisted that the two should meet. They did. “Lucky for me they gave me Kevin’s number because not a week later did my guitar get crushed when my power seat knob broke off in mid operation… I had no instrument and gigs coming up, Kevin is one of the most generous people I’ve ever met, he whipped frankenstein together in a week of tweaking and handed it to me, and it’s been my main guitar ever since. Frankenstein was a prototype brinnivere that was converted into an awedge of flamed maple, koa, and sitka spruce. Ben had plenty of time since then to dream of how he wanted to build this double-neck. Over the past few years he slowly collected the wood.  The guitar Features a sinker redwood top, Ziricote back and sides, 2 lightwheight 7-string Korina Necks with bookmatched Madagascar Rosewood Fretboards and a modified Yacobi-brace reinforced with the same material that helicopter blades are made from, it’s sonically dressed in two L.R. Baggs iMix systems.

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