T.O.T.T. - Tools Of The Trade -

An occasional series on the instruments and methods of some of the worlds great guitarists. These are guitars that really have a story to tell.

ERIC ROCHE R.I.P.

Regular visitors to our site may wonder why we haven't mentioned this before, but frankly its hard to believe Eric has gone. Eric developed a rare form of cancer about two years ago. There was some hope of a full recovery following an operation but sadly this proved false. Eric died on Tuesday 6th September 2005. His funeral on Tuesday the 20th was a very moving occasion attended by many friends and colleagues from the guitar school at Guildford, members of the music press, eminent guitarists from all over the country and naturally many family members.

Eric was a truly a master of the acoustic guitar, a fine musician, teacher and composer. He took altered tunings, tapping, percussion and fingerstyle playing and fused them all into his own unique style. He was also a warm, funny, friendly man and a loving father and husband.

His legacy remains in the memories of all the people who's lives he touched and in his recordings and books. A tribute CD is available from the Eric Roche website - www.ericroche.com.

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Eric Roche is a very physical finger style acoustic guitar player with a range of percussion and string tapping techniques that place a lot of stress on his instruments. Despite his at times very energetic rock attitude to the acoustic guitar he is also capable of playing traditional ballads with great sensitivity.

Until recently Erics main guitar was a modified Cedar and Mahogany Lowden O10 with a customised pickup system. Due to wear and tear this instrument has now been retired. He also owns two other Lowdens - an O23 (Walnut back and sides with a Cedar top) and an O25 custom model (Redwood top with Rosewood back and sides). Each of these guitars is fitted with a Fishman natural One undersaddle pick up.

His current working instruments are a new Nick Benjamin replacement for the O10 and a Nick Benjamin custom made OM 14 fret.

In this picture Eric is banging the heel of his picking hand against the body of the Lowden O10 to produce his trademark bass drum sound. The resulting signal from all this guitar mayhem drives the PA through the multiple cables exiting from the guitars end block.

The O10 model is no longer in production.

The Lowden Guitar Company is now known as Avalon guitars. Click here to link to their website -

www.avalonguitars.com

Here's an on-stage 'full frontal' view of Eric's Lowden O10. The evidence of wear and tear engendered by years of Erics pounding are plainly visible on the soundboard of the guitar. Scrape marks on the upper bout show where Eric uses his re-inforced nails to produce guirro sounds. Two glued splints repairing cracks are just visible to the left of the sound hole. These are not due to Erics hand drumming but to rough handling by air cargo!

Apart from the output connectors, all of the electronics fitted to this guitar are visible in this shot. The Fishman Rare Earth magnetic pickup, with its associated internal microphone, is clamped across the sound hole.

The individual saddles of the RMC pickup can clearly be seen beneath each string with the offsets appropriate to achieve the best intonation.

Individual volume controls for pickup and MIDI signals and a switch to toggle MIDI patches, are mounted just above the neck.

Here's a close up picture of the Fishman Rare Earth Blend System , soundhole magnetic pickup and microphone. The internal microphone is essential to Erics style since it picks up the percussion effects that Eric produces with his palms, fingers and nails against the body of the guitar.

The magnetic and microphone signals are separate and connected to a stereo jack socket on the guitars end block.

This close-up shows the brass saddles of the RMC piezo pickup which was installed by Bill Puplett in 2000. The general wear and tear on the Cedar soundboard is also clearly visible. The RMC Poly-Drive 1 pickup, acts both as a summed piezo bridge feed to one jack socket and as a hexaphonic MIDI pickup feed to the multi-pin connector. In total Eric's O10 has four pickup outputs - magnetic, microphone, piezo bridge and split-piezo for MIDI.

Here's a picture of the Nick Benjamin OM 14 fret guitar. At Eric's request Nick copied the neck dimensions and neck profile of the Lowden O10 so that the two guitars have a very similar playing feel. Both guitars have Cedar soundboards, but the NB OM has a smaller body than the Lowden O10.

Eric's new Nick Benjamin replacement for his modified Lowden O10.

Although this guitar follows the specifications of Eric's Lowden O10 and incorporates all the modifications to that instrument, it is very much a Nick Benjamin guitar, built to the customers requirements evolved from years of experiment, rather than a direct copy of the Lowden.

The most obvious customisation is the addition of a glued-on Spruce plate on the upper bout, for Eric's guirro and shaker nail effects.

And here's the back....nice mahogany. Notice the silver inlay OM on the Rosewood heel cap.

Thanks to Richard Lindsay for the Celtic sofa motif (bet you didn't know the Celts were big on sofas, several thousand years before Linda Barker).

Here's some background on the people involved in building and modifying Eric's instruments.

George Lowden

In the period 1976 to 1979 George Lowden began developing and selling guitars based on the 'Lowden design' which features A frame bracing and asymetric 'Dolphin' profiled struts. Eventually demand for guitars built to this design became so great that Mr Lowden entered into an agreement with manufacturer S. Yairi based near Nagoya in Japan. For a period of five years up until 1985 Lowden guitars were hand built at this small Japanese workshop. Due a world decline in acoustic sales the Japanese workshop eventually closed and Mr Lowden decided to set up a new workshop in Bangor, Co Down Ireland.

Sadly, as so often happens, since then the Lowden Guitar Company has become a victim of its own success. As the company has grown and become more commercial, internal pressures have forced its direction away from the original design principals developed by Mr Lowden. By June 2000 divisions within the company led to Mr. Lowden leaving. Since that time there appear to have been a series of messy legal wrangles over rights to the Lowden name and use of his designs.

Although it appears that the majority of the Lowden personnel have continued making guitars in the same workshops, these guitars are sold under the name Avalon Guitars. The current Avalon designs don't bear much resembelance to earlier Lowden guitars.

George Lowden continues to make guitars and intends to sell them using the Lowden name.

Link to the George Lowden site here - www.georgelowden.com

Bill Puplett

Back in 1974 Bill Puplett played lead guitar on a Bigsy equipped Gibson Les Paul with the pub rock band Scarecrow. Since then he has almost got himself a proper job as a highly respected guitar technician and pickup wizard.

Nick Benjamin

Nick Benjamin built his first guitar in 1990 when he was seventeen and opened his own workshop in Lewes, building guitars full time, in 1998. He studied Engineering Design at the University of Warwick and then went on to study luthierie with Jeff Chapman and Stephen Hill.

Nick uses fairly conventional techniques and materials to hand-build to order, a range of elegant and full sounding guitars. The most unusual feature of his designs is that he builds a slight doming into his sounboards, which helps increase soundboard stiffness. He is currently building a Jumbo model for Eric, perhaps anticipating the moment when Eric's O10 Lowden finally implodes in mid-performance!

Update - This Jumbo is now completed and making wonderful music in Eric's hands.

Link to Nick's site here - www.benjaminguitars.co.uk