C.W. Stoneking

On his website, Stoneking says, "I always liked the look of the Jazzmasters once I got over how ugly they are, I have two of them, an olympic white USA version with mint green pickguard, and a 60s sunburst Japanese reissue with tortoise pickguard, the Jap one I completely upgraded with USA parts (tremolo tailpiece, Mustang bridge, pickguard, electrics, pickups), the only remaining Japanese components being the body, neck, and tuners. Both guitars have Antiquity II pickups by Seymour Duncan and are strung with 13 – 54 flatwound strings."

"This was my first ‘blues’ guitar bought in 1993, a 1938 or 39 Kalamazoo archtop, these guitars were made by the Gibson guitar company as a budget line during the depression, this particular one had some unusual features, it had a sunburst Gibson 16? archtop type body with Spruce top (with fancy checkered binding around the top like an L-10), flame maple back and sides with sunburst finish, and the fancy ‘pointed top/ Recording king’ headstock shape. This guitar was traded for an amplifier when I was playing electric guitar in a zydeco band in 1996," says Stoneking, on his website.

"My first ‘real’ electric guitar, got it in 1987, made by the famous mandolin maker Steve Gilchrist (a family friend – I sanded the body and neck), back when he was still making electric guitars and things." - Source.

On his site, Stoneking specifies: "The Style N was custom built for me by National and is based on the earliest Style N Guitar models from around 1930. Though some of the plainest looking National guitars, the Style N was the top of the line single-cone model of it’s day. This guitar has a nickel-plated, German silver body with the old style un-ribbed coverplate with soldered on handrest, mahogany ‘Tricone’ style neck with old style fixed bar instead of a truss rod and a straighter than usual neck width, un-bound ebony fretboard with old style pearl dot marker layout."

On Stoneking's website, he says, "The El Trovador is the first National Reso-Phonic guitar I purchased, it’s a reissue of a model that was only manufactured for about 1 year in 1933. This guitar has a cool old parlour guitar type shape and a deeper than usual mahogany body also a slightly narrower neck than the other National guitar models, sounds real good and loud."

On Stoneking's website, he says, "The National NRP is a painted finish steel bodied single cone guitar, I have the ivory finish one, it’s basically a duolian which is the archetypal blues resonator guitar used by artists like Bukka White, Son House, Tommy McClennan, Blind Boy Fuller."

Stoneking says, "Got this hollowbody thinline Gibson in 2009, I like these cherry red guitars, back when I was 11 years old this would have been my absolute dream guitar. It has a completely hollow body and P90 pickups, Gibson’s version of the Epiphone Casino that John Lennon favoured," on his website.

Throughout this rig rundown of C.W. Stoneking's equipment, he is seen playing a 1957 Gretsch 6120.

On C.W. Stoneking's website, Stoneking says of his Style 1 Tricone guitar, "I purchased the Tricone ‘replicon’ in New York City shortly after losing my old 33 model Dobro in a NYC Yellow Cab, this guitar has a nickel-plated brass body and some cool vintage looking features, it also has an artifically aged finish, meaning that the folks at National make a perfect, shining, Style 1 Tricone and then do bad things to it to cram 70 years of wear into it, this guitar has made a few rounds with me now and has quite a bit more wear than it did before. This guitar is the one pictured on the front of the Jungle Blues album."

Stoneking says, about his 1974 Dobro, on his website, "This is the guitar on the cover of the King Hokum album, it was my first resonator guitar purchased back in 1997. This guitar was Dobro’s answer to the metal bodied National guitars, it has a nickel-plated brass body and a biscuit style’ 10 1/2 inch resonator cone, this one had a cone made by National which I put in it and was a very loud guitar. I played this guitar alot in the 11 years I owned it – it was lost in New York City, left in the trunk of a Yellow Cab one night after a show."