The happy reunion of Mark O'Connor and his old Martin resulted in a sequel to his foundational 1978 acoustic guitar album, Markology. Back then, he was already a star violinist and a mandolin player of note. Photo by Maggie O'Connor
In 1997, Mark O'Connor faced every guitarist's worst fear. He was teaching at his O'Connor Method String Camp that summer when he developed a debilitating case of bursitis in his right elbow. "Doctor's advice was that I limit or discontinue some of the activity that caused the bursitis, as the condition wasn't going to disappear entirely," O'Connor explains. As a multi-instrumentalist with a high-level violin career, he had a choice to make. "I sacrificed the guitar and mandolin to preserve my violin playing. I was very sad to see it go, but I needed to preserve my ability to play the violin, because it was the thrust of my career."
By that time, O'Connor had taken violin playing to groundbreaking new places. He'd released a string of solo records on major labels, including 1991's The New Nashville Cats, which took stock of the contemporary Nashville session scene by featuring more than 50 collaborators. His new trio with Yo-Yo Ma and Edgar Meyer had released their much-lauded debut record, Appalachia Waltz, in 1996, and he'd recently composed and recorded a violin concerto, a string quartet, and a soundtrack for the PBS series Liberty!,which featured Yo-Yo Ma, James Taylor, and Wynton Marsalis.
"It became too much about technique and not as much about what drew me to the guitar in the first place, which was its beautiful sound."
As far as career ambitions go, O'Connor's violin playing overshadowed his guitar playing, but his early accomplishments on 6-strings were also extraordinary. O'Connor started early, studying classical guitar starting at age 6 and soon moving into flamenco. He took on classical violin as a way to perform more recitals, and it was his interest in violin that helped him discover bluegrass. He explains, "I heard the fiddle on the Johnny Cash show, and it was the fiddle and fiddling I got into that led me into bluegrass guitar. I would've never known that existed in my surroundings in Seattle, if it weren't for the fiddle."
Once O'Connor fell in love with bluegrass, things started happening quickly. By age 11, he'd stopped playing classical and flamenco guitar and focused solely on flatpicking. "When I got into bluegrass and started with a flat pick, for me, that was rock 'n' roll rebellion. I was going down this path and there was no return," he says. And he soon began winning bluegrass guitar competitions, including the National Guitar Flat-Picking Championships.
Surrounded by his inspirations Tony Rice (center) and Dan Crary (left), O'Conner cuts "Fluid Drive" for the first Markology album, in 1978. Flatpicking doesn't get any finer.
At 13, O'Connor met Tony Rice, and by the time he'd turned 15, the elder guitarist had taken him under wing. When O'Connor recorded his landmark album, Markology, in 1978, Rice played alongside the 16-year-old and helped him mix it as well. Markology was a remarkable feat that found the young prodigy holding his own amongst elders like Rice, David Grisman, and Sam Bush. It was the first recorded evidence that he'd aligned himself with the jazz-inspired ways of his collaborators and was creating his own original and imaginative voice in bluegrass, setting the world on fire with his 1945 Herringbone Martin D-28. Two years later, at only 18, he stepped into his mentor's shoes, replacing Rice in the David Grisman Quintet for their Quintet '80 album.
O'Connor's guitar and fiddle playing co-existed on equal footing for quite a while. "Throughout my childhood, it was neck and neck," he says. "The distinctions could include that there were more big fiddle contests than big guitar contests, so I found myself going to three times as many major fiddle championships. That would automatically suggest that I'm spending more time on that instrument." When he joined the Dregs, playing violin on 1982's Industry Standard, Steve Morse insisted that O'Connor play both instruments in concert, though he began to notice how hard it was becoming to maintain his technique on both, and notes, "It was just so hard to keep up everything, especially with the kind of touring that we were doing, it was just nonstop."
Mark O'Connor's Gear
On Mondays this year, Mark O'Connor and Maggie, his wife, have been livestreaming concerts from their home. She is part of the Mark O'Connor Band, which includes his son Forrest and daughter-in-law Kate Lee.
Strings & Picks
- BlueChip CT55
- D'Addario EJ18 Phosphor Bronze (.014–.059)
It wasn't long before Chet Atkins encouraged him to move to Nashville at the age of 22, imagining he'd find a career as a session guitarist, that O'Connor committed to the violin as his principal instrument. He explains, "I found myself on a Glen Campbell album playing guitar, mostly, and doing an occasional fiddle solo. Something just clicked in my mind where I thought, 'There's so many guitar players in Nashville and there's hardly any fiddle going on.' That was 1983, '84. I just took it upon myself to be the person that brought back fiddling into country music, and I became known as the top fiddler."
He quickly began playing top-tier sessions as well as making a string of major label records under his own name, and his guitar playing took on a more background role. By the time he suffered his injury in 1997, he admits, "I was kind of a little bit burnt out about it. Maybe that's what led to my injuries. Sometimes when you're not completely focused on what you're doing, that's the time that you get injured. I was going through the motions a little bit and maybe over-practicing, trying to overachieve, pushing myself maybe for the wrong reasons. It became too much about technique and not as much about what drew me to the guitar in the first place, which was its beautiful sound."
"Music is a gift, I think, to us all."
Setting aside his guitar and mandolin, O'Connor found that he could continue playing violin, and for the next two decades fiddling took over his musical life completely. He didn't touch a guitar. "I never thought I would play guitar again, and I had grown accustomed to that fact. I had other bouts of bursitis in both my hip and my knee since then, so I knew I was prone to it. I just never wanted to take the chance," he says.
In 2017—20 years after his injury—he was busy focusing on his Mark O'Connor Band, with his wife Maggie on violin and vocals, his son Forrest on mandolin, guitar, and vocals, and his daughter-in-law Kate Lee on violin and vocals. While reminiscing about his multi-instrumentalist past, his family encouraged him to give the guitar another try. "I was wondering how I could add some variety to the instrumentation for our group," O'Connor says. "My family was encouraging me to try the guitars out, maybe play some easy-going strums on one of our songs, and, carefully, I started to try out some guitar stuff."
In his early years as a bluegrass fiddle trailblazer, O'Connor, at left, performs at a festival with (left to right) Eddie Adcock on banjo, Peter Rowan on guitar, and Jerry Douglas on dobro.
Photo by Jordi Vidal
As he began testing his limits, O'Connor realized that he could do a lot more than strum some chords, and one thing soon led to another. "It was not too long before I began to take a lead line on one of the easy songs on stage," he says. "That led to my taking my old Herringbone off the wall back home and experimenting. Over two or three months, I started building up calluses, and as soon as I got my calluses, then my right hand seemed to start to coordinate a lot better. The strumming came back pretty quickly. It was just coordinating mainly crosspicking and lead stuff. And when that started coming back, the whole thing just opened up and I was inspired."
It's hard to imagine the thrill of revisiting the guitar after such a long hiatus. O'Connor describes the feeling: "It felt like a gift. All of a sudden it just felt like it was meant to be—that it was my time to play the guitar again. Music is a gift, I think, to us all. I thought about Tony right away. His sound was in my mind the whole time, and his tone, the way he projected on the guitar, the way he held the guitar and the physicality of it."
"The strumming came back pretty quickly. It was just coordinating mainly crosspicking and lead stuff. And when that started coming back, the whole thing just opened up and I was inspired."
O'Connor decided to document his progress on the guitar, creating arrangements of tunes and recording them once they were ready. "It dawned on me that I had been storing up guitar ideas this whole time, and maybe they were held in my subconscious all along, never having an outlet for them, and then they were kind of spilling out onto the guitar."
Those recordings slowly coalesced into Markology II, a title that suggests not only a sequel to his debut album, but also a renewal or rebirth of his relationship with the instrument. Much like on his debut, Markology II once again shows that O'Connor possesses one of the most unique and versatile voices in modern acoustic guitar playing. Like his fiddle playing, his approach to the guitar now transcends the more bluegrass-focused playing of his youth, and he shows off a versatility and virtuosity that is stunning.
The strings O'Connor had on his Martin D-45 when he put it aside 20 years ago were still on the guitar when he recorded the first two songs for his new album. Nonetheless, "On Top of the World" and "Ease With the Breeze" ring with beauty and precision.
From "On Top of the World" and "Ease With the Breeze"—the first tracks recorded for Markology II,using his D-28 with the same strings that had been on it since he put it down in 1997—to awe-inspiring, fleet-fingered arrangements of "Beaumont Rag" and "Salt Creek," O'Connor proves that not only has he not lost anything with regards to his technique and musicality, but he's continued to grow well beyond the already highly developed playing we last heard from his flat-top box in the '90s. This makes Markology II not only a unique entry in his large discography, but a unique entry into the canon of solo acoustic guitar records that demand close study.
While he once again plays with rare speed and dexterity, O'Connor brings a lot of awareness to his physical approach to guitar. At 59, he knows he has to take care, listen to his body, and follow its cues in order to avoid another injury. "I have a template of how to approach playing with injury now," he assures. "The main thing is that you have to just discontinue playing the moment you feel pain in the arm or hand area. I mean, literally, as soon as you feel the twinge of pain for 5 seconds, you have to discontinue. I'm very hyper-aware of my limitations in that way." With this thoughtful and focused awareness, it will be thrilling to hear where Mark O'Connor takes his guitar playing for years to come.
Alabama Jubilee | Mark O'Connor | "Markology II" (Official Video)
Mark O'Connor takes a relaxed and efficient approach to picking while he sets his JC Baxendale-built dreadnought on fire with this version of "Alabama Jubilee." His creative and melodic solo guitar arrangement leaves lots of space for clever chording and hyper-fast licks while maintaining a casual and airy feel.
Note the cavity cover on the back, which houses the components of Andy Summers’ mid-boost system.
In general, you can use any Telecaster and convert it to Andy Summers’ specs. If you want to stay as close as possible to the original guitar, the way to go is an alder body—just like Andy’s, which is 2-piece—with a 3-tone sunburst finish and white double binding.
The neck should be quarter-sawn, 1-piece maple with a C profile, 21 vintage-style frets, and a 7.25" fretboard radius. Of course, you can choose your own specs here, too. The original guitar has a brass nut rather than bone or plastic, and it should be no problem to find a brass nut blank for a Telecaster. You will need different tools to work on it compared to bone, plastic, or graphite, so keep this in mind. If you do not have the right tools or don’t feel comfortable making nuts, you should leave this task to your local guitar tech. Summers’ guitar has Schaller M6 tuning machines, which are still available from the German Schaller company, and two chrome butterfly string trees. You may not really need two of them—usually one for the B and the high E string will do the trick, especially with a well-made nut.
The original has a heavy brass bridge plate with six individual brass saddles, which will increase overall weight significantly. You can still buy this type of brass bridge from several companies, but there are much lighter bridges on the market.
The stereo output jack is installed in a rectangular chrome plate, like on a Les Paul, which I think is superior to the typical Telecaster jack cup. Interestingly, the plate on Summers’ guitar is only held by two of four screws, but do yourself a favor and use all four to make this spot as strong as possible. You should attach the plate really tight, especially when you use an output jack with a tight grip for the plug.
“Electronically, there is nothing too specialized that you will need for the controls.”
The rest of the hardware is chrome and standard: two regular strap buttons, a standard Telecaster control plate, ’60s Telecaster flat-top knobs, a black ’60s-style top-hat switch knob on the 3-way pickup selector switch, and two flat-lever mini-toggle switches. You should have no problem getting all of these parts from any guitar shop. The pickguard is a 3-ply mint green pickguard with a standard humbucker routing for the neck pickup.
Electronically, there is nothing too specialized that you will need for the controls: a standard 3-way pickup selector switch, two 250k audio pots for master volume and master tone, a gain control pot for the booster, and two additional mini DPDT on-on toggle switches for switching the booster on and off and for the phase control of the bridge pickup. The resistance of the gain control pot depends on the booster you want to use: e.g. for the Fender Clapton mid-boost kit, a 500k type will work great.
For the bridge pickup, there is a standard early-’60s-style Telecaster single-coil pickup, and every pickup company will have something like this in their catalog. Because the bridge pickup is installed to an out-of-phase mini-toggle switch, your pickup will need three conductors, with the metal base plate separated from the pickup’s common ground, and a third wire that connects the bridge plate individually to ground. If you have a regular two-conductor model, you need to break this connection, soldering a third wire directly to the base plate.
Interestingly, the bridge pickup on Summers’ Tele is installed directly into the wood of the pickup’s cavity. I see no reason why you shouldn’t install it the regular way on your guitar.
Here’s a close-up of the bridge on Summers’ historic Tele.
Photo courtesy of Ten-Guitars (https://ten-guitars.de)
In the neck position, there is a ’59 PAF humbucker with a conventional two-conductor wiring installed directly into the pickguard in the standard way, with the open pole pieces facing towards the neck. The choice of late-’50s PAF copies has never been better than it is today. You can buy excellent versions from a lot of companies, just make sure to choose the correct string spacing, which is usually called “F-spacing” or something similar, and is usually 2.070" (52.6 mm). (Gibson spacing, or G-spacing, is 1.930" or 49 mm.)
You’ll need humbucker routing on your body to make it fit. If you don’t have a body with humbucker routing and don’t want to get your Tele body re-routed, you can consider one of the numerous stacked humbuckers that will fit into a standard Telecaster neck pickup cavity. My experience is that there is a noticeable difference in tone compared to a full-sized humbucker, and it will be a compromise.
Next is the active booster. Finding a good booster module and wiring it up is much easier than fitting it into the tight space of a Telecaster body. There are a wide range of available booster options. There are complete DIY sets available that include the PCB and all of the necessary parts to build your own, and there are also drop-in PCBs that are already populated, like the well-known Fender mid-boost circuit kit. You can also find mini-sized booster modules using high-quality SMD parts, which only require a fraction of space compared to the regular PCBs.
“Finding a good booster module and wiring it up is much easier than fitting it into the tight space of a Telecaster body.”
The available options include treble boosters, mid-boost circuits, full-range boosters, etc. Choose what you like best. The problem will be that you need to stuff it into a Telecaster body. As you know, there is not much space inside a Telecaster, and you need to add the booster itself, the 9V battery, an additional pot for controlling the booster, and two additional mini-toggle switches—one for turning the booster on and off, and the other to get the bridge pickup out of phase. This is a lot of stuff! On Summers’ guitar, this problem was solved by adding a large cavity on the back and closing it with a plastic back plate, as on a Gibson Les Paul.
A look inside the cavity for the mid-boost unit.
Photo courtesy of TeleManDon from Vancouver Island, BC (https://tdpri.com)
You can clearly see the two big routings for the booster’s PCB and the 9V battery, plus the additional pot to control the amount of boost as well as the mini-toggle switch to turn the booster on and off. If you are not afraid of routing two big chambers into your Telecaster’s body, this is a suitable way to go.
On a Telecaster, there are not many alternatives I can think of to fit all these parts. One possible way of saving space would be to use a stacked pot with two 250k pots for volume and tone, so you have the second hole in the control plate available for the gain control pot of the booster. Between the two pots, it should be no problem to place the two mini-toggle switches. Or you use a push-pull pot for the gain control to save one of the mini-toggle switches. The guitar will look much cleaner, at least from the front side. But you still have to put the booster PCB and the battery somewhere. A customer of mine did this by completely routing the area under the pickguard. But even with only a regular single-coil neck pickup, it was a really tight fit, so with a regular-sized humbucker, it will be close to impossible. So, you or your luthier will have to be creative, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a company offers Andy Summers Telecaster bodies with all chambers already routed.
Here we go for the wiring. Wherever possible, I tried to keep the diagram as clean as possible. The wiring of the booster is only an example and depends on the booster you want to use, but the basic wiring is always the same.
Here’s a helpful schmatic of the Andy Summers‘ Telecaster wiring.
Illustration courtesy of SINGLECOIL (www.singlecoil.com)
That’s it. Next month, we will take a deep look into guitar cables and wires, what really makes a difference, and how you can use this to reshape your guitar tone. So stay tuned!
Until then ... keep on modding!
Grammy-nominated session guitarist, producer, mixer, and engineer Paul Moak stays busy on multiple fronts. Over the years he’s written, played, produced and more for TV sessions (Pretty Little Liars, One Tree Hill) and artists including Third Day, Leeland, and the Blind Boys of Alabama. But most recently he’s worked with Heart and Ann Wilson and Tripsitter.
Time Traveler
Moak is most loyal to a 1963 Stratocaster body that’s mated to a 1980s-vintage, 3-bolt, maple, bullet-truss-rod, 1969-style Fender Japan neck. The bridge has been swapped as many as four times and the bridge and neck pickups are Lindy Fralins.
Cool Cat
If there’s one guitar Moak would grab in a fire, it’s the Jaguar he’s had since age 20 and used in his band DC Talk. When Moak bought the guitar at Music Go Round in Minneapolis, the olympic white finish was almost perfect. He remains impressed with the breadth of tones. He likes the low-output single-coils for use with more expansive reverb effects.
Mystery Message Les Paul
Moak’s 1970 L.P. Custom has a number of 1969 parts. It was traded to Moak by the band Feel. Interestingly, the back is carved with the words “cheat” and “liar,” telling a tale we can only speculate about.
Dad Rocker
Almost equally near and dear to Moak’s heart is this 1968 Vox Folk Twelve that belonged to his father. It has the original magnetic pickup at the neck as well as a piezo installed by Moak.
Flexi Plexis
This rare and precious trio of plexis can be routed in mix-and-match fashion to any of Moak’s extensive selection of cabs—all of which are miked and ready to roll.
Vintage Voices
Moak’s amps skew British, but ’60s Fender tone is here in plentitude courtesy of a blonde-and-oxblood Bassman and 1965 Bandmaster as well as a 2x6L6 Slivertone 1484 Twin Twelve.
Guess What?
The H-Zog, which is the second version of Canadian amp builder Garnet’s Herzog tube-driven overdrive, can work as an overdrive or an amp head, but it’s probably most famous for Randy Bachman’s fuzzy-as-heck “American Woman” tone.
Stomp Staff
While the Eventide H90 that helps anchor Moak’s pedalboard can handle the job of many pedals, he may have more amp heads on hand than stompboxes. But essentials include a JHS Pulp ‘N’ Peel compressor/preamp, a DigiTech Whammy II, DigiTech FreqOut natural feedback generator, a Pete Cornish SS-3 drive, Klon Centaur, and Electro-Harmonix Deluxe Memory Man.
