Guitar shootouts are no rarity. In the studio, guitarists and producers will constantly pit instruments against one another as they search for the perfect sound for each part of a record.
However, when alt indie icon Bon Iver – AKA Justin Vernon – came to record his latest album, SABLE, fABLE, there was a surprising victor when two acoustic guitars with completely different fortunes went face-to-face.
Discussing the record, which also features a guest spot from five-string Strandberg strummer Jacob Collier, in a new interview with BBC Radio 6 Music, Vernon explains his reasoning for the bizarre six-string switch-up on Speyside.
When it came to recording the tender ballad, plenty of time was spent in the studio trying to recreate the intimate vibe of the original iPhone demo, which was recorded in 2021. Vernon wanted the listener, he explains, to feel like they are listening from “inside the guitar”.
“There was something about the iPhone demo,” he says. “The iPhone just has that great compression on it.”
A visit to Willy’s Guitars in Minnesota followed, as Vernon searched for the ultimate instrument to achieve his aims. After some time, he landed on “a very nice ’60s Martin” – “I was like, ‘This song's important, we've gotta get the guitar for it,’” he says.
“I wanted the left part of the guitar to be in the left ear when you put the headphones on, and the right ear has the upper part of the guitar,” he goes on. His guitar tech, Wyatt Overman, was tasked with bringing his vision to life.
Overman felt the feat could be achieved by installing dedicated pickups for the treble and bass sides of the acoustic guitar. First, they needed a cheap, throwaway guitar to act as their guinea pig, and they soon found the ideal candidate: an Ibanez V70CE loitering in Overman's workshop.
The $199 electro-acoustic guitar, dismissed as “hideous” by Vernon, had a chequered past, but its story was about to change.
“I was like, ‘What's the story with this guitar because it is god ugly,’” he recalls. “Wyatt does this work where he sets up guitars for folks in recovery, at this recovery center in Minneapolis called Hazelton’s. And this was such a crappy guitar that they wouldn't take it – they wouldn't even take it for inpatient recovery. So we got it.”
The test worked on the Ibanez, so Overman mirrored the configuration on its much pricier Martin counterpart before A/B-ing the pair to ensure the second experiment was as successful.
“He takes this rather expensive Martin from the ’60s, drilling holes in it and putting all this hardware in it to do the pickups, and we test it and I'm like... ‘Cool, awesome, that's cool,’” he continues. “And we're playing it, but it's just not quite making me excited, it's not doing the thing.
“So I'm like, ‘Wyatt, did you bring the beater guitar?’ We plug it in, and it's very quiet and kind of noisy, but it just has ‘the sound.’” Ultimately, the Ibanez made the cut.
“We had to bring it with us because it's the only guitar that sounded like this, for some reason,” Vernon concludes.
“This guitar really is the song,” believes co-producer Jim-E Stack. “I can't ever imagine you playing this song without it.”
Elsewhere on the record, pedal steel features front and center, with Vernon calling it “the most beautiful musical instrument that humans have constructed” and “truly an American invention.”
