Eliza’s Guitars.

If you ever have enjoyed some of Eliza’s concerts or you may have seen her playing with the trio Diamonds & Rust, then you might remember her dark brown guitar. This guitar was her workhorse and with this guitar she showed off on many pictures and concertvideos.

The brand of this darkbrown guitar is Daion. And the model of this Daion is L-999. The Daion L-999 is a fine smallbody guitar, or Ladies guitar, made of laminated rosewood back and sides and a solid spruce flattop. The guitar has a 14-fret neck clear of the body with a solid head. The front of the head has an atractive rosewood peghead overlay showing a scooped out lyre, the brand’s decal.

The Daion L-999 with Eliza’s favourite background.

The neck is made of mahogany with an ebonized rosewood fretboard. A pearl lyre is inlaid on the fretboard at the fifth fret. The enclosed lubricated tuners are goldplated Schaller 14:1 geared ratio and each tuner has a lyre on the back. The straight old Martinstyle bridge is made of ebony with pyramid wings. The bridgepins are made of ebony. The saddlebone and nut are made of copper, the same material the frets are made of.

The headstock- and bodybindings and the soundhole-rosette are made of maple-wood. The bodybinding has on the back and sides white-black-white-black-white stripes. Also the heelcap and backstripe are made of maple. The heelcap shows an inburned lyre.

The bodyshape has small roundshoulders (ca.10 1/8 inch) and much wider (15 inch) lower bouts. The headstockshape is Martin D-28 style with a diamond-neck and square solid head. There’s no pickquard on the L-999. This guitar is inspired by the 1875 Martin O-28 model.

The bodyconstruction is the X-bracing with extra braces between the maple bridgeplate and the endpinblock. The strings that Eliza used were often bronzewound light cauge or even extra-light cauge strings. Eliza kept the strings on her Daion L-999 till they broke off before she replaced a broken string for a new one. Eliza never used flatpicks or finger- and thumbpicks. She just plucked or strummed the strings barefingered.

In 1994 her guitar was cracked by plane-transporting. At the lowerbout on the bass-side a part of the top and side was cracked. The cracks are professionally repaired en refinished by the guitarshop I was working at that time.

Eliza bought the Daion L-999 by mediation of Ben Davis and was around 1982 about 350 dollars. Today this guitar is out of production.

Another good guitar that Eliza owned was a Gibson J-45 deluxe. It was made in the early seventies from mahogany back and sides and a spruce top. All solid wood. The 3-piece neck was made of mahogany with a rosewood fretboard and belly-bridge. The bridgepins were made of black plastic. This J-45 deluxe has a longsize one-point tortoise pickguard. The bodybinding is made of the same material. The scale-lenght is 25 ˝” and the bodysize is 20” x 16” x 4 7/8”.

The 1977 Gibson J-45 deluxe, sunburst.

The bodyshape is a squareshouldered dreadnought flattop. The bodyconstruction is a double X-bracing and has a maple bridgeplate.

The body is sunburst finish, from wine-red to yellow or from dark to lightbrown.

The J-45 deluxe has nickelplated Kluson Keystone covered tuningmachines 14:1 geared ratio with Gibson deluxe vertically imprinted on the cover. The fretboard has dot inlays starting at the third fret.

The J-45 deluxe was about 575 dollars at the time it was made.

Eliza’s playingstyle was a no-nonsense steady strumming. No bassruns, hotlicks, fills, flat- or fingerpicking leadguitarsolos or other advanced guitarplaying technics like foreward and backward rolls, up- or downpicking or crosspickingstyles.

That was Eliza; simple melodies, simple guitar-accompanies and a clear voice.

This is what I call: musical meditation.
Eliza was brilliant.

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