To the guitar players who are reading this site: the guitar I used on “Pinky’s Boy” is a Thompson T-1 built by Canadian luthier Ted Thompson, in British Columbia. It’s shape is known as a Grand Auditorium model–a dreadnought-shaped body with a tighter waist and a slightly narrower body. It’s very well balanced, and because of the shallow body depth, it projects like crazy. I prefer the sound of Indian rosewood for my guitar bodies, both for the overtones they generates and the pleasing attack it gives.
As for phasing problems in the recording process, you just have to learn to listen. When I record, both myself and the engineer are on the same headphone channel at first, and we dial in the sound slowly. We keep every knob and dial, and my exact sitting position exactly the same every day. No one comes in the studio during recording sessions. Given all that, recording can still be mysterious. Why does it all sound different each day when every tiny detail is identical to earlier sessions–the atmosphere? Our moods? Who knows.