Kristin Hersh Guitars & Gear: Throwing Muses, 50 Foot Wave and the Guitar That Picks the Band

Kristin Hersh has fronted Throwing Muses since the early 1980s, leads the trio 50 Foot Wave, and has made solo records since 1994. The Kristin Hersh gear story is less about what she plays than about how she uses it. She has said in several interviews that the guitar she picks up decides which band a song belongs to. She has also described songwriting as listening for what a song wants instead of imposing her own plan on it.

This guide sticks to what is documented: Hersh’s own interviews, Premier Guitar’s 2017 gear list, and label and publisher records. Where the record is thin, as it is for the early Throwing Muses years, it says so instead of guessing.

Background: Throwing Muses, 4AD and a Life Spent Listening

According to 4AD, Hersh started Throwing Muses with her stepsister Tanya Donelly while both were still at high school. The label gives the year as 1983, though other accounts say 1981. The band later settled in Boston and became the first American act to sign to 4AD. Their self-titled label debut came out in September 1986, produced by Gil Norton. 4AD’s own history of the band describes that early playing as “joining the dots between elliptical post-punk, harmonious folk jangle and rockabilly thunder.”

Hersh has linked the start of her songwriting to an accident. Premier Guitar reported in 2017 that she was hit by a car while riding a bike at 16, and that after the injury the music “kept coming.” Her 2010 memoir Rat Girl (Penguin) covers a year starting in spring 1985. In that year Throwing Muses were signing their first deal and recording their first album. She was also diagnosed with bipolar disorder, a diagnosis WBUR later reported she disagreed with, and she was pregnant with her first son. The Boston Globe’s review of the book says she began “to hear and visualize color-coded songs” after the accident.

Donelly left after The Real Ramona (1991). By then she had already co-founded the Breeders with Kim Deal; 4AD’s own page for the Breeders’ 1990 debut, Pod, lists her in the line-up. She went on to front Belly. Throwing Muses carried on as a trio. Their sixth album, University, followed in January 1995 and brought in bassist Bernard Georges.

Hersh’s first solo album, Hips and Makers, came out in 1994. It was recorded in late 1993, after she finished work on University. The Quietus called it a big change from the band: a stripped-back, mostly acoustic record with Michael Stipe of R.E.M. singing backing harmonies on “Your Ghost.” It peaked at number seven on the UK album chart.

By 2004 she also had 50 Foot Wave, a trio with Georges on bass and Rob Ahlers on drums. Introducing a 2004 interview with her, Perfect Sound Forever’s Billy Hell wrote that Throwing Muses could “only afford to exist on an occasional basis” and that, counting her solo work, she now had “three outlets, for three different kinds of songs.” All three have released records in the 2020s: Throwing Muses’ Sun Racket (2020) and Moonlight Concessions (March 2025, Fire Records), 50 Foot Wave’s Black Pearl (2022), and the solo album Sugar on Blackstone (Fire Records, 18 September 2026).

The Rig: Kristin Hersh’s Guitars, Amps and Effects

Most of the specific gear below comes from one source: Premier Guitar’s February 2017 feature on her solo album Wyatt at the Coyote Palace, which included a gear list and interviews with Hersh and Steve Rizzo, her co-producer and longtime friend. Where Hersh named instruments herself in other interviews, those are cited too. Nothing here should be read as her complete rig for any other year, including the early Throwing Muses years.

Guitars

Amps

Effects

Strings and Setup

The 2017 list gives D’Addario EXP13 80/20 Bronze Custom Light (.011–.052) for acoustic and D’Addario ECG26 Chromes Medium (.013–.056). D’Addario describes the Chromes as flatwound strings with a polished stainless steel ribbon wrap. The list doesn’t say which guitar the Chromes go on, but they match the “chromes” Hersh said her Thinline takes without losing its character. For the Wyatt sessions, foam went under the strings of the Collings. Rizzo told Premier Guitar it was his idea; Hersh called it “the foam that I stuck under the strings.” Rizzo said the result sounds “almost like staccato cello lines.”

Kristin Hersh Gear: Sources and Confidence

Playing Style and Songwriting Approach

For Hersh, the guitar sorts the songs. She put it most directly to Louder Than War in 2022:

The 50 Foot Wave songs are written on the Les Paul, Throwing Muses songs are written on my Strat or my Tele, and my solo songs are written on Collings guitars.

In the same interview she said the choice is made “when I reach for the guitar that a song will be written on.” To The Big Takeover she described songwriting as “really a process of listening.” She hears the bass line behind the guitar, then backing vocals or cello, then drums, and knows she is “hearing what the song wants.” She called lyrics “a kind of percussive melody.” She told WBUR in 2020 that the songs “have to tell you what they want in the moment.”

On Sun Racket, she told PopMatters, the aim was a “wall of melody” rather than a wall of sound, because a trio cannot produce that “ocean wave sensation.” She also noticed that “the quieter songs are the more cacophonous.”

On acoustic guitar, the point for her is physical. Comparing it with electric, she told Premier Guitar: “You use pedals to mimic muscles, and with acoustics, you don’t do that. It’s all about the body.” Asked about effects on Wyatt, she pointed to the slide parts on its most chaotic leads and said “the leads were more [about] singing than singing could ever be.” In the studio, the acoustic techniques documented here are the Nashville doubling and foam-muted strings described above and, she told Premier Guitar, sometimes “eight tracks of the same guitar, so it sounds like brush strokes.”

How to Approach the Kristin Hersh Sound

No source gives amp settings or pedal chains, so this section sets out only the documented methods.

• Separate your songs by instrument. Hersh’s own system is one guitar family per project.
• Double an acoustic part with a Nashville-tuned guitar. Record a standard 6-string, then play the identical part on a Nashville-strung acoustic. The combination is what Rizzo says people mistake for a 12-string on her solo records.
• Try flatwounds on a semi-hollow electric. Hersh puts chrome strings on her Thinline and says its character survives them.
• Mute with foam for percussive parts. Foam under the Collings’ strings, Rizzo’s idea, gave the staccato, cello-like figures on Wyatt at the Coyote Palace. Rizzo said it “just keeps them from ringing too much.”

Legacy and Recent Work

4AD credits Throwing Muses with “pioneering a singular form of ‘alternative rock’ years before the term existed.” Her official site describes listeners as “Strange Angels” who support her studio recording costs as stakeholders. Besides Rat Girl, she has written Don’t Suck, Don’t Die: Giving Up Vic Chesnutt (University of Texas Press), about her late friend and fellow songwriter, and The Future of Songwriting (Melville House, March 2024). Her 2016 album Wyatt at the Coyote Palace came as two CDs with a 64-page hardcover book designed by Throwing Muses drummer David Narcizo.

Moonlight Concessions, which Hersh produced at Rizzo’s Stable Sound Studio in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, arrived in March 2025. Sugar on Blackstone followed on Fire Records in September 2026. It was recorded at the same studio with Rob Ahlers of 50 Foot Wave on drums and Throwing Muses cellist Pete Harvey. For another American indie songwriter-guitarist, see our Stephen Malkmus guide.

Frequently Asked Questions