QUESTION Ed Sheeran looks like he uses smaller acoustic guitars than usual. What are these?
Ed Sheeran started out as a teenage busker on the streets of Galway and Dublin, playing a Dean Performer E Acoustic-Electric Guitar.
This was a standard-sized guitar featuring a 25¼in scale length neck. A scale length is the distance from the nut (where the neck joins the headstock) of your guitar to the bridge saddle (where the strings are anchored).
In 2008, Sheeran made a couple of early media appearances — one on BalconyTV and another auditioning for the ITV series Britannia High. Here he used the Martin Backpacker, a lute-shaped, steel-stringed guitar weighing less than 2.5 lb.
Martin was the brand with which Sheeran became associated as he rose to stardom. He graduated to the more traditionally shaped but small-bodied Martin LX ‘Little Martin’ guitars (LX1E).
The LX1E is a ¾-size guitar with a 23in scale, which means the frets are slightly closer together than they would be on a full-size acoustic, though the nut width is standard, so the string spacing is the same as a full-size.
Sheeran prefers this smaller model, as the shorter scale length generally means less string tension and therefore a warmer sound. Sheeran used the LX1E on his breakthrough albums Plus (+), Multiply (x) and Divide (÷).
In 2019, Sheeran announced a partnership with George Lowden of Lowden Guitars, based in Downpatrick, Northern Ireland.
Sheeran has since exclusively used Lowden guitars, including a trio of new signature models for the release of his Subtract (–), Equals (=) and Autumn Variations albums.
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Sheeran’s first custom Lowden instrument, with a body shape designed specifically for him, was dubbed the ‘Wee Lowden’.
They have since launched an entirely new brand: Sheeran by Lowden. All the models are slightly smaller than full-size, in keeping with Sheeran’s preference.
Hannah Pierce, London W5
QUESTION How do they put vitamins in breakfast cereals?
The fortification of ready-to-eat breakfast cereals is widespread.
Minerals such as calcium, iron, potassium and zinc oxide, and the more heat-stable vitamins like niacin (B3) and riboflavin (B2), are usually combined into a powder known as a premix. This is then accurately metered into the flour or dough prior to processing.
Other vitamins such as A, C and thiamine (B1) will break down if subjected to high temperatures. As a result, these are sprayed onto the cereals after any heated element of the production process, often in the form of an emulsion.
Dr Ken Warren, Glasgow
QUESTION When and where were pinking shears first used?
Pinking, or cutting decorative slashes in material, dates from about 1500.
Originally, steel hand punches were used to create decorative patterned slashes in men’s doublets.
This method of enhancing fabric became very fashionable after 1545. Ben Johnson, in Every Man Out Of His Humour (1599), wrote ‘O, he look’d somewhat like a sponge in that pink’d yellow doublet, methought’.
The term was probably inspired by the petals of the ‘pink’ flower, a type of carnation with jagged edges.
Pinking in the modern sense of cutting a decorative border for clothing into small scallops or zigzags, was used from the second half of the 17th century.
Several layers of silk material would be laid on a block of lead and a punch positioned near the edge of the material which was then hit with a mallet, enabling the shaped end to cut through the material.
As women’s fashions became more elaborately trimmed in the 18th and 19th centuries, this method of pinking became increasingly tedious.
The problem was solved in the 1890s by two inventions: the pinking scissors patented by Louise Austin in 1893, and the Hannum Pinking Machine which was patented in the U.S. in 1897.
This mechanical version had variously shaped interchangeable vertical wheels which could be rotated by a handle and enabled material to be pinked at speed. However, the Hannum was an expensive piece of equipment.
Consequently, the more affordable pinking shears, as patented in 1934 by Samuel Briskman, were the earliest invention of the ubiquitous tool we still use today for decorative effect on garments.
Lesley Edwards, Goostrey, Cheshire