Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

I just recently finished a big overhaul to the Johnny Marr gear page on my site, Smiths On Guitar. There's new info on his Rickenbackers and Gretsches, along with his other various guitars, and new info on his effects and rack that he used in the Smiths era. If anyone notices any errors, please let me know(sometimes I wasn't too sure what model some of the Gretsches were).

You can see it here: http://www.smithsonguitar.com/2008/12/j ... -gear.html

i really enjoyed that cheers,a great read

That was GREAT! Thank you!

Any plans to go into his post-Smiths gear? I know he uses some cool stuff now; Jaguars, Jazzmasters, etc.

Thanks guys!

sloop_john_b wrote:Any plans to go into his post-Smiths gear? I know he uses some cool stuff now; Jaguars, Jazzmasters, etc.

I don't currently have plans to, mainly because his Smiths era gear was so varied, and also not very well reported on by guitar magazines the way some guitarists have been. I think his signature Jaguar is going to be debuted at the upcoming NAMM. Also, there are still some Smiths era pieces of gear that have me totally stumped. I'll dig up the photos and post them here later, maybe some of you guys may have a better idea than me.

I am going to do a post soon on Andy Rourke's gear, though!

Thanks, very interesting - I'll take my time to quietly read and absorb it.

Nice to know I'm not the only one using that capo...

This is the stuff that I'm trying to identify!

First up is this rack unit up top:


Also can be seen here, top of the rack:


Here is a different rack unit, on the top again. No idea what this is:


Lastly, here is a photo collage of a lot of screencaps of Johnny's Boss pedalboard:

http://i109.photobucket.com/albums/n54/ ... lboard.jpg

The pedals I'm sure of are the red PSM-5 on the far right, the yellow OD-2 right of center, and the tan TW-1 left of center. I'm pretty sure the two light colored pedals are a CE-2 chorus and a GE-6 equalizer, but I'm not positive which is which. The odd pedal out is the very dark one second to left, which has 4 knobs. I've narrowed it down to either a BF-2 flanger in poor lighting or an HM-2 heavy metal(which I wouldn't expect to find on Johnny's board ).

If anyone has any ideas about these loose ends, let me know!

egosheep wrote:I think his signature Jaguar is going to be debuted at the upcoming NAMM.

No way! Any idea what the specs on it will be?

sloop_john_b wrote:

egosheep wrote:I think his signature Jaguar is going to be debuted at the upcoming NAMM.

No way! Any idea what the specs on it will be?

Yeah, we can speculate. Basically JM claims he has gone over 11-12 vintage Jags, 62 and 63's being his favorite, looking for his favorite neck profile, body contours, pickups etc. The neck profile is based off a '65 and he says its a little beefier than normal. He has replaced the three jag switches with a chrome plate holding a Tele 4 way switch, for neck, both, bridge, and series. He also put the tone cut switch up top in place of the tone preset switch. His fender prototype is Olympic White and he has put a serious relic on it over the last year. He announced on twitter in december that he was on his way to Fender to get his guitar ready for release, so I'm assuming a NAMM release makes sense.

You can see it and read about it here: http://www.smithsonguitar.com/2010/09/t ... -2010.html

You can see him use it live here, playing with Hans Zimmer:

Is it me or has JM been told by Fender to kick against the JM & Rick association?
Here at work they don't specifically link him to his Ric at all - he's used so many different brands and models!

Nice he got a custom made guitar, don't see why I would want to buy a guitar which is someone elses dream of perfect though

Wildberry wrote:Is it me or has JM been told by Fender to kick against the JM & Rick association?
Here at work they don't specifically link him to his Ric at all - he's used so many different brands and models!

Nice he got a custom made guitar, don't see why I would want to buy a guitar which is someone elses dream of perfect though

To be fair, I think he says some of that just because he has been pidgeon-holed by some people as a "just a Ric guy" when it hasn't been a huge part of his sound for over 20 years. It's pretty clear he has nothing against Rickenbackers, he praises them on his site and played a 360/12 on all the shows he did with REM in 2005. Also, like when you look at his gear with the Smiths, he used so many guitars, but he isn't known as a les paul guy or a gretsch guy or a strat guy. He was a great guitarist who used all sorts of awesome vintage guitars. I think it just stems from annoyance that people don't know what their talking about, like when they hear This Charming Man and say, "MarrJangleRicific!", but it's actually a tele they are hearing. Multiply that by 20 years, and he's probably just tired of being stereotyped.

Here's a section from a February 1985 interview where he is already talking about wanting to play down his association with Rics:


So no, I don't think he is kowtowing to some direction from Fender to play down Ric associations. And while I won't be buying his Jaguar, I think his design method sounds a lot cooler and more hands-on than 90% of the Fender artist-signature guitars I see.

Now, back to our regular Ric scheduled programming!!

Very cool! Thanks for posting this, and all your hard work at your site.

Glad to hear Mr. Marr is getting his own Sig model! Nice!