Here’s the 10-string that was used and abused by one of Auerbach’s guitar heroes, Glenn Schwartz. Some notable things Glenn did to this instrument are the extended f-holes, swapped in the solid-brass tailpiece that goes through the whole guitar, and because Glenn was very religious, he believed that if you played music for the Lord, you played a 10-string instrument, so he added the four strings to the lower bout. All of Auerbach’s instruments take SIT .011–.050 strings.
Inspired by Mississippi juke-joint legend T-Model Ford, aka James Lewis Carter Ford, Auerbach tracked down this Peavey Razer. The homage is complete with the “T Model The Taledragger” stickers that were on Ford’s beloved Razer. The electronics have been upgraded and the stock pickups have been substituted with DeArmond gold-foils from a Harmony. The tailpiece is from a Kay and tech Dan Johnson machined the bridge and vibrato arm from brass.
Here is one from the old days—a lawsuit-era Ibanez modeled after a 1961 Les Paul Custom aka the first SG.
“I gotta admit, I got this guitar because of these absurd furniture nails,” admits Dan Auerbach. This lawsuit guitar was upgraded with Lollar Lollartrons and an old Bigsby off his Gretsch Duo Jet. Dan Johnson believes this came from one of Neil Young’s guitars as the vibrato was a gift from longtime Young tech Larry Cragg. Ironically, after purchasing the guitar and sitting with it in his living room, he realized it’s the same lawsuit guitar on Junior Kimbrough’s All Night Long, which was a major influence. Billy Sanford, the guitar man behind the “Oh, Pretty Woman” lick, coined the guitar “Nails in My Coffin” because of the guitar body’s rivets the nameplate on the nut cover. Perfect!
It’s no shock to any guitar dork that Auerbach is attracted to odd-shaped instruments. A Gretsch employee reached out to Dan Johnson and wanted to send Auerbach a G6138 Bo Diddley Firebird. The band received it while rehearsing for the Let’s Rock tour at the Wiltern in Los Angeles. The Dans agreed that the guitar needed to be stripped of its red top, so Johnson got to work. Once it was removed, they wanted to stain it like a piece of furniture from the ’70s, but it was late and Johnson didn’t think he could find a hardware store open around midnight. Lucky enough, a Wiltern maintenance worker knew where in the basement he could find the necessary woodworking supplies. Beer in hand, Johnson stained the guitar and let it dry overnight.
Here is a copy of a copy of a copy. Let us a explain. The Italian brand Eko made a signature guitar in the mid-’60s for their version of the Beatles, the Rokes. (Think along the lines of Mosrite building Ventures models coinciding with the surf-rock juggernauts.) Then the Japanese company Kawai made a copy of that in the late ’60s and it was nicknamed the “Flying Wedge.” And as Auerbach does, he bought a Kawai model on eBay and it was shipped directly to Johnson. It was cheap. It was horrible. It wasn’t playable. So, to make good on the bad bargain, Johnson started his own flying-wedge project. It incorporates flavors from its misfit predecessors including Lonnie-Mack’s-Bigsby-Flying-V workaround and machined parts reminiscent of Paul Bigsby’s early work. It has a chambered bird’s-eye maple body and Firebird-style mini-humbuckers. The project was finished just before the Atlanta show on November 9th and played onstage for the first time that same night.
This is a one-owner 1959 Gibson Les Paul that Dan Auerbach bought this year. He’s already recorded with it at Easy Eye and has truly enjoyed owning it. While he admits that a ’59 ’burst isn’t a guitar you’d attach to him because so many other famous guitarists have forged history with it, he couldn’t turn down the opportunity to have such an inspiring instrument. “I had no intention of buying a ’burst,” says Auerbach. “I’ve never even seen one before I walked into that guitar store and bought it from the owner’s sister.”
No, you’re not looking at a Stonehenge-sized Tetris wall, it’s Auerbach’s current lineup of amps.
While doing tour rehearsals at Easy Eye, they were going through the gear vault and brought out the usual suspects—The Marshall, the Danelectros, the Fender Quads. But something was lacking, so the Dans headed down to Nashville’s Carter Vintage and scored two early ’70s silverface Fender Bandmaster Reverb TFL5005D heads (shown above). They were keen on getting a fresh Fender wrinkle because Auerbach needed the squishier punch you get from a tube rectifier. The other one tours alongside its brother and stays in the wings as a backup.
As seen in the 2012 and 2014 Rig Rundowns, a big part of Auerbach’s tone was provided by this Fender Quad Reverb platform. (Again, a nod to Ohio hero Glenn Schwartz who used two of these beasts onstage.) Now the Quads are extension cabs for the Bandmaster Reverb head and are loaded with 12" Tubby Tone Alnico 25-watt Hempcone speakers.
While Auerbach did have a 40-watt Danelectro Challenger in his last Rundown (1956 model), he now travels with two different ones from 1949 and 1950. It does have a 15" speaker in it, but the 1950’s speaker is bypassed and feeds into both the Marshall 8x10s. The 1949 Challenger goes direct to FOH for clean baseline tone.
Here’s the backside of this gem.
While the Bandmaster Reverb does have some ’verb dialed into its sound, the bulk of the dark, deep, lush, springy goodness you hear is from the Premier Reverberation unit that’s coupled with a Maestro Echoplex EP-4 for space-rock guitar solos.
The Canadian company helped BTO’s Randy Bachman after he unsuccessfully ran a Fender Champ into his Marshall head. It probably sounded uh-mazing before the combo was fried. So the Garnet H-Zog was invented to allow Bachman to run a lower-powered tube head, as a preamp, before his full stack. Auerbach adopted the approach and uses the no-load tube preamp in front of all his amps. The H-Zog itself is a tube amp with a single 12AX7 and a single 6V6 powering it.
Steve Marion aka Delicate Steve uses this 1966 Melody Maker SG a lot playing behind the Black Keys. In a 2019 interview with PG, he had this to say about it, “The guitar I played on the whole record [Till I Burn Up] was sold to me by my friend, a guitarist named Ofir Ganon, who is the only guitar snob-gear guy whose opinion I care about at all. Ofir sold me a ’66 Gibson Melody Maker SG, which had PAFs in it. The whole album is that guitar.” Steve normally plays .009s because he likes how they’re harder to control and the subtly of strings moving around, but he went with .010s to have more consistent sound for the Keys gig.
On previous Delicate Steve projects before 2019’ Till I Burn Up, Marion used an Epiphone Ltd. Ed. Joe Bonamassa 1958 “Amos” Korina Flying-V. He was gifted this Gibson Custom Shop Flying V VOS from the historic company before embarking on the Let’s Rock tour. It is all original and comes loaded with Custom Buckers.
Appropriately, Steve Marion uses this 2015 Gibson Firebird on the new Let’s Rock song “Eagle Birds.”
Definitely the most Black-Keys-ish of Steve Marion’s arsenal, this 1960 Silvertone Jupiter 1423 sees stage time for songs like “Tighten Up” and “Thickfreakness.”
The only request that Dan Auerbach gave the rest of the bandmates was to try and work with the Fender Super Reverb. (More of a suggestion than demand.) Delicate Steve has enjoyed his time with the Supers because they’re very different than his typical setup. In Delicate Steve he uses an Orange Micro Terror that provides a squashed, overloaded, overdriven sound whereas the Super he uses with the Keys offers the neutral pedal platform that needs to cover all the synth and keyboards with his guitar.
A part of his solo setup that’s crept in the Keys show is this custom-built HammerTone head that is chasing the sound of an old tweed Gibson GA-5 Skylark combo. Dan Johnson suggested that Marion run the head through a Palmer PGA-4 speaker simulator/load box and into the Fender Deluxe Reverb’s speaker.
To replicate all the synth, keys, and organ tones heard on the Keys’ albums Brothers, El Camino, and Turn Blue, Steve Marion travels with a hefty board of goodies starting with the Auerbach-favorite Electro-Harmonix Russian-font Big Muff. The rest of the stomp station has an MXR Carbon Copy Deluxe, Xotic EP Booster, JHS Colour Box, EHX C9 and Pitch Fork, Boss TR-2 Tremolo, ZVEX Mastotron, Valeton Coral Mod (a Delicate Steve fave), Pigtronix Octavia, and a Styrmon BigSky. Everything is harnessed by the RJM Mastermind PBC/10 loop controller.
Zach Gabbard and his brother Andy have a longtime connection with the Keys. They were at the band’s first show in Akron and their band Buffalo Killers’ second LP Let It Ride was produced by Auerbach. Coming full circle, Zach was recruited to play bass and sing background vocals on the Let’s Rock tour. Zach’s No. 1 is this Gibson SG Standard Bass—his first short-scale instrument and he absolutely loves it: “I’ve been working too hard for to long [laughs].” It’s a completely stock 2019 model and is strung up with flatwounds.
For this gig, Zach Gabbard moves the Earth with an all-tube Ampeg SVT-VR 300-watt head that powers a matching 8x10 cab.
In addition to running through his cabs, Zach Gabbard uses a Palmer PDI-CTC to provide FOH a clean, pure signal from the Ampeg SVT-VR.
At Zach Gabbard’s feet rest two pedals—an old EarthQuaker Devices Monarch fuzz and a Boss TU-3 Chromatic Tuner keeping his notes in check.
“This is my favorite guitar I own because it’s the best feeling guitar I’ve ever played,” declares Andy Gabbard on his Gibson Les Paul. He safely added the Bigsby via a non-invasive Vibramate, but the rest of the guitar is stock. Gabbard sees his role in the current three-guitar attack is to trust his feeling, following the duo, and accent everything that Dan is doing.
Another guitar, another Gibson for Andy Gabbard. This 2019 Firebird was a pre-tour gift from Gibson. Andy digs it because “it looks cool and it cuts through.”
“This is the guitar I’ve always wanted,” admits Andy Gabbard. This Gibson Les Paul Standard '50s P-90 Gold Top. Gabbard remarks that he had to put a Bigsby on their because his picking hand while hit the strings and then phantom shake because he’s so used to the vibrato arm being used.
For Andy, it doesn’t get any better than Gibson guitars into a Fender amp, and the combo in this equation is a Super Reverb.
An MXR Brown Acid Fuzz, Pigtronix Gate Keeper Micro, and EarthQuaker Devices Dispatch Master are the few stomps help Andy Gabbard get the job done.
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Steve Marion might not be a particularly well-known figure amongst the mainstream of guitar music cognoscenti (yet, at least), but there’s a distinct possibility you’ve heard his playing before. Marion releases his own guitar-focused instrumental albums under the moniker Delicate Steve, but has worn a wide variety of hats over the years, working as a session guitarist, producer, and songwriter with a cavalcade of hip, adventurous, and downright legendary artists since initially gaining notoriety for his intriguing guitarwork within New York City’s ever-eclectic music scene.
Marion’s first two albums as Delicate Steve (2011’s Wondervisions and 2012’s Positive Force) were released on David Byrne’s wildly diverse Luaka Bop label, and those offerings earmarked the New Jersey-bred guitarist as a standout in a scene that really embraced musicians who reveled in abnormal styles or framed their work in off-kilter ways, but came from a technically proficient place. In many ways, Brooklyn’s music scene in the mid-aughts mirrored the freewheeling, intellectual, and anti-establishment spirit of Manhattan’s ’80s No Wave movement—which famously influenced Sonic Youth—but with a much less sonically combative attitude.
Watch the animated official video for “Till I Burn Up,” the title track from Delicate Steve’s latest album.
So, what exactly is it about Delicate Steve’s music and Steve Marion’s guitar playing that’s not only allowed him to build one of the most impressive and varied resumes of anyone working today, but also garner legitimately strong reviews—and remember, these are instrumental guitar records—from famously cutthroat outlets like Pitchfork? Steve Marion’s approach to the guitar shirks almost all of the clichés guitarists typically love about the instrument.
The latest Delicate Steve album, Till I Burn Up,is a perfect point of entry for those uninitiated to the cult of Steve. On his new LP, Marion has embraced what he describes as his “unhinged” side and found the confidence to allow Delicate Steve—formerly his sole creative outlet—to become a space for truly unfiltered self-expression. It’s undoubtedly a rock ’n’ roll album, but one that swings with the swagger of contemporary pop hits, the square-wave intrigue of classic prog, and the bubbly ambiance of ’70s African rarities. There are moody moments (“Ghost,” “We Ride on Black Wings”), but the record doesn’t take itself too seriously. Taking influence from albums that had flopped upon release, but would go on to become well-respected and influential (like Dr. John’s Gris-Gris and some of Iggy Pop’s weirdest work), Till I Burn Up seems like a raging party attended by each of Marion’s many musical personalities—none of which rely too much on classic guitar tropes, but remarkably never come off like they’re trying particularly hard to be futuristic.
Part of that trick is that for many years now, Marion’s key influence has been the work of soul singers rather than other guitarists, and he’s worked hard to posture his guitar as a kind of second voice. Additionally, while Marion is an extremely capable player, he avoids histrionic flash altogether, which lends his music an air of playfulness and means there’s never a moment on Till I Burn Up that sounds like it’s got something to prove.
Whether adopting the timbre of a synth or copping the vibe of a distorted and auto-tuned pop vocal, Marion’s guitar is always about conveying a vibe and a melody, and his slide guitar in particular—which is worlds away from anything one might describe as bluesy—has a distinctly human quality, but is very much its own thing, much like how George Harrison created his own inimitable vocabulary as a bottleneck player.
Premier Guitar spoke with Marion as he was knee deep in a tour to promote Till I Burn Up. The jovial anti-guitar hero from Jersey opened up about his new record, his background and philosophy as a player, his motivation when it comes to Delicate Steve, and even shared the tale of his recording session with Paul Simon.
As someone who has played on and produced many records by other artists, what’s your motivation when it comes to the instrumental guitar stuff, particularly on Till I Burn Up?
I feel happy with where I am in my career and I say “yes” to working on almost anything, if it seems even remotely interesting, because I like to work. Everything that’s happened for me so far has been through friends or friends-of-friends, so it doesn’t necessarily feel like I’m exactly in-demand so much. I feel content with that, but it doesn’t feel like my playing is the thing everyone needs on their track.
Until a couple of years ago, my whole identity as a musician was just a guy making instrumental guitar records. The only way I could export my creativity was into Delicate Steve, but having more outlets has made this a creative place where I can actually be a bit more unhinged. That’s a recent development, and the first three studio albums, when Delicate Steve was really my only outlet, the music was maybe a little less playful because of that.
On his new album, Till I Burn Up, Marion played just one guitar—a ’66 Gibson Melody Maker SG equipped with PAF humbuckers.
Till I Burn Up is a bit looser than your past albums and has a fuzzy layer around the edges in a fun way.
I was really paying attention to artists I like, like Iggy Pop or Dr. John—artists I was casually getting back into at the time. Dr. John’s debut album [Gris-Gris] was a critical and commercial failure when it came out, but it’s now on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list. It’s kind of funny how that works. Looking at that phenomenon, how weirder records are initially received versus how they’re remembered gave me some inspiration to be more free in my own music.
I’m one of the only “indie” artist making instrumental guitar records that’s even sort of on the radar, so it does take a lot of work to get people to pay attention to it. Until this last record, I was trying hard to produce something that was really accessible, but this is the first record where I’ve embraced feeling like my music doesn’t really fit in. There’s not a lot out there that excites me in a way I want to be a part of, so this record is where I finally said “fuck it” and decided to pave my own path.
I hear that come through in some of the more aggressive, synth-like fuzz tones you used on songs like “Freedom” and out-there moments like the kitschy space boogie of “Rubberneck.”
It’s so boring to see artists continually put out what they’re expected to put out and pander to this really tiny indie world—which I guess I’m a part of—and not push themselves creatively. I’m being really negative right now, but it just seems like everyone is trying to fit into whatever box they’re already in, whether they’re a punk-rock person or an indie or electronic musician.
I definitely want to push the box I’m supposed to be in. I like to play with elements of experimental music because it’s not really expected of me or of instrumental guitar records. Everyone thinks my guitars sound like synths, but I was thinking more along the lines of Kanye West’s vocals, where it’s a distorted and Auto-Tuned room mic, like on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. My inspiration was trying to channel a reverent second take on that.
That’s unexpected, but you’ve done a session for a Kanye West record, right?
Kanye sampled one of my songs. I know a producer brought it in, Boogz Da Beast from Chicago, who is one of Kanye’s old friends and apparently a big Delicate Steve fan. There’s only a little snippet of the track out and while I haven’t heard the whole song yet, my old record label says it’s really cool and Kanye actually sings my guitar part. That’s something I’ll always be proud of! I think Kanye West is a creative genius and he’s a big influence on me, so knowing that he was inspired to turn something from my music into a song ... well, that’s just so cool to me.
