The Black Keys – Brothers

Auerbach's guitar tech about Supro Martinique:

We have this Supro. I have to admit there are so many models of these that I don't remember this one off hand. But I am very familiar with them, I've had several of them myself. The Supro and the National are pretty much the same guitar really. The shape is different. It's a fiberglass body bolted together. It has a very interesting bridge pickup too. There's a piezo pickup and some coils inside the bass of that bridge. It's an interesting sound. It kind of sounds like an acoustic guitar but not really. I mean not compared to modern standards. This has the typical National hot single coils - they really crunch. It has lots of knobs; everyone likes that. The thing about it is I've had to do quite a lot of work to it. I've had to refret it and adjust the bridge and secure too so it would stay in tune. This has a truss rod in it, but it's the old box style, like an old Martin would have. It's not adjustable. Unfortunately, on a rock-n-roll guitar to have good action that's playable and clear you have to be able to really fine tune that. The only way to do that is not in the field, it's in the shop because you have to rig it up with the right amount of bow and then you have to test - take the strings off a lot of times until you get it right. Then you can finally polish and recrown the frets and finish the job off. It's a little bit of a process but it's super stable. I did that probably three years ago and hasn't needed anything since then. This song is mostly used for the Brothers - anything from the Brothers. Not every song but ones like 'Tighten Up' and 'She's Long Gone' and a couple of other ones too.

Auerbach acquired Supro Martinique around 2007, and the guitar was used on "Howlin' for You", according to 2022 Rolling Stone interview.

It has like a DI sound that’s really weird and we used it a bunch on that record. It’s got three positions. Forward is this pickup [the neck], back is this [the bridge pickup] and when you go here [the final setting] there’s a piezo pickup, which I think is under the bridge. It’s sort of like an acoustic pickup, which is not intended to go through a fuzz pedal, you know? [laughs]. Which is what we did and you get this weird, buzzy, thin, cool sound and we used this a bunch throughout the record.

Photos of Auerbach with Martinique: Lollapallooza, 2009, Unknown, 2013.

Here is Dan at The Wiltern on Sept 19, 2019 playing "Howlin' for You" on a Gretsch Bo Diddley with a Bigsby tailpiece and slightly modified knobs. This show kicked off their 2019 "Let's Rock" tour after an almost 5-year hiatis.

As seen in the second 0:18 of the Brothers Deluxe Remastered 10th Anniversary Edition, one of the photos contained in vinyl shows Dan Auerbach using a rickenbacker 4000 bass guitar in a studio recording.