Weezer – Pinkerton

"In late 1994, Rivers purchased a vintage Electrocomp 101 monophonic synthesizer from a pawn shop in rural Connecticut. He paid a fraction of what these things are currently valued at by collectors. It saw use on several "Black Hole" demos, and finally appeared on Pinkerton's "Tired Of Sex" , "Getchoo", and B-side "I Just Threw Out The Love of My Dreams". He still has it today."

Mentions using it during the Pinkerton recording

Rivers Cuomo uses a Tobacco Sunburst Gibson Les Paul Custom, as mentioned in the "1995-1996 - Pinkerton" section of the article on Weezerpedia. Several photos show Rivers playing this guitar during the sessions for Pinkerton, and the headstock indicates it is a custom model.

Used on The Blue Album and Pinkerton, according to the following sources. The version is not specified in either.

Guitar World, March 1997, "Schoolhouse Rock" (as transcribed on Weezerpedia)

GW: Pinkerton, however, is gimmick-free.

Rivers: Yeah, we trimmed that part of ourselves—it was the natural thing to do. So I think we're also going to trim some of our audience, which is unfortunate. We were never one of the top bands like Green Day or Offspring anyway; we were always a notch below. Maybe now even two notches below. Yeah it's a bummer, but I don't really feel like I have a choice in the matter. I've got to do what I've got to do, and right now that means not making the gimmicky video and not using language that's quirky. It means speaking more directly. Maybe the audience will be smaller, but at least they'll be liking us for the right reasons.

GW: What guitars and amps did you use in making the record?

Rivers: I think I used Gibson Les Pauls. I don't remember whose they were, where they came from, what kind of specifications they had—but I know they were Gibsons. For amps I used Marshalls. I also used a Big Muff quite a bit. It was about as standard a setup as you could have.

Chris Shaw, Gearslutz, "Weezer Say It Aint So Chorus Vocal Sound", Comment #34

Ummm, Some corrections re: the Blue Album:

• Vocals were done with a U67 at Electric Lady and a U87 at Rics house (surf wax, and some bgvs)
• There were NO REVERBS OR DELAYS at all on the record (The sole exception being a long delay used to extend one of the feedback parts on Only in Dreams). Ocasionally I used a stereo delay from the Lexicon 300 to delay the room mics slightly to get a little more slap. The band used to come into the control room at the start of the day and turn off all of the delay / reverb based outboard gear.
• When we did the recall for the Say it In't So single the assistant on the session called me while he was recalling the mix because he thought we were missing a few pages of notes. The only piece outboard was an 1176 on the ld vocal. That's all I used. Everything else was just the SSL E.
• All BGVs were doubled or tripled - no obvious artificial chorus was used at all. The only effect I might have used would be an Eventide 910 set to 15ms on the left and 7.5 ms on the right. (harmonize ratio set to 1.00 (that thing always drifted slightly anyway). This was only used to widen the lead vocal in a very, very, very subtle way.
• The album was tracked on Electric Lady's Focurite Forte console in Studio A with the remote pres (the pres were in the live room and ran at line level to the console)(I posted some pics around here of it.). Some overdubs were done on the SSL G in studio C (I distinctly remember cutting the gtrs for in the Garage up there. I believe we used a Tele through a Big Muff using E. Lady's Fender Twin for that tone. We also cut the clean rhythm for Say it Ain't So up there on Ric's Jaguar using E. Lady's Fender Twin
• The bass break for In the Garage was my Electro Harmonix Graphic Fuzz (original, circa 1980) across the insert on the SSL.

"He also got a new main amp, a vintage 1967 (?) 200-watt Orange Matamp. However this did not end up on the Blue Album due to its constant fuse popping (later we figured out that it needed a bigger size fuse than what it said on the back).

Later, in 1995, Matt got a second Orange Matamp, which was very similar to the '67, except it was from approximately 1975. It looked almost new, but this was before they started re-issuing them, so we knew it was old.

On 'pinkerton' and on stage for later Weezer and Rentals tours, Matt went back to the GK, with a Sovtek Big Muff pedal for distortion, and used the Orange just for recording clean sounds and for a back-up. Eventually both Oranges were severely damaged - the '67 from the "Rhino Lad" incident during a '97 show in Richmond VA, and the '75 from a bad freight shipping incident. Their whereabouts and current condition are unknown." - Karl Koch, weezer.com

Apparently, one of these amps was auctoned off Ebay in 2010.

Wilson got this kit with Champaigne Sparkle finish directly from Ludwig in 1996, in which he broke into two separate kits. He left the smaller one at home and used the bigger one on "Pinkerton" and touring from 1996 to 1997.

Brian can be seen playing this amp in the music video for Keep Fishin’. He also known to use it during Blue and Pinkerton tours live, and maybe on Pinkerton itself.