Dan Auerbach

Premier Guitar meets up with Dan Johnson - guitar tech to Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys and pulls out the Harmony H78 at 13:29, "This is probably the one that people are going to be most familiar with. It's a Hamony H78. And he's been playing this for several years. Boy, maybe five years or something. This is what he still uses in the middle of the set when they do a few songs as just a two-piece again. Even though they have a bass player and keyboard player that are playing with them now, they walk off for four songs or more. And he plays this guitar because it has a very distinctive sound because it's totally hollow and has these kickin' pickups in it. I've seen a lot of guitars that have this model of them in it but this one in particular sounds amazing. I don't know what model they actually are but they are usually referred to as Gold Foils because they came in so many different guitars. But this guitar has three switches, one for each and volume and tone for each. We've never really used anything but the bridge pickup. He's always collected guitars so he's had quite a lot of them over the years, but this one he's had in his operation for some time. He bought it from one of my helpers at the guitar shop in Akron. I had a guy helping me working on this thing and it needed a little bit of work. He wasn't working on it at the time because we had other things to work on. Then Dan came in one day and saw it and said 'Woo, how much for that one?' So he didn't buy it that day, but we got it ready for the next time he came by - and he sure did. So he's been playing that for quite a while."

You can see and listen to Dan Auerbach playing the Harmony H78 during this live performance for SiriusXM.

An interesting interview with Dan Johnson - Dan Auerbach's guitar tech.

Photos of Auerbach with H78: Unknown, 2009, Dauwpop, 2009, Islington Assembly Hall, 2023.

Perfromances of Auerbach with H78: "ThickFreakness", BBC Radio 1, 2012, "Same Old Thing", Governor's Ball, 2015, "Have Love Will Travel", NOS Alive, 2023

"This is the one that is his current favorite. It's a '64 Guild Thunderbird. It has a Bo-Diddley look to it. You don't see too many people through the history of rock-n-roll guitars playing this model for some reason. And I don't know why because it's awesome. It's got an amazing headstock shape. It's just not symmetrical. And I don't believe it's on any other Guild model either. I did have to do some work to it, but it's largely original. Of course, I did a setup, I did some fret work, I carved the saddles a few notches and other stuff to fine tune it. This bridge pickup didn't work so we had to have some coils made for it. Dan bought this shortly before we did Saturday Night Live last December. In fact, very shortly. He came in and said 'I need this guitar to work,' and it was a bit of a project. You would see this bridge and tremolo arrangement on a Hagstrom from the mid to late 60s too. I'm not sure who made them, maybe Burns or something like that. It's a great tremolo; it stays in tune great. Dan uses the tremolo a lot but he uses it gently, or fast but still gentle. He never tries to get crazy with it. The most amazing weird feature is that it has a stand built right into the back. It has a magnet too to keep it from coming up, but it doesn't work that great. We don't use that because I have a fancier stand that holds the set of guitars," says Dan Auerbach's guitar tech about the Guild S-200 Thunderbird Electric Guitar.

"The Boss Super Octave and the phaser, those are together in one loop. That's the 'Tighten Up' sound at the end," explains Dan Auerbach's guitar tech about the Boss OC-3 SUPER Octave Pedal.

Dan shows this fuzzbox in a gear rundown, around 3:40 in the video.

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.

"This is a regular Tremolo," remarks Dan Auerbach's guitar tech about the Boss TR-2 Tremolo Pedal.

Taken from this interview which also discusses the studio pedalboard used by Dan:

It’s just an analogue delay. I think they try to make the line-amp in it sound like the Maestro Echoplex EP-3 solid-state line-amp, which has a really cool sound. That pedal is just a great analogue delay. There’s a bunch of fun sounds in there.

"This one is dry. That's like two tweed deluxes in one amp. It's very squishy sounding. It's on all the time. This one has a couple of Eminence Red Coat. I think that's a copy of a Vox," says Dan Auerbach's guitar tech about the Victoria Double Deluxe Amp.

This guitar was commonly used by Dan early in his career. In this live performance of Thickfreakness, posted in 2007, you can see the guitar clearly at around 1:35. In 2017 Vintage Guitar interview, Auerbach mentioned that he used a late 60s Fender Telecaster on his 2017 solo album, "Waiting on a Song". It's possibly this Telecaster, visible in a 2017 performance of "Cherrybomb".

Auerbach used another Telecaster in 2018 at his Capitol Theatre performance. Judging by the color, and the white binding, it could be a 1960 or 1966 Telecaster, as seen in the photo.

Dan Auerbach's rig includes an Boss PH-3 Phase Shifter Pedal that is connected on the same loop as a Boss OC-3 SUPER Octave Pedal.

Incorrect. Faceplate reads, "JTM45" at the 01:36 mark.

"Dan's next guitar, chronologically, would be this one, another Harmony. It's a StratoTone. It's obviously had a lot of work done to it too. It has different tuning keys; I made new knot for it. Dan's dad deals antiques, and one of his cohorts or accomplices in the antique business gave Dan this guitar. But it didn't have any parts at all. It didn't have any tuners, no pick guard, no pickups, no Bigsby or anything. I think it had that [white] switch. Anyway, he said 'I want to make this work,' and so I got a set of Lindy Fralin pickups. This old Bigsby I think I had in my shop already. I made that pickguard. I was able to figure out, well it was pretty obvious, when you take the pickguard off its bright red underneath there because this awesome two-tone burst used to be a three-tone burst, like many from around maybe 1962 or whenever this is from - that era. The red on many sunbursts just dissipates, it just comes out, it just disappears like a three-tone stratocaster a lot of times becomes over time. So I just copied the image and made a pickguard to fit it. I put these Fralins in, the Bigsby on. Nothing really fancy. He plays this one in open-G tuning. For right now he's only playing it on one song, 'Run Right Back,' which is on the new record. Although he recorded a few of the other songs in that tuning, he's transposed them to standard just for ease. But this one particular song has that powerful open-D on the bass string and it has to be in that tuning to make it and be effective. It's heavy duty, and it's got a pretty heavy-duty sound as well because those are P-90s, they just crunch as they should," says Dan Auerbach's guitar tech about the Harmony StratoTone Electric Guitar.

"I do have a loop of cables that come out just for this pedal. This is the only and actual pedal that signal is coming out to and back during the show. It's in one of the loops, so it only comes on when he's using it, and that's for the intro to 'Lonely Boy.' It's the Super Shifter and he uses the Tremolo arm. We took the analog appraoch because you have to step on the pedal itself to actuate it. There's no remote. It does have an expression pedal jack, but you'd have to have another expression pedal to make it work. And if you step on the pedal it just dips the signal an octave and it comes back up when you release it. It's so much easier to do it that way. That's the way it was designed in the first place. So for that riff I have a buffered signal that comes all the way out here to this pedal and all the way back to the rig. It just comes on when he plays that riff and then we move on to a cleaner signal path. I'm just trying to keep all the time available his straight-into-amplifier sound because anything that you put in the path of that is not through bypass or splitters. Splitters usually buffer, although the devices we're using don't. They just transform or isolate splitters. So it sounds exactly like if you had just plugged into the amp," explains Dan Auerbach's guitar tech about the Boss Super Shifter PS-5.

In the video you can see Dan Auerbach using a white Ibanez Custom SG with three humbucker pickups, while his band "The Black Keys" perform "Set You Free". During 2023 and 2024, Auerbach uses white Custom SG mostly for "Gold on the Ceiling", as seen on this 2024 KROQ performance.

From 2010 Premier Guitar interview.

I’ve got shelves of pedals—sick amounts of pedals. But I swear, I use the same pedals I’ve always played. I bought an early-1970s Ibanez Standard Fuzz pedal—the octave fuzz with the two sliders. I’ve been using it since the first record, and I cannot top it.

When touring Attack & Release in 2008 and 2009, Dan Auerbach used a Analogman Sun Face Fuzz Pedal. The pedal was also mentioned in Auerbach's interview with Guitar World (published in November 2022 issue). Auerbach mentioned that he used the pedal for "over 20 years", and had used it while recording "Didn't I Love You".

From Auerbach's guitar tech:

This is a vintage companion fuzz. And the companion fuzz also goes into this EQ so that we can cut some of the lows and bring back some of the mids that are scooped out. It's a very cool octave fuzzy sound, but it kind of scoops the mids out. Even though it gets a whole lot louder, you have to bring that back into it,

Auerbach mentions Shin-Ei Companion as one of his favourite pedals in 2012 Guitar World interview. In 2012 Vintage Guitar interview, he uses Shin-Ei Companion fuzz to push the smaller amps that he uses.

"It's heavy duty, and it's got a pretty heavy-duty sound as well because those are P-90s, they just crunch as they should. First of all, because we're from Akron and we love Akron things we use SIT strings. I have a long relationship with SIT Company because the guy who started that company happened to own the guitar shop where I started my guitar fixing career. I still use those strings in my shop. Dan's always used them. They're quality strings. He pretty much sticks to the .011-.050 gauge on most of the guitars. All the other ones are in standard tuning. And that gauge still works for this one even with the drop tuning," says Dan Auerbach's guitar tech about the SIT Strings S1150 Medium Light Power Wound Nickel Electric Guitar Strings.

"This is unsual. It's all made by the Shin-Ei Company. It's a Japanese fuzz wah, although we don't use the wah part. It's got a real mid-range sound which is a lot different than the Big Muff," says Dan Auerbach's guitar tech about the Rosac Electronics Nu-Wa Fuzz Pedal.

An EarthQuacker Devices Hoof can be seen at 10:29 in this video.

Its numbered as "8" on this picture.

“This is my pedalboard for the studio,” explains Dan, before we pick through a sample of his boutique and vintage stompbox collection.

“I’ve also got a whole rack next to it that’s connected on a separate switcher that’s all linked up, so I’ve got about 20 wildly different sounds that I can call on instantly. It’s all meant for ease of use, and being able to cut fast.”

"Dan's favorite choice right now is yellow Tortex turned black and printed. It's actually the old yellow Tortex picks. We had them made of course in black and they have the Black Keys logo from the kick drum. That's actually Patrick's artwork right there, because Patrick has traditionally always done the kick drum with a Sharpie. We took a close-up and sent it to the company and they put that image on the pickups," says Dan Auerbach's guitar tech about the Dunlop Standard Tortex .73 Yellow Guitar Picks.

In this newest rig rundown, at 3:05 Dan's tech talks about using the El Capistan as a backup because "it's super quiet".

"It has the Earthquaker Devices' Terminal, which is a great fuzz pedal. We have it dialed up so that it's barely on...a manageable fuzz that doesn't feedback like crazy," says Dan's tech, at 10:42 in this video.

Dan Auerbach's guitar tech:

This one has some reverb. It has a more Fender, spikey, trebley sound. It's a traditional so it's got a little more chime to it. It's on all the time. This one has two 25-watt Greenbacks and two vintage 30s.

In 2012 Vintage Guitar interview, Fender Quad Reverb was mentioned as one of Auerbach's touring amps.

We spotted an MXR M-108 Ten Band Graphic Equalizer Pedal in Dan Auerbach's rig during in this rundown video.

"This is a great Mustang for anyone looking for a cool looking Mustang. It plays better than any Mustang I’ve ever used! And i’m not just saying that!" says Dan Auerbachs, as quoted in this article.

In this photo, Dan Auerbach is seated playing a white Fender Stratocaster next to Patrick Carney. The guitar was also mentioned in Auerbach's interview with Guitar World (published in November 2022 issue). Another Fender Stratocaster from 1954 was used to record "Lonely Boy" and was used throughout "El Camino".

In 2012 Vintage Guitar interview, Auerbach mentioned that he used a 1958 Fender Stratocaster on "El Camino". This could possibly be the guitar that he is seen with on Hermanos Gutiérrez 2022 music video for "Tres Hermanos".

In this 2008 photo of Auerbach performing, the EarthQuaker Hummigbird can be seen in his pedalboard.

Altec 1567A can be seen at 1:15