Jeff Beck

"It's been on his pedalboard for the whole time. I know he loves the Klon and it's a really, really great sounding pedal. A little bit on the noisy side for me - just a little hissy - but in between the hiss there are some really nice notes that come out of it. Sometimes it will be tune specific. Some songs will require a little bit more drive than others. It's kind of because he rides the volume part quite a bit that whatever is closest to max, he's going to want to have that setting to a certain point. So then he can gauge the sensitivity on the guitar," says Jeff Beck's guitar tech. - Rig Rundown of Jeff Beck (the link needs to be replaced.)

Beck continues to use Marshalls, specifically a JCM2000 that supposedly shares very little circuitry with retail models and that he boosts with a Klon Centaur. The man has also enjoyed a flirtation employing a pair of dimed Fender Pro Jr. amps, and let's not forget his trusty Magnatone models.

"I have this one set at half-power, at 50 watts, running into a Marshall 1960B cabinet. So we're getting a little bit of speaker break up out of it. We're in the modern gain side of it, but if you notice the gain on it is actually quite low. And so the idea with this is to just have a slightly hairier sound out of this than what the Fender is doing. So it's just something to kick in, a little push over the cliff, as the great Nigel Tufnel once said. I was expecting this to be the main amp, but for some reason the Vibro-King is not the only amp he's using by any means. The way we're kind of selling on it now is that when he does kick this one it's going to be for the tunes that are kind of driving a little bit harder. But he is doing several tunes on this set that are more of a clean sound oriented thing so I think that's really more why. I don't think that he just likes the Fender over the Marshall. I just think that it fits the set better. This is defintiely the one that he likes to use quite a bit," says Jeff Beck's guitar tech.

In the article of Vintage Guitar (link below), there is said that Jeff Beck was using a couple of Fender Pro Juniors on the concert featured in the DVD "Rock ‘N’ Roll Party, Honoring Les Paul".

http://www.vintageguitar.com/9486/jeff-beck/

Guitar World:

Beck continues to use Marshalls, specifically a JCM2000 that supposedly shares very little circuitry with retail models and that he boosts with a Klon Centaur. The man has also enjoyed a flirtation employing a pair of dimed Fender Pro Jr. amps, and let's not forget his trusty Magnatone models.

"I think the one thing he does like about this pedal is the versatility. It's the fact that it has different circuits, like on the side. If you look down on the left hand side there will be like a reference to Hendrix, a reference to Clapton and then a Shaft thing. So basically it's two cry babies and a wah. The one thing that is really interesting that I really appreciate is that he still cares about his tone. So he'll get down and start tinkering, even right in the middle of the set, if it sounded great during sound check. But now there's people around and he's really going up. So it may not be the same type of vibe so he changes it up," says Jeff Beck's guitar tech. (the source is missing - Rig Rundown of Jeff Beck)

Yeah, I’ve got a Snarling Dog wah. That’s a radical pedal. I mean it’s one or two steps further than any wah pedal ever known. It’s got an active circuit, as opposed to just a battery-powered toggle pot. So it kicks in a lot more dB and a lot more sweep and a lot more depth variable in the wah-wah itself. You can preset it so it won’t take your head off, which is good. I’ve seen guys play it in a bar where it’s time to leave the building.

"This is the number one Start that he plays religiously, basically. It's a custom shop Strat Jeff Beck model, well worn and not relicked or anything like that. Since 1993, he's had it pretty much since then. I know that it has different pickups than what come in the normal Jeff Beck line guitar. These ones here were custom wound for him. It's a really, really great sounding guitar. As a Strat goes, it's pretty standard. The only thing is the bridge and middle pickups are wired together for the bottom tone control. The bridge, if you notice the setup, has the tramkind of pulled forward to get a lot of upward pull. It's the way that you can get this to float without cutting a recess or anything like that into the guitar. So that way he can go either side, either sharp or flat. He plays this guitar so it has to be in great shape all the time," says Jeff Beck's guitar tech.

"This is the main [amp] here. What I'm doing is I'm running the speakers upstage facing away. I have another Vibro-King back there that I'm essentially just using as a speaker cabinet. So I have it unplugged and then I have a speaker cable running back there, and then through a female-to-female barrel jack it's just going straight into the speakers there," says Jeff Beck's guitar tech. The main settings used on this amp are dwell (1), mix (1), tone (1), volume (5), treble (7), bass (3), mid (9), speed (3.5), and intensity (1).

See the gallery of the '95 tour on the linked page for a pic of Jeff Beck's "board" consisting only a Rat and an A/B switch. Photo's description says: "So, how does Jeff get that sound? Some massive effects rack right? Wrong, this is it. A Pro-Co Rat into an A/B switch which feeds either a 50W MKII Marshall or a '59 Reissue Bassman (which he doesn't use much), he also has onstage matching backup rigs. Delays/echos are added at the mixing board."

Jeff Beck talks about this modified Fender Telecaster from the start of the video, until 2:08.

In the YouTube video "Rig Rundown - Jeff Beck," Jeff Beck discusses using the Marshall 2061X Handwired 20W Amp Head. He notes that the amp, with all settings cranked, delivers great sound despite needing to keep up with his other amplifiers in terms of volume.

"The Rotosphere he just likes to add for color. It's not really a primary part of his tone, but he likes to kick that in for the big Leslie kind of sound. It only comes on every once in a while. There's not a set tune that it's on. He'll kick it in during a solo just because and then he'll kick it in a place where you wouldn't think that it would be," says Jeff Beck's guitar tech.

According to Beck's tech, Stevie Prior, they were still deciding on the delays to use for his solo shows, but really liked the El Capistan as a tape echo.

"The Aqua-Puss and the Carbon Copy are two things that I brought into it because at the beginning of the tour they were playing a Les Paul and Mary Ford tune called 'How High the Moon', and so we wanted to get a pretty good sounding slapback. The Aqua-Puss is really nice for that. The repeats are pretty accurate to the actual sound of the guitar, whereas with the Carbon Copy the repeats are a little bit on the darker side," explains Jeff Beck's guitar tech.

Beginning at about 30 seconds in this youtube clip of Antonioni's "Blow Up," Jeff Beck (left) can be seen playing through his Vox AC30. Given the film's release date of 1966 and the cosmetics of the Yardbird's Vox backline I would date this AC30 to 1964.

Guitar World:

Beck has said over the years that he ran Vox AC30s in the studio with the Yardbirds, and a key part of his sound during this period was a Tone Bender MK I.

Beck has said over the years that he ran Vox AC30s in the studio with the Yardbirds, and a key part of his sound during this period was a Tone Bender MK I.

"With the Carbon Copy the repeats are a little bit on the darker side. There's a couple of tunes where he'll use the Carbon Copy on where it doesn’t make it so that you notice it so much - it's subtle. The way we have it set is only for like three repeats. For the most part, [Jeff] likes to play very dry, so anything that is going to color the sound like that, he notices too much and it gets in the way," says Jeff Beck's guitar tech.

During his tenure with the Yardbirds, Beck used the famed blonde ’54 Fender Esquire with a shaved bass bout. Beck bought this guitar from John Walker of the Walker Bros in the mid Sixties and (regretfully) traded it to Seymour Duncan for a heavily modified Fender Telecaster.

In this Guitar World interview, Jeff Beck says, "I've got a nice guitar that somebody found for me in Memphis, a '55 [Gretsch] Duo-Jet, which I've been falling in love with."

According to Beck's tech, Stevie Prior, they were still deciding on the delay to use for his solo shows, but like the Brigadier as it sounds like a darker delay from the 80s.

According to Beck's tech, Stevie Prior, Jeff is using the reverb pedal for his solo shows.

Beck had switched to Marshall Super Leads by this point, aided by a wah pedal and a mysterious boost pedal that’s often discussed by Beck gear cognoscenti.

In the linked article you can see diagram of Jeff Beck's live setup from around 2003. It includes 3 Marshall JCM 2000 DSL 50 heads, one for the main sound, 2nd as a backup and 3rd as a slave for monitors.

His tech described the main one (marked as Proto 0001 on the diagram) as being a prototype version, different from what production models are. From 2010 interview with Steve Prior (link dead, archived version), Beck's tech at the time, for Guitar.com:

That’s what people don't understand really. How can I get that tone like Jeff Beck? You can’t because the amplifier you’ll never find anywhere else. If anything ever happened to that amplifier he'd be lost anyway. There’s just no amplifiers that sound like that one. Even Marshall don't know why it sounds the way it does. There’s a couple little extra components in the pre-amp gain stage, which shouldn’t really account for the sound of the amplifier. The amplifier is more bassy than any other DSL50. There are another DSL50s that don’t sound anything like it. It’s the first proto-type, so its circa 1994. He, alongside a few other guitarists, was given that one about 10 months before they revised the circuit board three or four times and then actually put that one into production. To this day that one still survives. The other nine that everybody else had all caught fire or developed faults, went straight back to Marshall, and then they fault-found as well as they could and ended up cleaning up the circuit board manufacturing techniques.

The backup head was a production model though:

Another Marshall DSL50, but it’s nothing like the original one. It’ll only be a backup for 10 seconds while I have the back off and put new tubes in. If it’s any more involved than that, he’ll have to just play that. Any one of the spares would be [suitable, but not as good] for the rest of the show. That’s the problem. We can’t, having tried and having researched the situation at great lengths with all the designers at Marshall, they can’t find any tangible reason why that amplifier sounds different to any other one.

halfway down the apge you'll see pictures of Jeff at The Boston Tea Party in 1969. The backling consists of a wall of plush amps. All the amps have 2 rows of channel controls with 3 master controls to the right by the power switch so they're probably P1000 guitar heads, which are fender twin reverb copies with master controls for reverb, trem depth and tremspeed.

Beck had switched to a sunburst ’59 Gibson Les Paul Standard toward the end of his time with the Yardbirds, and that guitar was used for the majority of Truth and some of Beck-Ola - though much of the latter album was done with a stripped Fifties Fender Strat.

Here's a photo of Jeff Beck playing a Les Paul Standard.

Jeff Beck has been using the Magnatone Super 59 Amp on tour alongside his JTM45s over the past few years. This information is supported by a post from Magnatone Amplifiers.

Mentioned here on Macaris website that Jeff Beck is a user of the Overdriver.

“One is a very early Custom Shop Relic ’51 Nocaster – about 15 or 16 years old – with Lindy Fralin pickups and, obviously, more-conventional wiring instead of the Nocaster wiring. The other one is also a ’51 Nocaster reissue, done for the NAMM show two years ago.” -via Vintage Guitar

This 1956 Gretsch Duo Jet is mentioned in this Guitar Center interview -

"Although Jeff bought a pair of 1956 Gretsch Duo Jets in the early Nineties to duplicate the tone of his hero, Cliff Gallup, he does not collect vintage guitars. 'I love old guitars, but I don't really collect them,' he admits."

According Jeff Beck's tech, Stevie Prior, Beck uses an Octave Divider during his solo shows that's controlled in an offstage rack by Prior.

After 12:41 in this video Jeff Beck shows the Maccaferri plastic guitar Jimmy Page gave him. He notes that Django Reinhardt played an instrument like this, and adds "just the fact that he had one is good enough for me".

Jeff Beck used a Princeton Reverb II in conjunction with a Twin to record his "Guitar Shop" album in 1989. "Beck chose not to go with his usual Marshalls when recording Guitar Shop, opting instead for a pair of eighties Fender combos - a Princeton Reverb II and a Twin. "The Princeton took care of tonal qualities that the other amp didn't have. It has an overload channel, so you can get midrange distortion. I tried recording using just the Twin, but without the Princeton the sound just vanished. (The engineer) noticed it right away and said "The sound isn't as good. You've got to put the Princeton back on". " (ed. Jeff Kitts, Guitar World Presents the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time, page 178)