Joe Perry

Pretty much, unless my son’s been down there. He’s been fooling around. But yeah, it’s pretty much set up that way. I have like three or four amps right in one corner that I use. The other amp that I really like a lot, either new or old, is the AC15. That’s a really nice amp.

Joe Perry often played with left handed Fender Stratocaster.

"Everybody needs a Klon - if you can find and afford one! I wish I had the money and the knowledge when those things came out and bought all of them I could find. We've got three of those. I took them out of the pedalboard for about a week, and every day he kept saying 'something's wrong, somethings wrong!" Then once we went back to the Klon he goes 'there you go, that's what I was missing!' It's true, this is really a part of his sound. The Klon has been in his rig for probably at least ten years. It's been a while. When they found them they bought three, him and Brad each bought three. And so he's got all three of them. He's got his Klons. They're all the gold ones, all the exact same color. Brad, I think, has one without the horse. It's just maybe a little bit different color," says Joe Perry's guitar tech.

An interview with Perry done in 2004:

Well, let’s see: The Klon — fortunately the guy lives in the Boston area, and Brad and I got some of the first ones he made. He asked us to try them, and God, they’re amazing. I’ve seen everybody from — well, the last time I looked at Jeff’s [Beck] pedal board, which consists of three pedals, one of them is a Klon.

In a live performance captured in April 2004 at the Office Depot Center, Joe Perry can be seen playing a Fender Stratocaster in Gold Sparkle, a guitar he frequently used during tours in the mid-90s.

Joe Perry uses a Supro Ozark in the music video for Shakin' My Cage. He also uses this guitar on Monkey on my Back.

An interview with Perry done in 2004:

Well, that’s the Ozark, because it’s kind of a beginner’s guitar, so it’s got a fat neck on it. I doubt it’s even got a truss rod in it. In fact there’s a picture of Hendrix — I think it was the first guitar Hendrix’s father bought for him, back in the — if you look at some really early, early pictures of Jimi, he’s playing one. It’s got one of those kind of horseshoe pickups on it, and the neck is kind of flat. So it really lends itself to playing slide. So I just raised the action a little bit, and I’ve used it on a bunch of songs. The most notable would be “Monkey on My Back,” that little guitar riff. And that’s what I use when I play it live.

"We have the old Joe Perry mainstay here which is the clear Dan Armstrong. The only difference of this guitar from the stock one is that all these pickups are all custom-made. We've got a couple of these made, they're pretty much identical. They sound great. What we do is it's an open-A, a Keith Richards style open-A with five strings, but what Joe does is throw a bass string on the bottom and we make it an A. So it gives it that growl. This is used in 'Draw the Line'. He used to beat it up a lot, he would throw it down a lot. He's kind of mellowed out with it now. It's a good work horse. It's one of his main guitars, for sure. I mean, if you think of Joe Perry this is one of the guitars you think of," says Joe Perry's guitar tech.

"This is the Chandler Lap Steel. This is the 'Rag Doll' guitar, that we used for 'Rag Doll', and this guitar here is tuned to an E-chord that he plays slight on it. It's the Chandler Joe Perry Lap Steel. It's a twelve string set here and thirteen string set on the bottom," says Joe Perry's guitar tech.

"When you think of Joe Perry this is the other guitar people think of. This is the Blinged version of the BC Rich Bich 10. This is the 10 string, and what this does is the D, G, B and the high E are all unison and these strings are actually different gauges because it gives it a little bit different sound, a little more clarity. It gives it that good warble. He uses this one on 'Living on the Edge' and whatever else he wants - this is a drop-D. The switches are all disconnected. They all do different things but for what we're using it for right now it became a lot easier for us just to make it a volume and a tone. So I rewired past all these because we would hit something and it would change the whole complexity of the tone, so we just went back to the volume and tone Les Paul style. So that's the BC Rich," says Joe Perry's guitar tech.

"This is another Echopark guitar called the Ghetto Bird. If you pick it up it's pretty chunky. It's got a really big neck - Joe loves the big necks. [Gabriel] brought this guitar to the studio and as soon as I picked it up I said 'Joe is going to want this one'. It just has everything that Joe likes, it's got that look of a good sexy guitar, and it's just got that feel. The neck is a big fat neck and it sounds really, really good. This has a P90 and a Humbucker on it. It only has a volume and a tone, which Joe really likes as well. A lot of guitars lately we're just keeping volumes and no tones. Like the black Les Paul has one volume and no tone. And that's kind of his new thing. He wants the amps to do all the work," says Joe Perry's guitar tech.

"This is a Dave Friedman amp, Dave Friedman from Rack Systems. This is a Dirty Shirley head. This head is pushing a 15 cabinet. It sounds so good - 5881s as well. Such nice drive with a little warmth to it. It's very warm which is why the 15s is very good. What that does is it gives him that feeling underneath that he likes to hear," says Joe Perry's guitar tech.

You can see Joe Perry playing a Danelectro while doing his soundcheck.

"He can't do a show without his Joe Perry. This is the Joe Perry Les Paul model #1. This is the first year that he did Les Pauls. This is a very, very cool guitar. He switches guitars depending on the night. He really relies on the way it feels. If he gets a guitar, and we'll make a setlist with the guitars on there, and something doesn't sound right or feel right to him, he'll be like 'I really like the way the Tele sounds tonight' so we'll go to Teles or a Strat. It's not unlike him to completely change mid-show and just throw it all out the window. But this guitar here is very, very, very good. This guitar right here uses Ernie Ball 9s for strings. I use 8s, 9s or 10s depending on what the guitars are," says Joe Perry's guitar tech.

"This is a six-string bass. It's like a small scale bass. This is an Ernie Ball. This here is used on the song 'Back on the Saddle' and Joe originally wrote it on a Fender, but that guitar was stolen many, many years ago. This is what we have to replace. It's amazing. It's got lots of growl and it's got a Floyd Rose on it. The tuning on this one is G, it's one whole step down - standard tuning one whole step down. It's very growly. He actually plays lead on it, which is pretty amazing to watch him go crazy all over this thing. The gauge strings are .045 to .105. You got to hear him just bend it. It's pretty amazing," says Joe Perry's guitar tech.

"We all know and love this guitar as the Billie Guitar. This is a Gibson Lucille that actually that actually doesn't have the F holes and it's missing two of its volume and tone. This guitar is a guitar that Gibson had made custom for Joe, and Joe had this artist, John Douglas, air brush it. John did an amazing job! If you flip it there's another picture on the back. This guitar is one of those rarities that it looks really cool but it really sounds good as well. So he doesn't play it just because it has his wife's picture on it, he plays it because it sounds really good," explains Joe Perry's guitar tech.

"The cool thing about the Flashback and the reverb pedal is two years ago I put these in Joe's rack. And they're still in here. The cool thing about that is that Joe changes weekly. I mean it's every week that we're changing to a new reverb. I've got boxes of reverb and delay pedals that I used to change weekly. And now we're all set and good to go. I can close the drawer, click it in place, and we're laughin'! So to TC I say: Thank You," explains Joe Perry's guitar tech.

"I own a couple of Jazz Chorus combos, the [JC-120] 2 x 12. Nothing else sounds like it … it has a sound all of its own. I keep a minimum of stuff in my studio, but I always have at least one JC onhand. There’s a band called White Lion, and he [the guitarist] used the Roland JC heads. I bought four heads off of him at the end of their tour, so I have four of those and a pair of the Jazz Chorus combos."

When we did Honkin’ on Bobo, I used — hold on, there’s another helicopter — on Honkin’ on Bobo I used a Champ — an old blonde Champ — for the raunch, and then a Epiphone with an 8-inch speaker, a little practice amp. I put the two of those side by side, I put a Royer on both of them, and that’s what I used for most of the Honkin’ on Bobo record.

"There are EL-34s in the Jet City. This is a 20-watt amp and it is actually powering a talkbox. Joe says this is one of the best sounding talkbox amps. In the studio we use this for everything, but out here it just really works for that talkbox. It sounds so good and he's able to get the drive and the clarity out of it that it needs," says Joe Perry's guitar tech.

You can see Joe Perry holding a Gretsch while doing his photoshoot with Ross Halfin

In this early photo of Aerosmith we can see Perry with a Red B.C. Rich Mockingbird.

"We have a bunch of these. This is just your run-of-the-mill custom shop Fender Strat. But what Joe has is that all of his Strats all have something a little different than the other one. Whether it's pickups that are different or a differerent tremolo system. This here has become a main guitar for this leg of the tour right now because it's a really good sounding Strat that really chimes through and cuts really well. We're very lucky to have this one," says Joe Perry's guitar tech.

The Les Paul that Joe Perry uses in this is the second of Joe Perry's Burst-era Les Pauls. Most people will recognize his 1959 Les Paul, but the 1960 was one that he used a lot before getting his '59 back from Slash.

"This is a custom shop Tele that he has. This is the 'No More No More' guitar and it's tuned in all Es and all Bs - that's it. This is what he plays on the intro, and when the lead comes up he changes guitars and throws this one behind his back and just plays his solo on a regular tuned guitar. And this is just a custom shop Tele with an interesting robotic looking pickup. It's an old Gretsch pickup from I don't know when. It's been in there forever. It came with the guitar," says Joe Perry's guitar tech.

"This is Joe Perry Les Paul #3. This guitar is brand spanking new this year. It's got the old Joe Perry name on there. When you flip it over it has the Joe Perry prototype on the back of the headstock. So we were in the studio talking about different guitars that Joe wanted this year and he wanted a lighter Les Paul with a tremolo on it. And they came up with this one. This one basically has like an Axcess body and what they've done is completely chopped away any of the meat that gave it weight so it's thinner now. It sounds really, really good. This is a Wilkinson Tremolo. I love the rollers, it's like my favorite part of it. We pull it back a whole step, that's the secret. Joe loves to go up and down, he loves to be able to bury and then get one whole step out of it on the other side. We don't know if this guitar will become a guitar that you can buy or not. We're not sure if it will become a production model. Joe is still trying to figure out if he wants it too because he really likes the fact that it's the only one," says Joe Perry's guitar tech.

"The flanger is basically, you know, just for a little … to add a little texture to it. It’s not a real heavy flanger," says Joe Perry's guitar tech.

"The funny thing is that the delay and reverb pedals are the only delay and reverb that have not had to change in two years. Like in 2010, we changed reverbs and delays every week. We then put those in and we never change them," says Joe Perry's guitar tech.

"This is the JTM-45, this is the reissue. It has the EL-34s in it as well. I have three: a main one and two backups," says Joe Perry's guitar tech.

"...and I was probably using an old Fender Twin from the ’50s."

Of all the great original 1959 Standards out there—a pretty small number to begin with—Joe Perry’s own Les Paul has long been acclaimed as one of the finest. The rich, road-worn character of this guitar, serial number 9-0663, is utterly moving, and it seems to throb with the wealth of music and experience earned over decades of being played on stages and in recording studios around the world. In Joe’s own words, “It’s got everything a great Les Paul is supposed to have. The neck isn’t quite as fat as, say, a ’54 Goldtop, but it’s still got a good, meaty neck. It’s not a high-output guitar, so it’s got a lot of tone… And it’s got all the natural sustain and warmth, and when you turn it up it growls.”

"This is just your standard Fender Telecaster with a B-Bender system in there. There's nothing absolutely special about his Tele except for the fact that it has a B-Bender on it. The bridge pickup on it is a Bartolini," says Joe Perry's guitar tech.