Ric Ocasek

Thinking back to the tone Ric had on those early Cars records, I listened to a few Marshalls myself and the one that sounds the closest to what Ric was using at that time to my ears is the Marshall JMP 2230 50 watt JCM800 - which was amongst the most popular amplifiers in use by most professional rock groups of the period.

"Guitars? My favorite ones are always Gibsons. Fenders like the Jaguar I'll use on stuff like 'My Best Friend's Girl.' clicky stuff where I'm lust playing eighth notes. The Gibsons I like for more distorted, bigger, raw kinds of sounds." One of them is a '54 Fretless Wonder; the others arc mostly late 50s and early 60s Les Paul' TV models he picked up on various Cars tours. Curiously, Ocasek's guitars all come in red, white or black finishes except for a lone acoustic Martin. "I can't use a guitar with a natural finish. I don't like the look of wood guitars." Whatever their color, they all go through a 50-watt Marshall amp. Everything else is plugged straight into the board.

The Daily Event's Blog posted an entire article from the "Shake IT Up" album era talking about The Cars gear

http://dailyeventsbookpagethree.blogspot.com/2007/04/cars-musician-magazine-shake-it-up-1982.html

"He has a Dean guitar that he uses in concert, but not in the studio "because I think it's too bright." He has a 55 Les Paul double-cutaway that he uses a lot, and also an SG and a regular Les Paul, but "not a heavy one, because I can't hold 'em up. I'm too skinny." His strings are D'Addario mediums, and his amp is an Ampeg V-4, "because I can twist the midrange up a lot. I like midrange in a guitar.""