Steve Clark

In the music video for "Photograph", Steve can be seen playing his Gibson Les Paul XR-1. The guitar can first be seen at :22s in the video.

For Def Leppard's "Hysteria" tour, Steve Clark played a white LP Custom with a Khaler tremolo and three pickups. He can be seen playing it in the "Pour Some Sugar On Me" video. The guitar can first be seen at :11s.

Steve had endorsed Gibson. His gear during the Hysteria tour consisted of 2 Les Paul Custom’s (both equipped with Kahler trem units), 2 Gibson Clark with Cherry Red DoubleneckFirebirds, and 2 Gibson Doublenecks (EDS-1275 models).

The Gibson Firebird in photo 8 is a limited production 1976 Firebird, which was made to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the founding of the U.S.A., is mounted with a Kahler #2200B tremolo. While it looks similar to a vintage Firebird III, there is no binding on the fingerboard and the quickest way to tell them apart is by the unique red,white & blue Firebird logo on the scratch plates with stars and a small “76” – standard Firebird logos are plain and all red. This is the most visible way of noticing one. On the rear of the headstock it should also have Limited Edition stamped on the back and if it was made in 1976 the serial number should begin with a “00”.

Later on the Hysteria Tour when “Love Bites” was released as a single Steve would be seen on stage with a Fender Stratocaster – which was a fairly rare thing to see with Steve being primarily a Gibson man at this point in his career.

This Stratocaster is the one that he uses in the video for the“Love Bites” single. Steve had stated in an interview in Guitarist magazine in 1988 that he had a Fender Stratocaster fitted with Bill Lawrence pick-ups. Bill Lawrence pick-ups are renowned for their excellent tonal qualities. I assume that it is this guitar he’s referring to regarding those pick-ups, but I cannot be sure. Steve’s “Love Bites” strat is a Fender with the standard SSS pick-up configuration. It also has a rosewood fingerboard and is finished in the very nice gunmetal blue colour, looking similar to one that Jimmy Page had. It’s also fitted with a Kahler “Traditional Series” 2520 fulcrum tremolo unit.

Steve used a JCM during Def Leppard's early years...

"[Interviewer:] From a guitar perspective, is it true that there are no traditional amps on Hysteria and that you and Steve Clark played all your parts through a Rockman unit, which is essentially a headphone amplifier?

[Collen:] Pretty much. I used a small Gallien-Krueger amp on the demo for “Love Bites,” which made it on to the record, and also on a bit of “Animal”—that little feedback thing in the intro is me leaning hard on the Krueger. But otherwise the sound is all Rockman. And the reason for that was there were so many layers of tracks, and the sound was so huge that if you had had a massive Marshall sound it wouldn’t have fit sonically. The guitars would have smothered the vocals and drums. They really had to fit in a specific slot. Plus, Steve and I weren’t playing straight power chords; we were doing all these inversions and partials and different things that required definition. That would have been lost with a big, overdriven-amp sound."

Clark used a CE-2 on songs off the album "Hysteria", such as the title track, and "Love Bites"

And the three effects Steve used on this tour were a Boss Chorus, Boss Delay and a Morley Pre-amp Booster.