Wayne Coyne

Coyne can be seen in this image playing a Fender Jazzmaster.

in fashion with most flaming lips guitars Wayne has Duct tape on his guitar. you can see it at 4:18

One of the key components of the Flaming Lips’ psych-pop sound is multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd’s 1967 Jazzmaster.

But its most infamous modification probably wouldn’t have happened if not for the daring of frontman Wayne Coyne, who brazenly replaced the stock bridge pickup with a Seymour Duncan Hot Rails pickup.

As the story goes, Drozd was in Oklahoma around 1993, when the Flaming Lips had just broken through with the single “She Don’t Use Jelly” from the 1993 album Transmissions from the Satellite Heart. The multi-instrumentalist–who was actually the band’s drummer at the time–walked in to a local, Oklahoma City music store called Horn Trader, where the weathered Jazzmaster sang out to him from the wall.

As they were preparing to head out on tour in 1994, Drozd let Coyne borrow the guitar for a few days, but he didn’t get it back in the same shape, as Coyne made the switch unbeknownst to Drozd.

While he was initially pretty ticked off, Drozd eventually came around to the high-output single-coil, especially as the Flaming Lips’ sound evolved.

“He came over to the house and was like, ‘I hope you don’t mind, I put a (Seymour Duncan) Hot Rails in it,’” Drozd recalled in an interview with Ultimate Guitar. “I’m like, ‘What the f--k, man? What are you doing?"

But the switch turned out to be a saving grace as the Hot Rail could better handle the noise of his complicated setup. “A lot of the guitars, especially at the volumes we play, they just get so unwieldy to me. You have six different effects going; you’ve got a phase, you’ve got delay, you’ve got two different types of distortion, you’ve got wah, and the noise levels on those things get so bad. So he put that Hot Rail in, and I was mad for a couple of days.”

It can clearly be seen in this live video here. Wayne used this guitar from '91 to '94. It has Hot Rail pickups in it.

In this photo, Coyne can be seen playing a PureSalem Classic Creep guitar.

In the user-uploaded photo, Wayne Coyne is seen holding and playing the Korg Kaossilator KO-1 Dynamic Phrase Synthesizer, positioned where a guitar pickup would typically be.

Here's an image of Wayne Coyne playing a Harmony H59 Rocket during the recording of "Transmissions from the Satellite Heart"

Wayne's preferred microphone for vocals in the studio. As seen at 4:05, 7:10, and 9:48 in this studio footage.

Coyne can be seen in this live photo playing an Epiphone Limited Edition G-1275.

Coyne can be seen in this photo playing a heavily-modified Gibson EDS-1275; the Gibson logo on the headstock is just barely visible.

Coyne can be seen playing an Ovation Magnum Bass in this photo.

Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips used the Electra 500d overdrive pedal during the band's formative years through the mid-1990s, as discussed on The Gear Page.

Coyne can be seen in a photo in this Quietus article playing a Musicmaster Bass.

Coyne can be seen at :25 of this music video for "The Wand" playing a Fender Precision Bass.

In interviews about the making of the album Flaming Lips album The Terror, Wayne Coyne, Steven Drodz and producer Dave Fridmann were each asked about the ESP Wasp.

Interviewer: Can we also detect the distinctive tone of a beautiful old EDP Wasp analogue synth in places?

Wayne Coyne: "We're so much the slaves to sound that we're almost always looking for a new sound to use. We were at Sean Lennon's studio a little while back and we saw the Wasp, played it, loved it and, at the end of the session, Sean gave it to us. When we took it back to Dave's studio it was almost all we played for a while. That's the truth about how music is, really."

Interviewer: ...and not forgetting Sean Lennon's Wasp?

Steven Drodz: "[laughs] I think he just saw how into it we were and gave it to us and we've ended up using that on most of the album.

Interviewer: Wayne told us of his love for the old EDP Wasp synth. Was there a conscious decision to go more analogue on the new album?

Dave Fridmann: "I wouldn't say it was a conscious decision but what was a conscious decision was to make things more variable and random and seize the moment.

"There's a couple of tracks on the album where the click-track is a noise the Wasp was making when it was broken and we just kept it in the song. So, there's a sort of organic element to most of what happened on the record where it's continuously variable and interesting moment to moment."

Wayne used this guitar a lot during the mid 90s Flaming Lips era (Transmissions From The Satellite Heart and Clouds Taste Metallic era that is). most notably it was featured in the "She Don't Use Jelly" music video