Johnny Marr insists his latest $3,000 signature guitar isn’t a “vanity project”
The Smiths’ Johnny Marr has recently announced a new collaboration with with Fender: the Johnny Marr Signature Special Jaguar. While the Signature sits just shy of three grand, Marr insists the guitar is more than a “vanity project” – it’s his own attempt at making a versatile guitar for many different guitarists.
Marr’s latest Signature Special Jag comes as an update on his 2012 model, and the guitarist notes that it is designed with players in mind. “I’ve always got the idea of other musicians of all types in mind when I do it,” he tells Hero Magazine. “I’m thinking about my guitar comrades and whether they’re going to like it. It’s not a vanity project.”
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Marr has been involved every step of the way in designing his new Signature Special Jaguar. “I put a lot of time and energy into my Signature guitars – It’s something I get quite obsessive about,” he admits. “[My original Signature] came out after about three or four years of dedication and obsession.”
Despite having his previous Fender Signature under his belt, it was high time the old guitar learned some new tricks. “I’ve been using that original Jaguar for over a decade now, pretty much exclusively live and when I’m collaborating, because it’s got that perfect sound that’s become associated with me. The new one, the Signature Special, is a development of that.”
To develop the old model even further, Marr looked to other players for inspiration. “I thought a lot about other guitar players, whether they’re indie rock or more straight-up rock musicians,” he explains. “I changed the radius of the fingerboard so it’s a bit flatter – better for soloing – and added another pickup for more variety. It gives you the option to be a little more aggressive, a little more rock, whilst still keeping everything that made the original Jaguar what it was.”
This time around, Marr’s Signature features a flatter fingerboard, an extra pickup, and an extended range of tonal flexibility. However, above all, Marr insists that his guitar isn’t restricted to Smiths-esque noodling. “You don’t have to want to sound like me,” he emphasises. “It’s just that what’s useful for me tends to be useful for other musicians. My original guitar already did a lot. But, with these changes, it now covers even more ground and opens up new sounds.”
Looking forward, Marr’s Signature Special Jag will surely feature on his upcoming releases. Elsewhere in his conversation with Hero Magazine, he teases that plenty of new tracks are raring to go. “I’ve got a collection of new songs, and we’ve been playing some of them on tour in America recently,” he says.
It’s been three years since Marr’s previous release, Fever Dreams Pts 1-4, and the guitarist hopes that his new tracks will kickstart a whole new era. “I’m hoping this next record is the start of the next long chapter,” he notes. “That’s the way it feels… it feels like we’re moving into a new phase.”
He even teases a pair of potential collaborators. “I still see Hans Zimmer quite a bit – I hang out with him a lot,” he says. “And me and Nile Rodgers have been talking about doing something together, so I’d quite like to do that. That’d be good.”
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
