Around 2000 when Johnny Marr started using the Boss GT-5 Amp Effects Processor while playing with The Healers. In an interview with Boss (quoted below), he talked about the transition from his massive rig setup to something more manageable. He mentioned that, although he loved having a big rack system for live gigs because of the sheer variety of sounds it allowed him to create, the setup was too big and complicated to manage on the road.
The GT-5 offered Marr a practical solution—it allowed him to keep the versatility he enjoyed without the hassle of a large, cumbersome rig.
When the GT-5 came out, I happened to be going out with The Healers, and [it was] really useful for me, particularly as I’m in the position of having to reproduce a lot of different sounds. The GT-5 did two things for me: it made it so that I could change sounds and reproduce some of the things that were going on in my records, but with just hitting one pedal. I still wasn’t entirely there with the sound of it, but I got there.
Johnny Marr – Guitar Antihero
By the time the GT-100 model was released in 2012, Marr had moved on to using that instead. It’s worth noting that all this information comes from an interview he did with Boss, so he may have slightly overstated how consistently he used these processors. Also, he didn’t actually use the GT-5 consistently and exclusively for 12 years—it’s just that the GT-100 became his go-to effects processor once it was available.
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