Johnny Marr’s Fender (nine-pickup) Stratocaster

Marr acquired this guitar sometime in the early ’90s, shortly after he met Noel Gallagher. They were sitting together, having drinks and talking about guitars, when Noel mentioned a store in Doncaster called Music Ground, which Marr had never heard of. So, they decided to go and visit.

A few days later, Marr picked up Noel, and along with Owen Morris (Marr’s guitar engineer at the time, who later worked with Oasis), they drove out to Doncaster, where Marr bought this 9-pickup Stratocaster

We [first] went to a sandwich shop, and [Johnny] said to me, ‘A bit of advice: before you go guitar shopping, don’t do it on an empty stomach.’ And I was like, ‘Okay.’ So we had a sandwich and a cup of tea, and then he went and bought a Stratocaster with nine pickups in it.

Noel Gallagher – 24:12 / 1:03:08 Icons: Noel Gallagher of Oasis

I was having a great time working with for ‘the Smiths’ Johnny Marr in Manchester. Johnny introduced me to this guy who I thought was some kind of drug dealer. It turned out he was Noel Gallagher.

Owen Morris

The first time, and possibly the only time Marr used the guitar on a studio recording was on the outro of the song “Out of My League” by Electronic.

I got it really cheap. Not only are there nine pickups but there’s an on/ off and in/ out-of-phase switch for each pickup. I’m not making this up, ‘cos Noel was witness to that dreadful event. Bizarre! But I just thought, if Kraftwerk played guitar, they’d play this! I used it on the rhythm outro of Electronic’s Out of My League (from Raise The Pressure). I figured it would give some strange harmonics… and if you just replace the word “strange” with “shit” then I was right.

Johnny Marr – The Guitar Magazine (UK), 1997

Apart from that, the guitar was seen in the video for Marr’s 2021 song, “Spirit Power & Soul” – but it’s unclear whether it was featured on the actual recording of the song.

Specs

By the looks of it, the guitar is an actual Fender Stratocaster – likely a 70s model based on the logo design and the headstock size. All the mods that were done to it however were definitely not from the factory and were done by someone who owned the guitar before Marr.

Unfortunately, no one has any idea who actually built the guitar, including Marr himself.

Again, what can be deducted from the photos is that whoever modified the guitar, routed out the whole middle section of the body, and installed nine pickups (if you happen to recognize the brand and the model of these pickups, be sure to leave a comment below) and along them, nine on/off switches, and nine in/out of phase switches.

The on/off switches alone allow for 511 different combinations (if we exclude the combination where every single one is off). If we add in the in/out of phase switches, each of which provides two additional states (in phase or out of phase) this amounts to 262,143 possible combinations.

Also, the bridge appears to be a Telecaster string through bridge with the front edge cut off so it would fit next to the last pickup.