Johnny Marr’s Fender Twin Reverb

Fender Twin Reverb has been Marr’s main choice of amp for the majority of his career, especially during the early years with The Smiths. In the early days he would use a Fender Twin (Silverface) and a Roland JC-120, but as the years went by the amp collection also increased, especially when it came to live gigs.

With my amp setup, the Rickenbacker’s just perfect as it goes through a Fender Twin and a JC-120. The Fender Twin has loads of power, and it handles the bottom to midrange. The Fender also has the best reverb, so I let the Roland handle the top end most of the time; it’s a dream and sounds great.

Johnny Marr

In the studio, however, Fender Twin Reverb remained Marr’s main go-to. It was used on (probably) all of Smiths’ records – most notably – he used four different Twin Reverbs to create he unique sound on “How Soon is Now”.

The vibrato sound is ****ing incredible, and it took a long time. I put down the rhythm track on an Epiphone Casino through a Fender Twin Reverb without vibrato. Then we played the track back through four old Twins, two on each side. We had to keep all the amps vibratoing in time to the track and each other, so we had to keep stopping and starting the track, recording it in 10-second bursts. This sounds incredibly egotistical, but I wanted an intro that was almost as potent as ‘Layla’ – when that song plays in a club or a pub, everyone knows what it is instantly.

Johnny Marr – Guitar Player magazine, 1990