Matthias Jabs Guitars & Gear: The Complete Guide to Scorpions’ Lead Guitar Maestro’s Rig

Matthias Jabs’s most famous guitar is a 1976 Gibson Explorer — an instrument whose visual identity is as distinctive as anything in the hard rock guitar world, and whose origin story involves an admirable degree of DIY creative initiative. When Jabs acquired this Explorer in 1976, it was a standard production-finish instrument. In 1979, having clearly decided that the factory finish wasn’t going to work for him, he painted it white himself. He then applied the black stripes using 2-inch wide gaffer tape — the industrial adhesive tape that live musicians and production crews use for everything from securing cables to patching equipment — creating the graphic pattern that would become one of rock guitar’s most recognizable visual statements. He subsequently sent the guitar to Gibson, where the paint job was applied professionally with the durability and precision that a touring instrument requires. The hardware (gold throughout) and the pickups are stock Gibson production components, with the exception of Grover tuning machines. This is significant: Jabs did not upgrade the pickups, did not modify the electronics, did not chase aftermarket components to improve the instrument’s performance. The stock Gibson pickups through a 50-watt Marshall Super Lead were sufficient to produce everything he needed from this guitar. The DIY white stripes, transformed into a professional paint job, completed a visual and sonic identity that Jabs maintained across the most commercially successful years of the Scorpions’ career. The 1976 Explorer’s mahogany construction and stock humbucker pickups produce the warm, aggressive, naturally sustaining tone that defines the classic Scorpions lead sound — “No One Like You,” “Still Loving You,” “Big City Nights” are all this guitar and these pickups into those 50-watt Marshalls.

Running parallel to the Explorer as a primary instrument during the 1980s was a 1963–64 black Fender Stratocaster that Jabs called his “trouble guitar” — a nickname that suggests affectionate frustration with an instrument that delivered enormous creative rewards but demanded constant maintenance attention. The guitar was significantly modified from its original configuration: it received a Floyd Rose floating tremolo system (replacing the original Stratocaster synchronized tremolo) and a Bill Lawrence L90 pickup — a single humbucker replacing the original Stratocaster triple-single-coil setup. The L90 Bill Lawrence is a distinctive pickup design known for its articulate, high-output character with good single-note definition — somewhere between a single-coil’s clarity and a humbucker’s output, with a specific midrange character. The Floyd Rose gave Jabs the dive-bombing and vibrato capabilities that the Stratocaster’s original tremolo couldn’t reliably provide — particularly important for the “Blackout” track itself, which featured tremolo-intensive parts that demanded the tuning stability the Floyd provides. The combination of the vintage Stratocaster body (with its alder construction and single-coil-optimized resonance) with the humbucker pickup and Floyd Rose gave Jabs a tonal option very different from the mahogany Explorer — brighter, more articulate, with different sustain characteristics and the dramatic vibrato capability that the Floyd enables.

In the late 1980s, Jabs worked with the Gibson Custom Shop to design the Explorer 90 — a modified Explorer with a body size 10% smaller than the standard Gibson production model. The “90” designation refers to this dimensional reduction: 90% of the standard Explorer’s body scale. The motivation was practical and articulates a specific touring musician’s priority: Jabs wanted a sleeker, more maneuverable stage guitar that retained the fundamental tonal character of the Explorer while being physically smaller and easier to handle in the context of the elaborate stage productions that characterized major Scorpions tours of the era. The Explorer 90 was equipped with a Floyd Rose tremolo system — consistent with the floating vibrato approach he had developed with the modified Stratocaster — and featured the same mahogany construction and humbucker pickup configuration as the standard Explorer. This model subsequently became a short-run Gibson production instrument, available to the general public rather than exclusively as a custom build for Jabs’s personal use. The Explorer 90’s reduced body size addresses a genuine ergonomic issue with the standard Explorer’s wide, angular wings while preserving the fundamental acoustic resonance of the mahogany body construction.

The “Jabocaster” — Jabs’s signature Fender Stratocaster, dubbed with a portmanteau name that Fender themselves coined — was produced by Fender Japan as a Limited Edition model in the late 1990s. The Jabocaster differs significantly from Jabs’s original 1963–64 Strat modifications: rather than being a replica of his working stage guitar, it was designed to Jabs’s specific requirements for a touring-practical instrument. The body is reduced by 10% from standard Strat dimensions — consistent with the size-reduction approach he had taken with the Explorer 90 — and the overall instrument was built to Jabs’s specifications rather than being a standard Fender production model with minor variations. The Jabocaster is considered quite rare, having been produced only in Japan for a limited period and never having achieved broad international distribution. Collectors seeking Jabocasters face a genuine scarcity challenge, which is unfortunate given the guitar’s historical interest as both a Scorpions artifact and an example of Jabs’s active instrument design work.

Jabs’s signature relationship with German luthier Boris Dommenget produced the EX90 Stars — an Explorer-style guitar featuring the white-with-black-stripes aesthetic derived from his original DIY paint job, built to the 90%-size specification that had characterized his Gibson Custom Shop collaboration. The EX90 Stars features a korina body (echoing the original 1958 Gibson Flying V and Explorer construction material, and consistent with the tonal preferences established elsewhere in the Scorpions camp), with a 24-fret ebony fingerboard inlaid with Mother of Pearl and abalone Matthias Jabs signature inlays, Dunlop 6150 frets, and Dommenget’s proprietary Musclebucker pickups. Each pickup has its own volume control with a coil-split push/pull function, sharing a master tone control and using a three-way toggle plus a dedicated lead switch — a wiring configuration that allows Jabs to access the full range of tones from humbucking warmth to single-coil clarity without changing guitars between songs. Gotoh hardware, Kluson tuners, and a Vintage bone nut complete the specification. The Musclebucker pickups — Dommenget’s proprietary high-output humbuckers — provide the output and character required for hard rock and heavy metal lead work while the coil-split function enables cleaner, more articulate tones for passages where the full humbucker output would be excessive.

The Dommenget Mastercaster represents the culmination of Jabs’s instrument design evolution — described in its development brief as “a better follow-up of the Jabocaster” that “should be able to produce all the different sounds of the Scorpions, from wallcrashing heavy to ultraclean, with all sounds available from the guitar controls,” and featuring 24 frets. The development process took “a couple of years” of iterative refinement. The resulting instrument is designed to be a comprehensive tonal solution for live Scorpions performance — one guitar capable of covering the full range of sonic territory that the band’s catalog requires, from the aggressive high-gain lead passages of “Rock You Like a Hurricane” to the cleaner, more delicate tones of “Wind of Change.” The Mastercaster was Jabs’s primary stage guitar for the Humanity Hour 1 album period and its associated touring, and represents the most fully realized expression of his instrument design vision. It is built by Boris Dommenget’s workshop using Dommenget’s characteristic approach to construction quality and pickup design.

Jabs’s relationship with Dommenget extends to acoustic instruments as well — a Dommenget EX Acoustic (an acoustic version of the Explorer body shape) is documented in his collection and used for acoustic performance contexts. The FireAxe is another Dommenget-built signature instrument in the Jabs arsenal, featuring korina construction with a maple top (6mm), a medium-C korina neck profile, and ebony fingerboard with Matthias Jabs signature inlays. Both the EX Acoustic and the FireAxe reflect the breadth of Jabs’s instrument collection and the depth of his Dommenget collaboration — this is not a simple endorsement arrangement but a genuine ongoing creative partnership between a guitarist and a luthier who both take the instrument seriously as a design object.

Jabs’s studio work reveals a significantly more varied instrument palette than his live touring rig might suggest. For the Rock Believer sessions (2022), he used a Bigsby-equipped ’59 Les Paul, a ’58 Les Paul Standard, a ’55 Les Paul Junior, vintage Stratocasters, various Explorer configurations, and the Candy Apple Red Telecaster that he had notably used on the “Wind of Change” recording. In a Vintage Guitar interview, Jabs identified the specific instruments on individual album tracks: “the opening chord on ‘Mysterious’ — believe it or not, that’s the old Candy Apple Red Telecaster.” The vintage collection provides specific tonal options that modern instruments, regardless of quality, cannot precisely replicate — the aging of wood and pickups, the specific resonant character of particular production years, the indefinable quality that makes certain vintage instruments respond differently under the fingers. Jabs understands and exploits these differences deliberately, choosing specific vintage instruments for specific tonal requirements rather than relying on a single consistent instrument across all studio contexts.

Throughout the period before the Dommenget custom pickups became his standard, Jabs used Seymour Duncan SH-4 JB Model humbuckers in his Explorers and modified guitars — the same high-output aftermarket humbucker that his bandmate Rudolf Schenker also used during the MSG period. The SH-4 JB’s hot-wound character, bright top end, and aggressive midrange presence made it a natural fit for hard rock and heavy metal lead work: maximum output and definition for solos that needed to cut through the full Scorpions band mix. Seymour Duncan is documented in his gear lists as a consistent choice during the 1980s and into the 1990s.

Jabs has used both 100-watt and 50-watt Marshall Super Lead heads, and his stated preference for the 50-watt version is both specific and instructive. He found the 50-watt heads’ tone “easier to control” — a practical observation about how the 50-watt Marshall’s power section behaves differently from the 100-watt variant. The 50-watt amp reaches natural power-amp saturation at lower absolute volumes, which means the EL34 output stage is working harder (and therefore producing more of its characteristic harmonic enrichment and natural compression) at manageable stage levels. The 100-watt amp, by contrast, requires higher absolute volume to reach equivalent power-amp saturation — and at those higher volumes, the amp’s character may be harder to manage in terms of stage level, monitor balance, and the overall production of the live sound. Both Rudolf and Matthias ended up preferring 50-watt heads for essentially the same reason — a shared understanding within the Scorpions guitar section of how their specific amplifier configurations perform at different output levels. Jabs replaced the Marshall logos on his cabinets with his own name, in the identical font — one of rock guitar’s more entertaining acts of logo appropriation.

For the World Wide Live era and the commercial peak of the Scorpions’ recording and touring career, Jabs’s primary amplification was the Marshall JCM800 2210 — a 100-watt, two-channel master-volume head that appears in the World Wide Live DVD footage. The JCM800 series represented Marshall’s move into higher-gain territory while preserving the fundamental EL34 character of the earlier Super Lead designs. The 2210 variant’s two channels — clean and lead — gave Jabs the ability to switch between clean tones and high-gain lead sounds without additional channel-switching equipment, a practical advantage in the live context of a major arena tour.

The JMP MkII Super Lead head is documented at 0:05 in specific performance footage, identifiable by its characteristic large toggle switches and four-input configuration. This is the early-period Scorpions amplification — the pre-master-volume Marshall that Jabs was using in the transitional period between the Lovedrive and Blackout eras, the raw, non-master-volume amplification that produces the most direct relationship between guitar output and power-amp response.

The Soldano SLO-100 Super Lead Overdrive is one of the most celebrated high-gain amplifiers in rock guitar history — Mike Soldano’s design was an immediate success from its late-1980s introduction and has remained a benchmark for high-gain tube amplification for four decades. Jabs uses Soldano heads both in studio recordings and in his live rig alongside other amplifiers. The Vintage Guitar interview confirmed the Soldano in specific recording contexts: “I think I used an old ’60s Hiwatt amp in connection with a Soldano amp” for specific track recordings. The Soldano’s character differs from the Marshall in ways that suit different sonic requirements: more focused high-end, more aggressive preamp gain structure, with the SLO-100’s three-channel configuration (Clean, Crunch, Overdrive) giving Jabs a greater range of tonal flexibility than the vintage Marshall designs.

ENGL appears in Jabs’s documented modern amp setup — consistent with the ENGL adoption seen in both Rudolf Schenker and Michael Schenker’s modern rigs. The German-made ENGL amplifiers provide a quality-constructed, tour-reliable alternative to vintage Marshall heads for the live context, with the EL34 power section that preserves the fundamental British amplification character while offering more gain control and tonal flexibility than the vintage designs. For a band that has been touring at arena level for four decades, the reliability and consistency of a modern amplifier is a genuine practical advantage.

Hiwatt amplifiers appear in Jabs’s documented arsenal for specific studio applications — as confirmed by his Vintage Guitar interview description of using “an old ’60s Hiwatt amp in connection with a Soldano amp” for specific recording passages. The Hiwatt’s exceptional clean headroom provides a character quite different from the Marshall’s natural saturation, and the combination of Hiwatt clean response with Soldano overdrive character creates a tonal blending that neither amplifier produces alone. Jabs’s use of multiple amplifiers simultaneously (or alternately for different tracks) in the studio reflects his systematic approach to tone: identify the specific tonal requirement of each passage, then select the equipment that best serves it.

The Fender Prosonic — a relatively rare, short-lived Fender tube amplifier head that appeared in the mid-to-late 1990s, designed to provide American-voiced tube amplification with more gain capability than typical Fender clean amps — also features in Jabs’s documented amp list. The Prosonic’s character is quite different from his Marshall and Soldano primary amps: American rather than British voiced, with Fender’s characteristic bright, open quality filtered through a higher-gain circuit than the standard Fender clean amp approach. For the clean and semi-clean passages that appear in the Scorpions’ repertoire, the Prosonic provides a tonal color distinct from the Marshall-based sounds.

Kitty Hawk was a German preamp manufacturer whose units appeared in Jabs’s rack-based amplification setup at various points. Rack preamps allow the guitarist to separate the preamp (tone-shaping) and power-amp (volume and power-tube saturation) functions of conventional amplification, using the rack preamp to generate the tonal character and then routing that signal to a separate power amplifier. This approach gives the guitarist more tonal flexibility and the ability to combine different preamp voicings with different power amp characters — a level of systematic signal chain architecture consistent with Jabs’s methodical approach to tone.

Matthias Jabs’s most immediately recognizable and distinctive effect is the talk box — a device that routes the guitar signal through a plastic tube into the player’s mouth, where the oral cavity acts as a resonating chamber that shapes the sound. By moving the mouth and lips while the guitar signal is playing through this tube, the guitarist produces a vocalized, speech-like quality in the guitar tone — the characteristic “wah-wah-wah” vocal-guitar hybrid that is one of rock guitar’s most theatrical and expressive effects. Jabs used the talk box in conjunction with a wah pedal on “The Zoo” from Animal Magnetism (1980) — the combination of the wah’s sweep with the talk box’s vocal filter creating a layered, complex effect that gives the track its distinctive, immediately recognizable guitar voice. Additional Scorpions tracks featuring the talk box include “To Be No. 1” (Eye II Eye), “Money and Fame” (Crazy World), “Can You Feel It” (Unbreakable), “Media Overkill” (Savage Amusement), and “Raised on Rock” (Sting in the Tail). The talk box is not an effect that most rock guitarists encounter or use — it requires significant performance technique and is associated primarily with specific players (Peter Frampton’s “Do You Feel Like We Do?” and Joe Walsh’s “Rocky Mountain Way” are the most famous examples). Jabs’s use of it across multiple tracks and decades reflects a genuine enthusiasm for its expressive possibilities rather than a one-time novelty application.

Standard wah pedal use appears in Jabs’s documented effects chain — both the Dunlop Crybaby and the Vox Wah (the original British-made design that preceded the Dunlop’s American production) feature in his gear history. The wah is used both conventionally (rocking back and forth for dynamic, vocal guitar expression during solos) and in the specific combination with the talk box documented on “The Zoo.” The Vox Wah’s slightly different frequency sweep compared to the Crybaby produces a subtly different tonal character — the Vox tends to be slightly more midrange-focused, the Crybaby slightly broader — and having both available gives Jabs tonal flexibility in how he uses the filter effect.

An Echoplex tape echo unit appears in Jabs’s effects documentation — the same Maestro Echoplex that Tommy Bolin used as a primary compositional tool, and that appears in the gear histories of multiple players from the 1970s through the 1980s who valued tape-based delay for its specific organic, degrading-repeat character. Jabs used the Echoplex for depth and dimension on lead passages, adding the warm, natural quality of tape delay to his sustained lead lines.

Seymour Duncan JB Model pickups are specifically listed in Jabs’s documented equipment — the high-output, bright-top-end humbucker that appeared in multiple guitars across the classic Scorpions era. The JB’s aggressive character is well-suited to hard rock lead work through Marshall and Soldano amplification, providing the output and upper-midrange presence needed for solos to cut through the full Scorpions band sound at arena volumes.

Matthias Jabs has been a D’Addario endorsed artist since 1999, using their string sets across multiple guitar configurations. D’Addario strings are among the most widely used in professional guitar circles, known for their consistent quality, precise winding, and reliable intonation. His specific gauge preferences reflect both his guitar configurations (the Floyd Rose-equipped guitars typically require specific gauge/tension considerations to maintain proper tremolo balance) and his playing technique (the bends, the vibrato, the aggressive attack of his hard rock lead approach all affect optimal string gauge selection).

D’Andrea picks are listed as Jabs’s pick choice — a standard pick manufacturer providing the specific thickness, material, and bevel that his technique requires. Pick choice affects the initial attack quality and the warmth or brightness of the note attack in ways that are subtle but audible across a full-length album recording.