Picture the 1993 Super Bowl halftime show. Over 1.3 billion people watching worldwide — the largest live music television audience in history at the time. Michael Jackson erupts from beneath the stage, the crowd loses its collective mind, and standing stage left with a lightning bolt in her hair is a guitarist who had beaten out over 100 other players for the privilege of being there.
Her name was Jennifer Batten, and if you didn’t know it before, you should.
For a full decade — across the Bad, Dangerous, and HIStory world tours — Batten was Michael Jackson’s lead guitarist, playing to tens of millions of people across every continent. She was also, simultaneously, one of the most technically advanced two-handed tapping guitarists on the planet. She had performed an unaccompanied tapping arrangement of John Coltrane’s Giant Steps at her audition. She discovered the DigiTech Whammy pedal early enough to invent uses for it that other players would later rediscover decades later.
After the Jackson era, Jeff Beck — who had never toured with a female instrumentalist in 30 years of band history — called her up and asked her to join. She did. For three years.
This is the gear story of a player who deserves far more attention than she gets. It starts with a Sears electric, ends with a BluGuitar in a carry-on bag, and passes through some of the biggest stages in the history of live music along the way.
Background: The First Woman at GIT and the Audition That Changed Everything
Jennifer Batten was born November 29, 1957, in upstate New York, and received her first guitar at age eight — inspired entirely by jealousy over her older sister’s instrument. The family relocated to San Diego when she was nine. The Beatles and The Monkees were early musical touchstones; B.B. King and Jeff Beck were the players who eventually rewired her understanding of what the guitar could do. Beck became a specific obsession — an influence she would eventually end up touring alongside, which is the kind of career arc that sounds fictional until it happens.
Batten’s first serious guitar was a Sears electric. She worked her way up through various instruments while developing the technical foundation that would define her career, absorbing jazz, blues, and rock simultaneously. By her late teens she was serious enough to attempt entry to the Guitar Institute of Technology (GIT) in Los Angeles — and failed the initial audition. She spent six months working with jazz guitarist Peter Sprague on her jazz chops, transcribing Charlie Parker saxophone solos onto guitar and working relentlessly on major and minor scales, before re-auditioning and being admitted as the only woman enrolled at GIT at the time.
At GIT in 1978, she encountered Steve Lynch — later of the band Autograph — who was experimenting with a newly emerging technique that would change guitar playing forever: two-handed tapping. Emmett Chapman, inventor of the Chapman Stick, had come to the school for a seminar and planted the seed in Lynch’s mind. Lynch started developing it independently, before Eddie Van Halen’s “Eruption” hit the mainstream. Batten watched, asked Lynch to teach her, and proceeded to take the technique further than anyone around her.
In 1979, Batten became the first woman to graduate from GIT, winning two awards. She then became the first woman to teach at GIT after graduating — while also gigging in local bands (she hadn’t played in a band until after graduation at 21, because her mother wouldn’t let her go out and play with strangers). She wrote the instructional book Two Hand Rock, published by Hal Leonard, documenting the technique she had spent years refining.
In 1984, she moved from San Diego to Los Angeles. In 1987, the phone rang with an opportunity to audition for Michael Jackson’s Bad tour. She was one of over 100 guitarists who tried out. The audition was just her and a video camera — no band present. She improvised funky rhythm guitar, soloed freely, and performed an unaccompanied tapping arrangement of Coltrane’s Giant Steps that she had been developing as part of the demos for her first album. She got the gig.
The rest — a decade with the world’s biggest pop star, followed by three years with Jeff Beck, followed by a solo career spanning four albums and a global clinic circuit — is the story of someone who earned every single thing she got.
Tone note: She failed her first audition to GIT. She turned that failure into six months of the hardest practice of her life. That psychology defined everything that followed.
The Rig: Jennifer Batten’s Guitars, Amps & Gear — Complete Era-by-Era Breakdown
Batten’s gear history is both more varied and more technically sophisticated than it gets credit for. The Michael Jackson context tends to dominate the conversation, but the full picture includes a rack system of jaw-dropping complexity during the Jeff Beck years, pioneering use of pitch-shifting pedals, and an evolution toward a streamlined modern rig that fits in a carry-on bag without sacrificing capability.
Guitars: From Sears to Washburn to Suhr
Early Instruments — Ibanez Era
Before the Washburn endorsement that defined the Jackson and Beck years, Batten worked with Ibanez guitars through the earlier part of her career. The specific models aren’t extensively documented, but the Ibanez relationship preceded her Washburn era and provided the basis for her developing playing style — high-output humbuckers, Floyd Rose vibrato systems, and the kind of fast neck profiles that suit two-handed tapping technique.
Her very first guitar was a Sears electric — she confirms this in multiple interviews, with characteristic self-deprecating humor. Before that, she had briefly played what she describes as an acoustic knock-off. The Sears guitar was where the real work began.
Washburn Signature Models — The Jackson and Beck Era
Batten secured a long-term endorsement with Washburn Guitars in 1997 during the HIStory World Tour, and the relationship defined her instrument choice through the peak of her most famous career period. She was heavily involved in specifying her signature models — the JB100 and JB80 — and outlined exactly what she needed them to do.
Her Washburn JB100 and JB80 signature guitars featured:
- Body: Swamp ash — Batten’s specific wood choice for its light weight and bright tonal character
- Neck: Fast neck profile suited to high-speed tapping and intervallic runs
- Bridge pickup: Seymour Duncan JB Jr. — a mini-humbucker version of the classic JB, providing high output with a slightly tighter, faster response than a full-size humbucker
- Neck/middle pickups: Seymour Duncan Duckbucker (some configurations) or Hot Stacks — single-coil-sized humbuckers that eliminate the noise of standard single coils while maintaining their tonal character
- Tremolo: Original Floyd Rose — essential for the pitch-bend work she built into her playing, in combination with the DigiTech Whammy
- Synth pickup: Roland GK-2A hexaphonic pickup — allowing each string’s signal to be processed independently for MIDI synthesis
The Roland GK-2A synth pickup was particularly important for the Jeff Beck touring years, where Batten’s role required triggering keyboard and synthesiser sounds alongside conventional guitar playing. She described sometimes having “a different sound assigned to every string” during complex patches in the live rig.
She also used a Stuart Box Doublewidth Neck guitar for specific tapping pieces — a wider-than-standard neck that facilitated the two-handed technique by giving more physical space for both hands to operate simultaneously.
During the HIStory tour, she applied glow-in-the-dark tape to her guitar frets — a practical solution to the problem of playing accurately during the dark theatrical segments of the show, when normal fret visibility was impossible. This detail reveals the level of practical problem-solving that goes into executing a production of that scale.
Tone note: The glow-in-the-dark fret tape is not a quirk. It’s a professional solution to a professional problem. At that level, everything is optimised.
Washburn Parallaxe — The Later Washburn Era
In her later touring years, Batten transitioned to the Washburn Parallaxe series — a 24-fret guitar that she used extensively through her solo touring and Michael Jackson tribute work. She later described a specific limitation of the Parallaxe: the 24-fret neck meant she couldn’t get proper Strat-style pickup spacing between the bridge and middle positions, which compromised certain tonal combinations she needed for the evolving range of shows she was playing.
Suhr Modern Antique — The Current Guitar
The breakthrough came when Batten shared a stage with Brazilian guitarist Leandre Gomes and tried his Suhr Modern Antique. In her own words: “The clouds parted.” She bought one immediately and has used it as her primary guitar since. The Suhr Modern Antique is a 24-fret guitar that solved the pickup spacing issue that had frustrated her with the Parallaxe — she described it as having a more comfortable neck than any guitar she had previously owned.
Her Suhr Modern Antique features an added Wilkinson locking bridge (WVS130) for tuning stability — essential for a player who uses Floyd Rose-style pitch manipulation extensively — and Lock-It Straps for security during energetic live performance.
Tone note: After decades with Floyd Rose tremolos and high-output humbuckers, the right guitar was still out there. She found it when another guitarist put it in her hands onstage. That’s how gear decisions get made at the highest level — not by reading spec sheets.
Amps & Cabinets: From Marshall to Peavey 5150 to BluGuitar in a Carry-On
Marshall — The Michael Jackson Era Foundation
During the Michael Jackson tours, Batten’s primary amplification was Marshall. The specific head model isn’t exhaustively documented across all three tours, but Marshall was the consistent brand through the Bad, Dangerous, and HIStory era rigs. Given the scale of the productions — 26 semi-trucks of equipment, crews of around 100, elaborate staging requiring three days to set up per venue — the amp choice was inevitably part of a larger engineered sound system rather than a single head into a single cab, with extensive EQ work done by on-tour programmers to match the recorded sounds audiences expected to hear.
Tone note: At stadium scale, the amp is the starting point for the tone, not the ending point. The programmers, the PA system, and the room are all part of the sound.
Peavey 5150 — The Jeff Beck Years
For the Jeff Beck touring era (1998–2001), Batten’s electric guitar sound ran through a Peavey 5150 head into two Peavey 5150 4×12 cabinets. The 5150 — Eddie Van Halen’s signature amplifier, designed with EVH specifically — is a high-gain American amp known for its aggressive preamp distortion, tight low-end response, and exceptional sustain. The irony of Batten using Van Halen’s signature amp during the period when she was playing with Jeff Beck — the guitarist who, alongside Van Halen, defined the technical guitar aesthetic of the era — is not lost on close observers.
The 5150 was paired with a DigiTech GSP2101 for clean sounds, and a Boss Acoustic Simulator to cop acoustic guitar tones when required by the set. For synth sounds, the Roland GR-10 MIDI converter drove Akai samplers and a Roland JV-1080 sound module through Peavey power amps and keyboard cabinets. Guitar Player described her Jeff Beck touring rack as a “rack of doom” — two completely different systems running simultaneously, 60 patches switchable on the fly, sometimes with a different sound assigned to every individual string.
BluGuitar AMP1 Mercury Edition — The Modern Rig
In her most recent incarnation, Batten has simplified dramatically. She now uses a BluGuitar AMP1 Mercury Edition — a 100-watt tube amp weighing approximately 3 pounds that fits in a carry-on bag. This is one of the most compact professional-grade amplifiers available, using a genuine EL84 output tube and preamp tube to deliver real tube character at a fraction of the weight and size of a conventional head.
Her only requirement when she arrives at a venue: provide a cabinet. The amp goes in the carry-on. Everything else she needs fits in a compact, lightweight rig that bears no resemblance to the truck-filling rack systems of the Beck years — but delivers the same professional results in a completely practical travel format.
She has stated enthusiastically that the AMP1 has changed her touring life entirely. Despite calls from fans and the BluGuitar team about a Jennifer Batten signature version, she has declined: “I have no interest in making a Jennifer Batten signature model… I’m perfectly happy with the current version.”
Tone note: The “rack of doom” era and the “3-pound carry-on amp” era produce equally professional results. The difference is 40 years of experience understanding what you actually need versus what you thought you needed.
| Amp | Era | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Marshall (various heads) | Michael Jackson Bad, Dangerous, HIStory tours (1987–1997) | Primary live amp through all three Jackson world tours; part of larger engineered stadium sound system |
| Peavey 5150 head + 2× 4×12 cabs | Jeff Beck touring era (1998–2001) | High-gain American amp for electric guitar sounds; part of the “rack of doom” system |
| BluGuitar AMP1 Mercury Edition (100W, 3 lbs) | Current (2010s–present) | Compact tube amp that fits in carry-on luggage; paired with BluGuitar FatCab. Has transformed her touring logistics. |
Pedals & Signal Chain: The DigiTech Pioneer and the Rack of Doom
The DigiTech Whammy — Pioneer and Innovator
Jennifer Batten discovered the DigiTech Whammy pedal shortly after its release in 1989 — making her one of the earliest professional adopters of a device that would go on to become a fixture on countless guitarists’ pedalboards. She used it extensively on her debut album Above, Below and Beyond (1992), primarily in the whole-step-down mode for slide-like effects, and in octave-up mode for a technique she described as making the guitar “sound like an angry cat” — which became the basis for her track “Cat Fight.”
She later went further than any other guitarist in Whammy innovation by using two DigiTech Whammy pedals simultaneously — a dual-pedal approach that Guitar World later traced back to her 1992 album as the first documented use of this technique, which other guitarists rediscovered and popularised decades later.
On her own FAQ, she described her three methods for achieving bends: fingers, Floyd Rose bar, and the Whammy pedal. “If it sounds like a slide guitar, most likely it’s the Whammy pedal,” she confirmed. The Whammy became a core component of her sound identity in a way that went beyond mere use of the device — she was shaping the vocabulary of what pitch-shifting could sound like in a rock context.
Tone note: She was using two Whammy pedals simultaneously in 1992. The internet rediscovered this technique 25 years later and acted like it was new. It wasn’t.
The Jeff Beck “Rack of Doom”
During the Jeff Beck touring years (1998–2001), Batten’s signal chain achieved a complexity that Guitar Player described with appropriate awe. The rack contained two completely independent systems running simultaneously:
Electric guitar system:
- Peavey 5150 head → Peavey 5150 4×12 cabs (× 2)
- DigiTech GSP2101 multi-effects processor for clean sounds
- Boss Acoustic Simulator for acoustic tones
- DigiTech Whammy pedal
- Multiple volume pedals (3 Roland Stereo Volume pedals)
- Two separate foot controllers
Keyboard/synth system:
- Roland GK-2A hexaphonic pickup on guitar → Roland GR-10 MIDI converter
- Roland JV-1080 sound module
- Akai samplers
- Peavey power amps → Peavey keyboard cabinets
60 patches switchable live — 30 guitar sounds and 30 keyboard sounds. “Sometimes I have a different sound assigned to every string,” she noted during the Beck touring period. This level of real-time sound design in a live touring context — without laptop-based systems — was genuinely exceptional for its era.
The Modern Compact Rig
The current rig represents four decades of simplification distilled into a carry-on bag:
- BluGuitar AMP1 Mercury Edition — 100W tube amp, 3 lbs, carry-on
- BluGuitar FatCab (or venue-provided cabinet)
- Line 6 HX Stomp XL — multi-effects unit covering everything from drive to modulation to reverb and delay
- Morningstar MC8 MIDI Controller — MIDI control over the HX Stomp and other components
- Boss FV-50L Volume Pedal
- Line 6 EX-1 Expression Pedals (×2) — one for wah/whammy effects, one for delay mix control
- Mission Engineering 529M USB C-PD Converter — power management for the HX Stomp and other pedals
- D’Addario XPND Pedalboard and case
- ASI Audio 3D Ambient in-ear monitors — professional IEM system for stage monitoring
Tone note: 60 patches and a rack of doom in 1999. Line 6 HX Stomp in a carry-on in 2024. Same musician. Same musical demands. Dramatically different logistics. Technology did most of the heavy lifting.
Strings, Picks & Setup
Strings: D’Addario XL Pro Steels .009–.048 gauge (current preference), confirmed directly from Batten’s own FAQ. During the Beck era she used Dean Markley Blue Steels .010–.050 (tuned down a half step for Beck). Her earlier period used a hybrid set: .009 / .011 / .016 / .028 / .038 / .048 — lighter on the high strings for tapping speed, heavier on the bass strings for stability. She keeps action very low: “I keep fairly low action basically to make tapping easier. I’ll keep them as low as they can go without fretting out.”
Picks: Heavy gauge flatpick — she used Fender heavies for over a decade before switching to Seven Kings custom picks of the same thickness and shape (with high-quality photo printing on the picks). The heavy pick is deliberate: it provides the resistance and attack definition needed for the intervallic right-hand picking that frames her two-handed work.
String dampener: Batten uses a string dampener — a small foam or rubber device fitted at the nut end of the headstock — to mute the strings behind the fretting hand during two-handed tapping. Unwanted harmonic noise from the open string behind the fretting hand is a persistent problem in tapping technique; the dampener eliminates it cleanly. She sells and recommends the Michael Batio-designed version, which she considers the best available.
Tunings: Standard E for solo work; half-step down (Eb) for the Jeff Beck touring period to match Beck’s vocal comfort and tonal preferences.
Tone note: Low action for tapping. Heavy picks for picking. A dampener for noise control. Every setup decision is a direct response to a specific technical challenge in her playing style.
Tunings & Tone Philosophy
Batten’s tone philosophy has evolved from maximum complexity — the Jeff Beck rack era — to deliberate simplicity, but the core principle has been consistent throughout: the sound must serve the performance, not the other way around. During the Jackson years, replicating the studio sounds audiences expected from songs as iconic as “Beat It” (with Van Halen’s original solo) and “Billie Jean” was a primary technical requirement. She described the first month of Bad tour rehearsals as being substantially about “tweaking sounds” — programmers working to achieve the precise EQ of the snare sounds embedded in people’s musical memory.
Her stated philosophy on gear advice is refreshingly direct: “Sound is everything.” Not brand loyalty, not fashion, not endorsement logic — sound. When the Washburn stopped serving the tonal requirements of her evolving setlist, she tried a Suhr and the clouds parted. The same logic applies at every level of her setup.
The one consistent sonic priority throughout her career has been dynamic range: she needs her rig to respond to the light touch of a tapping passage and the aggressive attack of a funky rhythm part with equal precision. This is why low action matters for the technique, why the Floyd Rose and later the Wilkinson locking bridge are essential for tuning stability during whammy work, and why the Line 6 HX Stomp became the natural replacement for the rack — it delivers the same dynamic complexity in a fraction of the space.
Tone note: “Sound is everything.” That is the entire tone philosophy of a professional who has spent four decades in serious professional contexts. Three words that contain a lifetime of discipline.
Playing Style & Tone Philosophy: Two Hands, Every Interval, and the Work Ethic of a Survivor
Jennifer Batten’s playing style is built around three interlocking elements: two-handed tapping technique developed to a level that other guitarists still study decades later, a melodic intervallic language that sits firmly outside the pentatonic comfort zone of most rock guitarists, and a rhythm/funk sensibility developed through a decade of playing for one of the greatest rhythm artists who ever lived.
Two-Handed Tapping — The Foundation
Batten encountered two-handed tapping in 1978 through her GIT classmate Steve Lynch, before Eddie Van Halen’s “Eruption” had broken the technique into the mainstream consciousness. Lynch had his own approach, informed by Emmett Chapman’s Chapman Stick techniques, and Batten took Lynch’s teaching and developed it independently into a vocabulary that went significantly further than Van Halen’s famous technique.
Where Van Halen primarily used tapping as a way to achieve rapid single-note lines at extreme speeds — the right hand tapping and hammering onto fretted notes to create runs impossible with picking alone — Batten used tapping to create chord voicings, arpeggiated patterns across multiple strings, and intervallic leaps that spanned the full range of the neck simultaneously. Her arrangement of Coltrane’s Giant Steps as a tapping solo is the clearest demonstration of this: she was treating the guitar as a piano, both hands operating in different registers simultaneously, the full harmonic complexity of Coltrane’s notoriously difficult chord changes laid out across the fretboard.
Steve Vai observed: “The way she hammers, her technique, she’s obviously completely suited for the role of being a virtuoso guitar player.” Eric Johnson noted: “I saw her playing some two-hand stuff and she is great at it in a musical way. She uses it to where it would sound different than normal guitar.”
Tone note: Van Halen used tapping for speed. Batten used it for harmony. That’s the difference between a technique and a language.
The Intervallic Vocabulary
Batten’s melodic approach is specifically intervallic — she favours large leaps between notes (fourths, fifths, octaves, sevenths) over the more common stepwise motion of pentatonic scale runs. This creates a sound that is immediately identifiable: phrases that jump across registers, notes that arrive from unexpected harmonic positions, a melodic personality that sounds jagged and unpredictable compared to conventional blues-based rock guitar.
Her jazz background — GIT trained, Coltrane-transcribing, Peter Sprague-coached — is the foundation of this vocabulary. The Charlie Parker saxophone solo transcriptions she worked on as part of her GIT re-audition preparation are particularly relevant: Parker’s melodic language is supremely intervallic, constantly skipping register and avoiding the predictable stepwise motion of scale-based improvisation. Batten brought that logic to the electric guitar and found that it worked extremely well with two-handed tapping, since large positional jumps that would be physically awkward for a single fretting hand become natural when both hands can cover the full neck independently.
Tone note: Transcribing Charlie Parker saxophone solos on guitar is not preparation for a jazz career. It’s preparation for playing intervals that nobody expects from a rock guitarist. That was the point.
The Rhythm Foundation — A Decade with the King of Pop
Ten years as Michael Jackson’s lead guitarist is ten years of the most demanding funk and pop rhythm playing on the largest stages in the world. Jackson’s music is rhythmically precise and groovedriven in ways that leave no room for imprecision — the band had to lock in with a click track and a production that had been programmed to the millisecond. Batten’s rhythm guitar work for Jackson developed a level of rhythmic discipline and pocket awareness that many technically flashy guitarists never achieve, because they never have to: if you’re the lead guitarist in a rock band, the groove is the rhythm section’s problem. As Jackson’s guitarist, the groove was everyone’s problem, and Batten solved it night after night for a decade.
This rhythm foundation is why her playing sounds musical rather than merely technical. She can shred, but she can also lock in. She can play “Beat It” the way audiences need to hear it, then play an unaccompanied Coltrane tapping solo, then go back to funky rhythm guitar for three more hours. The range is real, and it was built in the hardest possible professional environment.
Tone note: She played “Beat It” exactly like Van Halen every night for three years. That discipline — suppressing your own instincts to serve the audience’s expectation — is as hard as any technical skill.
The Work Ethic
When asked about lessons from the Michael Jackson era, Batten’s answer is revealing: “I have never felt over-rehearsed. I always feel like, if I had another time, I could take that time to make it better.” This from a woman who spent a month in pre-tour rehearsals before Jackson even showed up — tweaking sounds, drilling parts, working toward a standard of preparation that the size of the audience demanded.
Jeff Beck described her approach with characteristic directness: “Incredible stuff, very impressive. She’s very dedicated. I just see her playing away in her little house somewhere, doing nothing else. Because you can’t get that good unless you do.”
Tone note: Beck has one of the finest ears for guitar of any living musician. When he says you’re impressive, you’re impressive.
How to Sound Like Jennifer Batten: The Two-Handed Approach to Electric Guitar
Batten’s core tone is less dependent on specific gear than on specific technique. The two-handed tapping approach, the intervallic melodic vocabulary, and the rhythm precision are the real foundations. That said, here’s how to approximate her sound at various stages of her career.
The Guitar
High-output humbucker in the bridge, Floyd Rose tremolo for whammy work, fast neck for tapping. The Suhr Modern Antique is her current choice. Budget alternatives that capture the key specs:
- Any Stratocaster-style guitar with a Floyd Rose and high-output humbucker in bridge (HSS or HH configuration)
- Ibanez S or RG series — fast necks, Floyd Rose, quality humbuckers, designed for this style of playing
- Washburn JB100 or JB80 if available secondhand — purpose-built for her approach
Essential modification: String dampener at the headstock for tapping work. The Michael Batio version (available through Batten’s own website) is her current recommendation.
The Amp
Clean-to-crunch range with enough headroom for dynamic tapping passages. The BluGuitar AMP1 is her current answer, but any quality tube amp in the 20–50 watt range with good clean headroom will work as the foundation.
| Control | Setting | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Gain | 4–6 | Moderate — enough for crunch on rhythm, clean enough for tapping definition |
| Bass | 5 | Neutral — tapping work needs clarity in the low register, not boom |
| Middle | 6–7 | Present — intervallic melodic lines need midrange presence to cut through |
| Treble | 6 | Clear but not harsh — the JB Jr. adds plenty of top end already |
| Presence | 5–6 | Adds articulation definition to fast tapping passages |
The Essential Pedals
- DigiTech Whammy (any generation) — Non-negotiable for the Batten slide-effect vocabulary. Set to whole-step down for the slide-like sound; octave up for the “angry cat” effect. The Line 6 HX Stomp includes Whammy-style pitch-shifting as a built-in effect if you want to consolidate.
- Multi-effects (Line 6 HX Stomp XL or equivalent) — For the modern compact rig approach, a quality multi-effects unit covers everything from drive to modulation to delay in one manageable package.
- Volume pedal — Essential for dynamic control, particularly in tapping passages where volume swell can be used as an expressive tool.
Budget vs Pro Rigs
Budget Rig:
- Guitar: Ibanez RG series with Floyd Rose and HH pickup configuration (~$500–$700)
- Amp: Boss Katana 50 or Fender Mustang series — solid-state with modelling covers the needed clean-to-crunch range
- Pedals: DigiTech Whammy (any generation) + volume pedal
- Strings: D’Addario .009–.042 or similar light gauge
- String dampener: Essential for tapping; budget versions available from multiple manufacturers
Pro Rig — Modern Batten Approach:
- Guitar: Suhr Modern Antique with Wilkinson locking bridge
- Amp: BluGuitar AMP1 Mercury Edition + FatCab or venue cabinet
- Effects: Line 6 HX Stomp XL + Morningstar MC8 MIDI Controller
- Monitoring: ASI Audio 3D Ambient IEMs
The Technique — What Actually Matters
None of the gear above substitutes for the technique. For two-handed tapping in the Batten style:
- Keep your action very low. She is explicit about this: as low as possible without fretting out. High action makes tapping physically difficult and kills speed.
- Use a string dampener. Open string noise behind the fretting hand is the enemy of clean tapping. The dampener solves it.
- Think harmonically, not just fast. Practice tapping chord shapes, not just linear runs. Coltrane’s Giant Steps as a tapping exercise is not a bad starting point.
- Practice the Whammy like an instrument. Batten didn’t just use the Whammy — she invented vocabulary for it. Treat the pedal as an expressive tool, not an effect you switch on occasionally.
- Develop your rhythm precision first. A decade with Michael Jackson says everything about the importance of being locked in. Before the tapping solos, you need the groove.
Tone note: You can own every piece of gear Jennifer Batten has ever endorsed. Without the low action, the string dampener, and 10,000 hours of tapping practice, the tone you’re looking for isn’t in the equipment.
Influence & Legacy: The Most Watched Guitar Player You’ve Never Googled
There is a strong argument that Jennifer Batten is the most-watched guitarist in history who most people can’t name. The 1993 Super Bowl halftime show alone was broadcast to an estimated 1.3 billion viewers. Three Michael Jackson world tours, each reaching millions of people per run. Her total live audience across the Bad, Dangerous, and HIStory tours likely exceeds the live audience of almost any other guitarist in history — because almost no other guitarist has played the largest shows in the history of live music for a decade straight.
Yet she remains less famous than her context suggests she should be. Part of this is the structural invisibility of sideperson work: when you’re playing for the world’s biggest pop star, the audience sees the pop star. Part of it is the persistent underrepresentation of women in the guitar world’s historical memory — a problem Batten herself addressed directly throughout her career, noting that on every continent during the Jackson tours, audiences assumed she was a man because she was playing guitar. The question “are you a man or a woman?” became a recurring feature of her international touring life.
Her influence on the technical guitar world is more clearly documented. She was among the earliest professional adopters and innovators of the DigiTech Whammy; she was developing two-handed tapping vocabulary alongside, and independently of, Van Halen’s emergence; and her instructional work — the Two Hand Rock book, the GIT teaching career, the TrueFire courses, the decades of global clinics — has directly shaped players across multiple generations.
Jeff Beck’s decision to hire her — and the fact that Beck had not toured with a female instrumentalist in 30 years of band history before her — is itself a statement about her playing quality. Beck was not making a statement about representation when he hired her. He was hiring the best available guitarist for the job. The fact that she was a woman was, from his perspective, entirely irrelevant. That is the cleanest form of professional validation.
She received the Guitar Player Magazine Gallery of the Greats induction and the She Rocks “Icon” Award. She has been described by Steve Vai as “obviously completely suited for the role of being a virtuoso guitar player.” Eric Johnson called her two-handed work musical in a way that sounds different from normal guitar. These are not minor endorsements.
The ongoing work — teaching, recording, the global clinic circuit, the Michael Jackson tribute performances that have found new relevance since Jackson’s death — ensures that her playing continues to reach new audiences. The career she built by beating 100 other guitarists to a single audition in 1987 is still going, still evolving, and still producing music that rewards attention.
Tone note: She played guitar for more live human beings than almost any guitarist in history. The only reason you might not know her name is that the wrong person’s name was on the marquee. The guitar, though — that was always hers.
In 1978, at the Guitar Institute of Technology in Los Angeles, a young woman watched a classmate do something she had never seen before — both hands on the fretboard, tapping notes from above and below simultaneously, creating sounds a guitar wasn’t supposed to be able to make.
She watched for a while. Then she asked him to teach her. Then she practised until she was better at it than anyone she had ever met.
Nine years later, she walked into an audition room with a video camera, improvised a funky rhythm part, soloed freely, and played an unaccompanied arrangement of one of the most harmonically complex pieces in the jazz canon as a tapping exercise. She was selected from over 100 guitarists. She went on to play for more live human beings than almost any guitarist in history.
The gear changed — from Marshall stacks to the rack of doom to a 3-pound amp in a carry-on bag. The commitment didn’t. The technique didn’t. The philosophy — “sound is everything,” keep your nose to the grindstone, never feel over-rehearsed — didn’t.
There’s a lesson in that about what actually matters in a guitar career. It’s not the gear. It’s not the famous name on the marquee. It’s the ten thousand hours before the audition, and the discipline to keep playing after the lights go down.
Jennifer Batten played those hours. And then she played the Super Bowl.
If Batten’s two-handed tapping vocabulary has you reaching for the fretboard with both hands, our deep dive on John McLaughlin’s gear and technique covers another player who built an entirely original guitar language from scratch — though in a very different musical direction.
And for the guitarist who shaped Batten’s teenage musical imagination more than any other, don’t miss our complete guide to Jeff Beck’s closest contemporary equivalent in the blues-rock space — Stevie Ray Vaughan’s tone and technique, another player who made the guitar sound like nothing else.
FAQ: Jennifer Batten Guitars & Gear
- What guitar did Jennifer Batten use with Michael Jackson?
- During the Michael Jackson tours, Batten used various guitars including Ibanez models in the early period and Washburn instruments from the HIStory tour onward. Her Washburn JB100 and JB80 signature models featured swamp ash bodies, Seymour Duncan JB Jr. bridge pickups, Seymour Duncan Duckbucker or Hot Stack neck/middle pickups, original Floyd Rose tremolos, and Roland GK-2A hexaphonic synth pickups. She applied glow-in-the-dark tape to her frets for playing during dark theatrical segments of the shows.
- What amp did Jennifer Batten use with Jeff Beck?
- A Peavey 5150 head through two Peavey 5150 4×12 cabinets for her electric guitar sounds, alongside a DigiTech GSP2101 for clean tones and a Boss Acoustic Simulator for acoustic sounds. Her full “rack of doom” also included Roland GR-10 MIDI converter, Akai samplers, Roland JV-1080 sound module, three Roland stereo volume pedals, two foot controllers, and a DigiTech Whammy — supporting 60 switchable patches with 30 guitar sounds and 30 keyboard sounds.
- What is Jennifer Batten’s current guitar rig?
- Her current touring rig fits in a carry-on bag: a Suhr Modern Antique guitar with Wilkinson locking bridge, BluGuitar AMP1 Mercury Edition (100W, 3 lbs), BluGuitar FatCab or venue-supplied cabinet, Line 6 HX Stomp XL multi-effects, Morningstar MC8 MIDI Controller, two Line 6 EX-1 expression pedals (one for wah/whammy, one for delay mix), Boss FV-50L volume pedal, and ASI Audio 3D Ambient in-ear monitors.
- Did Jennifer Batten invent the double Whammy pedal technique?
- Batten is documented as the first guitarist to use two DigiTech Whammy pedals simultaneously, on her 1992 debut album Above, Below and Beyond. She discovered the DigiTech Whammy shortly after its 1989 release and was one of its earliest professional adopters, developing vocabulary for it including slide effects (whole-step-down mode) and the octave-up “angry cat” sound. Other guitarists later independently rediscovered the double-Whammy technique.
- What two-handed tapping technique does Jennifer Batten use?
- Batten learned two-handed tapping in 1978 from GIT classmate Steve Lynch, before Eddie Van Halen’s mainstream breakthrough with the technique. She developed it into a harmonically sophisticated vocabulary — using both hands to create chord voicings and intervallic leaps across the full neck simultaneously, rather than purely linear speed runs. Her arrangement of John Coltrane’s Giant Steps as a tapping solo demonstrates the technique at its most harmonically complex. She wrote the instructional book Two Hand Rock (Hal Leonard) documenting the approach.
- What strings and picks does Jennifer Batten use?
- D’Addario XL Pro Steels .009–.048 gauge strings (current), with low action specifically to facilitate tapping technique. She uses heavy flatpick — currently Seven Kings custom picks in the same thickness and shape as Fender heavies she used for over a decade. A string dampener at the headstock is essential to her setup, muting open string noise behind the fretting hand during tapping passages; she recommends and sells the Michael Batio-designed version.
- How did Jennifer Batten get the Michael Jackson gig?
- Batten was selected from over 100 guitarists who auditioned in 1987. Her audition was solo — just her and a video camera. She improvised funky rhythm guitar, soloed freestyle, and performed an unaccompanied tapping arrangement of John Coltrane’s Giant Steps. She was the first woman to graduate from GIT (in 1979) and had spent years developing her tapping technique before the audition. She went on to play all three of Jackson’s solo world tours: Bad (1987–89), Dangerous (1992–93), and HIStory (1996–97).
