There are one hundred Ibanez WRB-3 guitars in existence. One hundred. The WRB-3 was a custom Ibanez signature model produced for Reb Beach during the height of the Winger years — decorated with the Winger graphic, built in Japan, personally signed and numbered by Reb, limited to one hundred units for sale and three personal guitars for the artist. Of the three personal guitars Beach received, he eventually sold all of them. The reason: rent money, during the “dark time” that the Winger community refers to with a kind of collective discretion — the years following Beavis and Butt-Head’s memorable mockery of Winger, which contributed substantially to the commercial collapse of a band that had been genuinely talented and genuinely popular until the culture moved violently against the hair metal genre it was associated with. The three Reb Beach signature guitars sold for rent. Finding a genuine WRB-3 today, as the Ibanez community documentation notes, is “an almost impossible exercise.” This is one way to understand what happened to a certain generation of hard rock guitarists in the early 1990s: excellent musicians with genuine ability whose signature instruments became impossible to find because they had to sell them to pay the bills when the genre they played in simply stopped existing commercially. Reb Beach is a significantly better guitar player than the Winger association would suggest to anyone who encountered him first through the cultural rear-view mirror of grunge-era mockery. The session credits confirm this: the Bee Gees, Chaka Khan, Howard Jones, Alice Cooper, Dokken, Night Ranger. The man who sold his WRB-3s for rent was also the man playing sessions at Atlantic Studios for some of the most commercially successful popular music acts of the era. The two facts coexist.
Reb Beach was born on August 27, 1963, in Silver Spring, Maryland. His path to Winger ran through the New York City music scene of the mid-1980s, where he was building a reputation as a technically sophisticated session guitarist before Kip Winger brought him in to co-found the band that would bear Kip’s name. Beach’s session background gave him a different tonal perspective from many of his hard rock contemporaries: where most metal guitarists of the era were focused exclusively on the specific requirements of the genre, Beach had developed the technical vocabulary and the tonal adaptability of someone who had to produce good guitar work for Chaka Khan on one session and Alice Cooper on another. This breadth of experience produced a guitarist who was both more technically accomplished and more tonally flexible than the Winger commercial context always allowed listeners to understand.
The Winger era — Winger (1988), In the Heart of the Young (1990), Pull (1993) — established Beach’s commercial profile and produced some genuinely excellent melodic hard rock guitar work. “Seventeen,” “Headed for a Heartbreak,” “Miles Away,” and the broader Winger catalog contain lead guitar work that rewards careful listening by any guitarist interested in how melodic lead guitar operates at the highest level of 1980s commercial hard rock. The cultural fate of Winger — the Beavis and Butt-Head episode, the grunge-era backlash, the commercial collapse — does not change the musical quality of the recordings. It just made them temporarily difficult to appreciate without the distancing lens of genre mockery.
His Whitesnake tenure — beginning with the 2002 reunion and continuing through the band’s most recent activity — has been the primary public platform for his musicianship since the grunge era, and it has consistently demonstrated that the guitar work that was always present in the Winger material was not circumstantial. Whitesnake’s Flesh & Blood (2019) and the broader post-reunion catalog contain guitar work at the highest level of melodic hard rock — sophisticated in its construction, technically accomplished in its execution, and tonally refined in ways that the specifically modern Suhr guitar and amplifier configuration has enabled. Beach’s current rig — Suhr guitar through a Suhr head, with a Suhr Shiba Drive as a solo boost — is the simplest and most complete version of a tonal approach that has been developing since the early Winger days.
The Guitar Player quote from his Whitesnake period captures the essence of his mature philosophy: “So for Whitesnake, it’s my Suhr guitar through a Suhr head, and maybe with a Suhr Shiba Drive pedal if I need more overdrive for a solo.” This is the tonal ambition expressed with maximum economy: one maker, three products, the minimum necessary signal chain between guitar and amplification. It is the opposite of the elaborate rack systems and complex effects chains that characterized the commercial hard rock of his formative years, and it produces — because of the specific quality of Suhr’s engineering — exactly the sound he needs.
Background: Session Credits, the Dark Time, and the Rehabilitation of a Genuine Guitar Player
The New York session scene of the mid-1980s — where Beach built his pre-Winger reputation — is a specific and demanding musical environment. Session work in New York in the 1980s required a guitarist to be simultaneously technically proficient, stylistically flexible, tonally adaptable, and professionally reliable. The Bee Gees session and the Chaka Khan session and the Howard Jones session and the Alice Cooper session are not all asking for the same thing; navigating all of them successfully requires a broader musical vocabulary than any single genre can provide. Beach’s session background gave him this vocabulary, and it has informed his guitar playing throughout his subsequent career in ways that are audible to anyone who listens carefully to his most sophisticated work.
The founding of Winger in 1987 brought Beach into a commercial context where his session versatility was channeled into a more focused genre application. Kip Winger — himself a trained musician with a classical background — assembled a band with genuinely high musical standards that the commercial requirements of the late-1980s glam metal market sometimes obscured. Rod Morgenstein on drums is one of the most technically accomplished drummers in rock; Paul Taylor’s keyboard work is sophisticated beyond the genre’s usual requirements. Into this context, Beach’s guitar work brought the session musician’s precision combined with the electric guitar virtuosity of a player who had absorbed the full breadth of the shred-era guitar tradition. The result was Winger — a band that was simultaneously more musically ambitious than their commercial association suggested and more commercially compromised than their musical ambitions fully warranted.
The “dark time” — the early-to-mid 1990s Winger commercial collapse — is a specific rock biography chapter that Beach has discussed with the equanimity of someone who has had three decades to process it. The Beavis and Butt-Head mockery, which featured the two cartoon characters mocking Winger while watching their “Seventeen” video, was both a symptom of the broader cultural shift away from hair metal and a contributing cause of Winger’s specific collapse. The commercial impact was severe: a band at the peak of their profile in 1990 found themselves commercially irrelevant within three years. The sale of the three WRB-3 personal guitars for rent is the material expression of that trajectory. Beach’s response — continuing to play sessions, maintaining his musicianship through the commercial drought, eventually returning to public performance with both Winger and Whitesnake — is the professional musician’s response rather than the celebrity’s response: keep playing, keep getting better, wait for the moment when the work is recognized again.
The Whitesnake 2002 reunion gave Beach a platform that the Winger commercial history had temporarily denied him, and his two-decade tenure with the band has been the extended demonstration of a guitarist who was always more than the genre category suggested. The parallel resumption of Winger activity — the band reformed and has released albums through the 2000s and 2010s, with Seven appearing in 2023 — has given Beach a creative context where the specifically melodic hard rock vocabulary he developed in the original Winger period can be applied with the maturity and technical refinement of a thirty-five-year career. The critical reassessment of Winger that has occurred since the early 2000s — driven partly by the Beavis and Butt-Head moment becoming history rather than present cultural fact, partly by a generation of guitarists rediscovering the actual musical content beneath the visual associations — has restored appropriate recognition to a guitarist who never deserved the mockery that the cultural moment attached to his band. The WRB-3s were sold for rent. The playing that went with them was never for sale at any price; it simply waited for the culture to catch up.
The Rig: Reb Beach’s Guitars, Amps, and Effects
Guitars
Reb Beach’s primary guitar for the modern Whitesnake and Winger period is the Suhr Reb Beach Signature Standard — a custom-built Suhr instrument with a Koa body, gold Floyd Rose system and hardware, and a Pau Ferro neck and fingerboard. Suhr Guitars is a California boutique guitar manufacturer founded by John Suhr — himself a former Custom Shop luthier at Fender — known for instruments of exceptional construction quality and precise tonal refinement. The Koa body provides a specific acoustic character: warm, with a distinctive midrange presence and a slightly brighter fundamental tone than mahogany, producing an instrument voice that suits Beach’s melodic lead approach without the excessive warmth that might obscure the harmonic complexity of his playing. The gold Floyd Rose provides tuning stability for tremolo use without the brass-saddle brightness of the original Floyd Rose hardware. Beach has four Suhr guitars in active use, reflecting the practical necessity of having multiple identical-playing instruments available for touring.
The Ibanez WRB-3 — the Reb Beach Winger signature model — is one of rock’s rarest and most historically specific instruments. Produced in Japan in a limited run of exactly one hundred units for commercial sale, with three additional examples built for Beach’s personal use, the WRB-3 features the Winger graphic design, Floyd Rose tremolo, and the specific configuration that Beach used during Winger’s commercial peak. Beach received his three personal examples and subsequently sold all of them during the band’s commercial collapse: “Reb was forced to sell all 3 of his WRB-3s ‘for rent in the dark time we try not to remember.'” A genuine WRB-3 in mint condition with original accessories is, in the Ibanez community documentation, “an almost impossible exercise” to find — making it one of the more significant collectible items associated with the late-1980s hard rock signature guitar category.
The Ibanez RBM2NT Limited Edition is an earlier Reb Beach signature model from the Winger period — the RBM (Reb Beach Model) designation preceding the WRB-3 in the signature sequence. The RBM2NT features a natural top finish (NT = natural) and the standard Ibanez superstrat configuration appropriate for the melodic hard rock context. Beach’s association with Ibanez during the Winger years — and the subsequent production of the WRB-3 — reflects the brand’s relationship with virtuoso hard rock guitarists in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when Ibanez was the primary superstrat alternative to Charvel and Jackson in the American market.
Multiple Ibanez models appear in Beach’s documented Winger-era arsenal: the Ibanez Voyager (a distinctive angular body design), the RG560 (from Ibanez’s flagship RG series with its AANJ neck joint and prestige construction), and various other Ibanez superstrat configurations. The RG560 in particular — Ibanez’s professional-grade superstrat with the Edge tremolo and the specific bright, articulate tonal character of the basswood-body RG design — was a standard instrument for technically sophisticated guitarists of the era, and its appearance in Beach’s documented arsenal reflects the same practical quality assessment that led Ibanez to adopt it as their primary professional model.
Beach is documented as using EMG 85 active humbuckers — confirmed on the EMG website. The EMG 85 is the neck-position counterpart to the famous EMG 81, with a slightly warmer, rounder character that suits both bridge and neck positions for smooth, articulate lead tones. Where the EMG 81 is the aggressive, high-output bridge pickup of choice for many metal players, the EMG 85’s slightly more complex midrange character suits Beach’s melodic approach. The active pickup’s low noise floor and consistent output are particularly relevant for a guitarist who plays both in studio sessions (where noise is immediately audible) and in large live venues (where electromagnetic interference from stage equipment would create significant hum with passive pickups).
Beach’s session work at Atlantic Studios and other New York recording facilities exposed him to a wide range of instruments — from the studio’s own collection of vintage and contemporary electric guitars to the specific instruments he brought for different session requirements. His session philosophy, as expressed in the Guitar Player interview, was practical: “Back when I was doing a lot of sessions, it was Atlantic Studios and they had all the rack gear and effects.” The studio-supplied gear reduced the need for the guitarist to specify and bring every element of the signal chain, allowing Beach to focus on the playing rather than the setup.
Amps
Beach’s primary amplification for the modern Whitesnake and Winger period is a Suhr amplifier head — confirmed in the Guitar Player interview: “for Whitesnake, it’s my Suhr guitar through a Suhr head.” Suhr’s amplifier range — including the PT100 (a 100-watt valve head based on a Marshall-influenced design philosophy) and the Badger series (smaller, more class A-influenced designs) — produces the specific combination of valve warmth, natural saturation, and tonal clarity that Beach’s melodic lead approach requires. The Suhr PT100’s EL34 power section provides the British-voiced character familiar from Marshall amplification, refined by John Suhr’s engineering approach into a more consistent, more recording-ready presentation. The brand consistency of Suhr guitar into Suhr amp reflects Beach’s understanding that equipment from a single builder, voiced to work together, produces a coherence that mixing different brands sometimes doesn’t achieve.
The Kitty Hawk Quattro preamp was the primary amplification used for the first Winger album (Winger, 1988), documented in a Kitty Hawk advertisement featuring Beach. The Kitty Hawk Quattro was a boutique rack-mounted preamp from the late 1980s — produced in limited quantities by a small American manufacturer — with the specific high-gain, harmonically complex preamp character that the Winger melodic hard rock context required. Its appearance as Beach’s primary recording amplification for the debut album reflects the specific boutique amplifier culture of the late 1980s, when the limitations of standard production amplifiers were being addressed by small manufacturers building purpose-designed high-gain preamps for professional recording applications.
Beach documented his Mesa Boogie experience in an Equipboard quote: “When I used to do clinics, if they didn’t have a Mesa Boogie Rectifier I would request a 5150. They’re very good, especially if you are going for a Van Halen tone. There is a mid frequency that I can never seem to dial in on those though.” This illuminating statement reveals both his comfort with the Rectifier as a workable clinic amplifier and his specific frustration with the mesa’s mid-frequency architecture — a frustration that aligns with his current preference for the Suhr amplifier’s more controllable mid-frequency response. The Rectifier is “good but not quite right” for Beach’s specific tonal requirements, making his Suhr head the natural eventual solution.
Marshall 4×12 cabinets appear in Beach’s documented live rig — the standard professional touring cabinet loaded with Celestion speakers. The specific Celestion model varies by production period and tour, but the standard Marshall 1960B straight cabinet configuration provides the British-voiced, full-range speaker reproduction appropriate for the Whitesnake arena context.
Beach’s confirmation that he would “request a 5150” as a clinic fallback if the Mesa Rectifier wasn’t available indicates comfort with the Eddie Van Halen-voiced 5150 amplifier as a working tool for his genre context. The 5150’s specific high-gain, mid-forward character — designed with Van Halen’s input and widely used by guitarists in the hard rock and metal genre — provides adequate tonal territory for melodic hard rock lead work even if it doesn’t perfectly replicate Beach’s preferred Suhr tonal character.
Effects
The Suhr Shiba Drive — Suhr’s own boutique overdrive pedal, based on a vintage Japanese overdrive circuit — is Beach’s primary pedal for the Whitesnake period, used specifically for solo boost applications: “maybe with a Suhr Shiba Drive pedal if I need more overdrive for a solo.” The Shiba Drive’s warm, midrange-boosting character adds sustain and harmonic complexity to his Suhr amp’s already-saturated signal for lead passages that require additional gain beyond the amp’s natural operating point. The Suhr brand consistency extends to the pedal level, with the Shiba Drive being designed by the same company that built the guitar and the amplifier — ensuring tonal compatibility across all three elements of the signal chain.
The TC Electronic Flashback delay pedal appears in Beach’s documented Whitesnake live rig, confirmed in a YouTube rig tour video. The TC Flashback is a compact, high-quality digital delay with multiple delay algorithms and the TC Electronic tone engine’s specific character — warm, musical, with good note definition at longer delay times. Beach’s use of the Flashback in the Whitesnake context reflects his preference for quality, reliable effects over elaborate effects chains: a single, excellent delay pedal rather than a complex multi-effects system.
The Boss DD-3 Digital Delay also appears in Beach’s documented effects — specifically shown in a clinic/demonstration video and documented on Equipboard. The DD-3 is one of the most widely used compact delays in professional guitar — reliable, consistent, with a clean digital delay character that suits a wide range of musical applications. Beach’s use of the DD-3 alongside the Flashback suggests a preference for specific delay character for specific applications: different delay sounds for different musical contexts.
An Ernie Ball VP Jr volume pedal appears in Beach’s documented rig — the compact passive volume pedal that allows dynamic control over the guitar’s signal level without taking the hands off the strings. The VP Jr’s specific passive design preserves the guitar’s impedance relationship with the amp input, important for maintaining tonal clarity. Volume swells and smooth level transitions are enabled by the pedal’s smooth, consistent taper.
For his session work at Atlantic Studios in New York, Beach used the studio’s own rack gear and effects — the comprehensive professional studio equipment that Atlantic maintained for recording sessions. “Back when I was doing a lot of sessions, it was Atlantic Studios and they had all the rack gear and effects” — confirming that the session context provided professional-grade processing that Beach didn’t need to supply himself. This session-era approach — using the studio’s equipment rather than specifying a personal effects chain — reflects both the practical economics of session work and the specific adaptability that makes a good session guitarist: the ability to produce excellent guitar work through whatever equipment the studio provides.
The Whitesnake musical context that Beach entered in 2002 has a specific history worth understanding in the context of his contribution. Whitesnake had been through multiple guitar lineups before Beach arrived — from the foundational blues-rock approach of Bernie Marsden and Micky Moody, through John Sykes’s more aggressive hard rock approach that produced the Whitesnake 1987 album, through Adrian Vandenberg and Vivian Campbell, to Beach’s arrival. Each guitarist brought a different set of musical values to the Coverdale vocal context, and Beach’s version — sophisticated, session-trained, melodically precise — produces a specifically different character from any of his predecessors. The Flesh & Blood album (2019) demonstrates what Beach and co-guitarist Joel Hoekstra bring to the contemporary Whitesnake context: a dual-guitar sophistication that matches the quality of the band’s best classic-era work while reflecting the specifically modern tonal approaches both guitarists have developed independently.
The dual-guitar dynamic between Beach and Hoekstra in Whitesnake — both accomplished, both session-trained, both bringing sophisticated melodic intelligence to the hard rock context — has produced some of the band’s most musically developed lead guitar work. The specific character of two technically accomplished guitarists serving the same vocalist and the same songs, each with their distinct tonal identity (Beach’s warmer Suhr approach versus Hoekstra’s different setup), creates an ensemble sound more complete than either could produce alone. It is the twin-guitar philosophy applied to a band with a different historical tradition from the harmonized-lead Thin Lizzy/Iron Maiden model — more about complementary tonal colors and alternating lead voices than about written harmonic lines.
Playing Style & Tone Philosophy
Reb Beach plays with the technical precision of a session-trained musician and the melodic intelligence of a guitarist who thinks about solos as musical statements. His lead work — in both the Winger and Whitesnake contexts — is characterized by the specific quality of melodic development that distinguishes guitar solo construction from guitar solo execution: each solo tells a musical story, moves through a deliberate emotional arc, and arrives at a conclusion that feels earned rather than arbitrary. This compositional quality in improvised lead playing is one of the most difficult things to achieve consistently, and Beach achieves it consistently.
The Guitar Player interview distinction between his Whitesnake and Winger approaches is illuminating. Beach describes crafting guitar solos differently for each context — Whitesnake’s blues-rock foundation requiring a different relationship to the pentatonic scale and blues inflection than Winger’s more melodically precise, harmonically sophisticated environment. In Whitesnake, the guitar naturally gravitates toward the specific emotional directness of blues-influenced playing — the slow bend, the expressive vibrato, the spacious phrasing that allows each note to breathe. In Winger, the more polished melodic-metal context demands tighter phrase construction, more technically precise articulation, and the specific harmonic sophistication that distinguishes melodic hard rock from its blues origins. Beach moves between these contexts — and has done so simultaneously across four decades of parallel activity in both bands — without losing the specific character of either.
His picking technique reflects the session musician’s comprehensive development: he is documented as comfortable with both picking approaches required by the different genre contexts he operates in, with the EMG 85’s consistent output enabling the specific clarity of attack in fast passages that more compressed pickups can obscure. The volume pedal in his documented rig also speaks to dynamics awareness — a session musician understands that control of output level is as important as the tone itself, and the Ernie Ball VP Jr gives Beach the ability to manage his signal level expressively during performance in ways that the guitar’s own volume control doesn’t provide with the same smoothness.
The simplicity of the current Suhr-based rig is, in this context, the endpoint of a journey that began with Atlantic Studios rack gear and the elaborate signal processing of the late 1980s session world. Three decades of experience — with every amplifier type, every effects configuration, every guitar brand available to a professional player at the highest commercial levels — produces, in the musicians who pay genuine attention to what they hear, the specific clarity of knowing exactly what they need. For Reb Beach, that clarity is expressed in six words from a Guitar Player interview: “Suhr guitar through a Suhr head.” The rest is silence, or more precisely, the specific musical character of a player who has been finding his way toward that clarity for forty years.
The modern Reb Beach tone — the current Whitesnake configuration — requires a quality superstrat or S-style guitar with active or high-output humbuckers (the EMG 85 or a similarly warm, articulate active pickup), through a Marshall-voiced EL34 amplifier (the Suhr PT100 or equivalent), with a warm overdrive pedal for lead boost. The Suhr Shiba Drive as the lead boost is the historically accurate and tonally appropriate choice; a Ibanez TS9 Tube Screamer or similar warm, midrange-boosting overdrive functions in a similar role. The key tonal quality to target is the combination of warmth and clarity — Beach’s tone never becomes harsh or fizzy under gain, always retaining the musical character of the underlying guitar signal even at high saturation levels. This warmth-with-clarity is the signature of EMG active pickups through a quality EL34 power section, and it is what makes the melodic sophistication of Beach’s lead playing audible even in the dense hard rock mix of Whitesnake’s live sound.
| Control | Setting (0–10) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Suhr Head / Marshall EL34 Gain | 7 | Moderate-to-high gain — warm, musical crunch rather than extreme compression. Beach’s tone retains note definition and harmonic clarity even under significant saturation. The Suhr PT100’s specific gain character maintains articulation at higher gain settings better than some amplifiers at comparable settings. |
| Bass | 6 | Controlled bass — neither scooped nor excessive. The Koa body’s warm midrange needs bass support without exaggeration. In the Whitesnake context, controlled bass keeps the guitar from competing with the band’s lower frequency content. |
| Mid | 7 | Present midrange — Beach’s frustration with the Mesa Rectifier was its “mid frequency I can never seem to dial in.” The Suhr’s more controllable mid response is the reason for the brand preference. Present, warm, musical midrange is the target for melodic lead guitar. |
| Treble | 7 | Present treble for note definition and harmonic clarity. EMG 85’s slightly rounder top-end needs amp treble support for the melodic lead work’s harmonic content to project clearly. Not harsh — warm and defined. |
| Presence | 5–6 | Moderate presence — Beach’s tone is not the cutting, aggressive character of a presence-boosted heavy metal setup. Warm and present rather than cutting and aggressive. Moderate presence maintains the specifically melodic character of the Whitesnake/Winger guitar approach. |
| Master Volume | 7–8 | Push the master for EL34 output stage engagement. The Suhr PT100’s power amp character is a significant part of the tonal equation. Low master volume loses the specific valve warmth that makes the tone sing rather than merely distort. |
| Suhr Shiba Drive (Solo Boost) | Drive: 4; Level: 7; Tone: 5 | Warm mid-boost for solos — engages for leads, bypasses for rhythm. The Shiba Drive adds warmth and sustain rather than additional harsh distortion. Low drive, higher level — the function is to push the amp harder, not to radically change the tonal character. |
| TC Flashback Delay (Lead Dimension) | Time: 350ms; Mix: 25%; Repeats: 2 | Moderate delay for lead dimension — used for specific passages rather than as a constant tonal element. The Flashback’s clean, musical delay character adds spatial depth to sustained lead lines. Keep the mix moderate; the melodic content of Beach’s leads should be the primary element, with the delay adding dimension rather than dominating. |
Influence & Legacy
Reb Beach’s influence on melodic hard rock guitar is concentrated in his two major band contexts — Winger and Whitesnake — and in the session work that preceded and surrounded both. The specific quality of his lead playing that has made him consistently respected by other guitarists — the compositional intelligence, the melodic precision, the tonal warmth — has been documented across four decades of professional output that the commercial fluctuations of the genres he worked in never fully interrupted.
The Winger rehabilitation that has occurred in the music community over the past two decades — the recognition that the Beavis and Butt-Head mockery was more about the cultural moment than about the musical quality of the band — has brought appropriate attention back to Beach’s work on the Winger recordings. Guitarists who encounter the Winger albums without the cultural baggage of the early 1990s tend to find a guitarist working at the highest level of melodic hard rock technique, and Beach’s reputation among peers has remained consistently high throughout even the commercial darkest periods.
For the broader Whitesnake guitar tradition that Beach joined and extended, the connection to previous Whitesnake guitarists provides historical context: Bernie Marsden’s foundational Whitesnake blues-rock approach established the template that subsequent guitarists — including Beach — have elaborated. The specific Winger-era glam metal context connects to Warren DeMartini’s parallel Ratt trajectory — another guitarist whose genuine quality was temporarily obscured by the cultural dismissal of the genre. And the session background that gave Beach his technical foundation connects to the broader tradition of the studio musician who brings professional craft to whatever musical context is required, a tradition represented throughout this series by players whose recorded work exceeds what their band context alone would suggest. The WRB-3 guitars are sold. The music remains.
Frequently Asked Questions: Reb Beach Guitars & Gear
What guitar does Reb Beach play for Whitesnake?
Beach’s primary guitar for Whitesnake is the Suhr Reb Beach Signature Standard — a custom-built Suhr instrument featuring a Koa body, gold Floyd Rose system and hardware, and a Pau Ferro neck and fingerboard. He has four Suhr guitars in active touring use. Suhr Guitars is a California boutique manufacturer known for exceptional construction quality and precise tonal refinement. For the 2005 Whitesnake reunion tour, Beach began primarily using custom Suhr models, and the relationship has continued through the band’s ongoing activity. The Suhr guitar runs through a Suhr amplifier head — the Guitar Player interview confirms: “for Whitesnake, it’s my Suhr guitar through a Suhr head, and maybe with a Suhr Shiba Drive pedal if I need more overdrive for a solo.”
What was the Ibanez WRB-3 and why is it so rare?
The Ibanez WRB-3 was a custom signature guitar produced during Reb Beach’s Winger years — decorated with the Winger graphic, built in Japan, and limited to exactly one hundred units for commercial sale, with three additional examples built personally for Beach. The commercial production was intentionally limited, making the WRB-3 rare from its initial production. Beach subsequently sold all three of his personal examples during the commercial collapse of Winger in the early 1990s — described by the Ibanez community as being sold “for rent in the ‘dark time’ we try not to remember.” Finding a genuine WRB-3 today in good condition is, per the Ibanez community documentation, “an almost impossible exercise.” It is one of the most collectible signature guitars associated with the late-1980s hard rock era.
What amplifiers does Reb Beach use?
Beach’s primary modern amplification is a Suhr amplifier head — the PT100 or similar model from Suhr’s amplifier range — which he uses for Whitesnake and Winger. His Guitar Player interview confirms the all-Suhr signal chain: guitar, amp, and Shiba Drive pedal. For clinic appearances when the Suhr isn’t available, he has used the Mesa/Boogie Dual Rectifier as a first choice (“if they didn’t have a Mesa Boogie Rectifier I would request a 5150”), though he notes a specific dissatisfaction with the Mesa’s mid-frequency response compared to his preferred Suhr setup. The first Winger album used a Kitty Hawk Quattro preamp — a boutique rack preamp from the late 1980s, documented in a Kitty Hawk advertisement featuring Beach.
How did Reb Beach’s session career shape his guitar playing?
Beach’s session work in New York in the 1980s — recording for artists including the Bee Gees, Chaka Khan, Howard Jones, and various Broadway and pop productions at Atlantic Studios — developed the tonal adaptability and professional reliability that distinguishes session musicians from live-only performers. Session work requires the ability to produce good guitar work quickly, in unfamiliar environments, for a diverse range of musical styles. Beach’s sessions ranged from pop and R&B to hard rock, developing a musical vocabulary far broader than the Winger and Whitesnake contexts alone would have provided. This breadth is audible in his playing — the melodic intelligence and harmonic sophistication that characterize his best work reflect a musician who has engaged with many different musical languages rather than one genre exclusively.
What is the Suhr Shiba Drive and why does Beach use it?
The Suhr Shiba Drive is an overdrive pedal produced by Suhr Guitars — based on a vintage Japanese overdrive circuit — known for its warm, midrange-boosting, musical overdrive character. Beach uses it specifically as a boost for lead guitar passages when playing with Whitesnake: “maybe with a Suhr Shiba Drive pedal if I need more overdrive for a solo.” The pedal’s function is to push the Suhr amplifier’s input harder during solos, adding sustain and harmonic complexity without radically changing the amp’s fundamental tonal character. The Suhr brand consistency — guitar, amp, and pedal from the same manufacturer — ensures tonal compatibility across all three elements of the signal chain.
What happened to Winger and how did it affect Reb Beach’s career?
Winger’s commercial collapse in the early 1990s — precipitated by the cultural shift toward grunge and alternative music, amplified by Beavis and Butt-Head’s memorable mockery of the band — severely impacted Beach’s career trajectory. From a position of commercial prominence at the end of the 1980s, the band became commercially irrelevant within two to three years. Beach sold all three of his personal WRB-3 signature guitars for rent money. He continued to work as a session musician and maintained his playing during the “dark time,” eventually joining the Whitesnake 2002 reunion and subsequently resuming Winger activity with the reformed band. Winger released new albums through the 2000s–2020s (most recently Seven in 2023), and Beach has maintained parallel careers with both bands throughout.
What pickups does Reb Beach use?
Beach is documented on the EMG website as using EMG 85 active humbuckers. The EMG 85 is a hum-cancelling active pickup with a slightly warmer, more complex midrange character than the more commonly specified EMG 81, making it appropriate for both bridge and neck positions for smooth, articulate, melodic lead tones. The active pickup’s low noise floor and consistent output are particularly relevant for a session-trained guitarist who works in both recording studio and large live venue contexts — both environments where electromagnetic interference and noise management are important practical considerations. Suhr also produces specific pickup configurations for their Beach signature instruments that may incorporate different voicing from the standard EMG specification.
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