Pat Metheny — Rig Network

Metheny's primary guitar through his early career — an ES-175 modified with a Roland GK interface pickup for guitar synthesizer triggering. The ES-175's warm, projecting archtop tone is the acoustic foundation of his sound; the GK pickup allows him to simultaneously trigger the Roland GR synth for orchestral layers.

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Signature hollow-body built to Metheny's precise specifications — the PM100's warm, full-spectrum archtop tone with custom electronics. A refined version of the ES-175 concept with specific neck profile and pickup voicing.

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Various Martin acoustics for the Pat Metheny Group's acoustic passages and his solo acoustic recordings — the Martin dreadnought body provides full projection for ensemble acoustic performance.

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The Roland JC-120 is central to the Pat Metheny Group sound — its pristinely clean solid-state amplification and built-in stereo chorus provide the spatial, shimmering quality of his clean tone. The stereo output of the JC-120 allows true stereo guitar synthesis routing.

The guitar synthesizer — triggered from the GK pickup on his ES-175. The GR-300's analog synthesis produces orchestral tones (strings, brass, pads) controlled in real-time by guitar performance. Metheny was the most prominent early proponent of guitar synthesis in a jazz context.

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Additional external chorus layered with the JC-120's internal chorus — the combination of the amp's stereo chorus and the CE-1's warm bucket-brigade circuit creates the characteristic Metheny Group width and shimmer on every note.

Studio-grade digital reverb for adding spatial depth to the guitar and guitar synthesizer signals — Metheny uses the PCM-70 for specific reverb characters on studio recordings.

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