Pat Metheny acquired his Gibson ES-175 Hollowbody guitar at age 12 from a garage sale in Lee's Summit, MO. He used this guitar extensively to craft his signature jazz sound until it became unstable, prompting a switch to a custom Ibanez archtop. Metheny's ES-175 was heavily modified, with the bridge pickup removed, a Roland MIDI pickup installed, and a toothbrush wedged into the tailpiece to secure his guitar cable. Remarkably, he never had a single repair done on it. A photo titled "Pat6.jpg" on Chez visually documents Metheny with this iconic instrument.

Pat has used the Lexicon Prime Time since the late 70's to achieve his signature sound. He uses two of them, with slightly different delay settings, and pans them hard left and right of his stage position so he is enveloped in the sound.

From Pat's website: The output of the Digitech 2101 is run into 2 lexicon prime-time digital delay lines, one on my left at 14 ms delay, one one my right at 26 ms delay. each delay has a very slight "pitch bend" controlled by the VCO (sine wave) inside the prime-time. this is what gives it the "chorused" thing

"The electric sitar was an instrument that i had used to color various tracks for the previous few years - and I wanted to write something that would feature it as a lead voice for an entire tune. Trains, ans the sounds of trains, are familiar and important to me; the Missouri Pacific Line was just outside the window of the house I grew up in, and the sound of distant trains was a constant counterpoint to growing up in Lee's Summit. This tune was without a bridge for a long time - finally just before we recorded it, the bridge came, shown here in this book with the excellent vocal counterline that Lyle came up with for the arrangement of the tune that appears on the record." . Pat Metheny about the Coral Electric Sitar and the tune "Last Train Home"on the Pat Metheny Songbook (Hal Leonard). . Last Train Home - 1986, Waltham, Mass. Recorded on the album Still Life (Talking) 1986

"I used an acoustic (brand name) 134 model amp for 20 years from 1974 to 1994" said Pat Metheny, in response to a question on his website.

In today’s Helsingin Sanomat newspaper’s interview (by Harri Uusitorppa) Metheny is remembering his previous visit in Finland, as a young guitarist in Gary Burton’s quintet. He made a comment about the guitar he played then, Fender Coronado XII (my free translation, with Harri’s help):

Harri: “You played in Finland already in Pori Jazz 1974, in two concerts in the quintet of the vibrafonist Gary Burton as a second guitarist. Do you still remember that performance? You were then just a 19 year old novice.”

Pat: “Of course, the first time in Europe was a immense experience for a teenager from Missouri, Mid-West. Gary was the best possible mentor: three years in his group influenced me greatly. And I had that awful, unplayable Fender Coronado 12 string that was really one of the worst guitars imaginable … I remember that too!”

i finally settled on the digitech 2101 dsp guitar preamp. with it, i could get the SOUND and some cool bells and whistles too, mainly pre-programmability

Pat has used an Ovation deep bowl nylon string cutaway since the early 80's. In the 90's he switched to a Linda Manzer made nylon string, but recently brought the Ovation out of retirement for the Unity Band < Kin > tour.

He recently started using an AMT S15g internal condenser mic in the Ovation and seems to be bypassing the Ovation's piezo pickup all-together now.

This photo shows Patrick "Pat" Bruce Metheny, legendary guitarist of acts such as the Pat Metheny Group, Jaco Pastorius, and Herbie Hancock playing his iconic Roland G-303 Guitar Synthesizer Controller 6 string. He is also noted using it in conjunction with the Roland GS-300 controller pedal.

In a video by Kemper Amps Official, Pat Metheny discusses his use of the Kemper Profiler Rack, highlighting his recent role as an endorser of the product.

In this YouTube video, Pat Metheny is seen playing his own signature guitar during the 2003 Newport Jazz Festival.

Pat Metheny at Laeizhalle Hamburg in Oct. 31st, 2017 for a quick chat about his take on the KemperProfiler

Pat is also listed in the Artist Gallery https://www.kemper-amps.com/artist-gallery

In this Vintage Guitar article Pat talks about buying his Gibson ES-150

When did you first play a Gibson Charlie Christian? In high school, there was a kid who had an ES-150. It’s a very particular sound and a great sound. We all love the sound of those Charlie Christian records. But there are some problems that come with it. It’s gonna buzz and hum, and the B string is too loud. A great guitar player here in New York is Miles Okazaki, and he turned me on to a box that Electro-Harmonix came out with called the Hum Debugger Hum Eliminator that completely defeats the hum issue without changing the sound. Works great.

I had a gig in Nashville, and like everybody, when you’re in Nashville, you go to Gruhn’s. They had a 150, and a particular one just kicked my ass. I took it into this little practice room and played it for about two hours, but ended up not getting it. Then they sold it, so I was kicking myself. But as it happened, the guy brought it back and I wound up with it.

Pat tells the story about his father buying this bass:

By this time, I was into Wes, and I explained to my dad, “I need a guitar that’s more like that first one.” I made a deal with him where if I could earn more money and sell the Mustang, I could get another guitar. Also, they could kind of see that this was happening quickly, and I could play a little bit almost right away. So I got permission again to spend my own money to get something better. After I found somebody to buy the Mustang, my dad and I found an ES-175 for sale. The guy wanted $120, and dad talked him down to $100. And he also had a bass, and he offered to sell us that for $75. My dad said, “We’ll give you 60,” and the guy went for it. That was a ’58 Fender Precision, which I later gave to Jaco Pastorius, who did his whole thing on it, and that was the bass that Mark Egan played all those years. Then Steve Rodby played it when he joined, but it was stolen in Argentina.

Pat talks about his 2nd guitar here:

How long did you play the ES-140? I didn’t have it very long when my family took a plane to Minocqua, Wisconsin, to see my grandparents, on Ozark Airlines. I checked my guitar, and when we got to Minocqua, I opened the case to find shards. It was heartbreaking for me. Ozark Airlines said, “How much is that guitar worth?” And my dad, knowing that I paid $60 for it, said, “It’s worth $100.” (laughs) So they gave me 100 bucks and I went to a music store and bought a Fender Mustang. No idea why. It didn’t work for me at all.

Here Pat performs The Beatles - And I Love Her on his Linda Manzer Nylon String

My whole thing has always come from a solidstate sound, because it’s loud and it’s clear. That’s sort of a fundamental difference between my sonic approach and something like a Vox AC30 or, say, a Fender Twin, where there’s a very slight fuzz around the note. You even hear that with Grant Green and Kenny Burrell. My thing is more like a steel guitar kind of sound. (Ed. Note: Metheny’s guitar tech, Carolyn Chrzan, details, “He currently uses a Digitech 2101 preamp. Two outputs go to a QSC PLX1804 amp and then to a 4×10 cabinet and a 2×10 cabinet, both loaded with JBLs. The other two Digitech outputs go to a T.C. Electronics M2000 studio effects processor, to another QSC amp, and out to two single-15 cabinets.”)

"The GR-300 has maintained a unique level of recognition thanks in large part to musical genius of Pat Metheny. Guitar players who see Pat play for the first time want to know how to get 'that sound.' While Pat has continued to embrace new guitar technology, he has maintained a close relationship with his G-303/GR-300 combination." - Wayne Scott Jones.

Question:
Dear Pat (or other readers), What tunes do you use the soprano guitar on? I recently made one at a workshop and have transcribed "A Map of the World", "No Calej Polaci Snieg", and "Polskie Drogi". I’m hunting through my records for more tunes but haven’t found any so far. It’s a wonderful sound.

Pat’s Answer: Hi Richard. Not exactly the same guitar - the one you are referring to is a Manzer - but both In Her Family and Letter from Home are both tunes I wrote on piano and the only way I could eventually play them on guitar was to use an extended range instrument like the sopranos you are talking about. In both of those cases it was the Ibanez mini PM20. I actually tune that one an entire octave higher - the Manzer is just a 4th or 5th higher. Thanks from Pat

Pat Metheny uses the vg-8 as stated in this article.

Pat explains in the video how he redesigned his whole rig to utilize the Bose L1 speakers.

In this Vintage Guitar article is displayed Pat's Danial Slaman guitar

Pat talks about his first guitar here:

I had a paper route throughout those years, and I told my parents, “I think I want to get a guitar.” For them, that was like, “I think I’m going to join the devil worship church down the street. Is that okay?” They said, “No, you’re not. You’re not going to play electric guitar.” So that made me really want to do it.

This went on until finally for Christmas, when I was 11, my Christmas present was their permission to use my own money to buy a guitar (laughs). We looked in the Kansas City Star, and for 75 bucks there was an ES-140 three-quarter for sale. My dad being a car dealer, he talked them down to 60. That was my first guitar. Sort of an odd choice, and not what I was thinking. But I knew that Gibsons were good, and 60 bucks was about what I had. For about two weeks I played in a little rock band called the Beat Bombs, doing “Hang On Sloopy” and “Little Latin Lupe Lu.” Then my brother brought home this Miles Davis record, Four And More, and it was like somebody smacking me over the head with a baseball bat. I immediately started down the road of where I’m still at, trying to figure out what is that.

Pat talks about buying the first electric guitar he ever saw in his life from the sons of his neighbor Mr. Sumner.

What other guitars have you collected? I didn’t really remember much about Mr. Sumner’s guitar except that it was red and it was beautiful, and it wasn’t a Gibson. Then about two years ago, the sons called me after the dad had died, because they remembered the guitar making an impression on me, and they asked if I’d be interested in buying it. They’d had it appraised, and it was a ’56 Gretsch Chet Atkins 6120. They named a price, and it was very reasonable, so I now have the first electric guitar I ever laid eyes on. And it’s an incredible guitar. The guy basically never played it; it’s in flawless condition.

Pat talks about owning his mentor's Atilla Zoller's guitar:

You had a close relationship with Hungarian jazz great Attila Zoller. When I was about 14 and had been playing for maybe a year and a half, Downbeat had a competition to win a week at a summer jazz camp in Illinois. So I got together with a couple of friends, and we recorded “Bumpin’ On Sunset,” and I did my very best Wes imitation – kind of my obsession at the time. And I won. So I went to Decatur, Illinois, in July of ’68, and Attila was the guitar teacher. That was the first time I’d had any contact with a real professional, high-level jazz guitar guy – an incredible figure for me at that age.

Somehow, Attila recognized something in me and took me under his wing. He said if I ever wanted to come to New York and hang out, go hear everybody, he’d be happy to show me around. We stayed in touch by mail, and the next year, my parents let me fly to New York with money I’d saved, and I spent a week hanging out with Attila. We went to hear Jim Hall and Ron Carter every night, and Bill Evans, Freddie Hubbard. And Attila and I played a lot together, and we remained friends for the rest of his life.

The Höfner/Zoller AZ Standard I have was his main guitar for the last few years of his life, so it’s a real special piece because of that connection and friendship.

Pat is shown in a Guild advertisement playing his Guild D-40C

Most exciting for Metheny are the improvisational possibilities available to him in performing with his Orchestrion. Rather than simply playing on top of sequenced parts, he is in complete control of the parameters of every instrument via Ableton Live and can switch between, say, having a marimba or a vibraphone shadowing the guitar top lines he improvises on stage.

"Live, I'm able to do a lot of variations on things. I can also start with nothing and build a whole world, using Ableton. It's a real different environment. I mean, obviously DP is a linear environment. Ableton is a sort of 3D environment, if you're using velocity. I can have lots of things kind of lying in wait that I only get to by increasing velocity. So there's a lot of control aspects of the Orchestrionic instruments that I can do live that are really fascinating. The panorama available is everything from the most composed, the most planned?out to absolutely improvised. And sort of every shade in between.”

"So for me, as much as I love the front end of all this — by that I mean the Sibelius aspect, the Digital Performer aspect, the Ableton Live aspect — I've never been crazy about the result. And when you have one thing going into one speaker, that's sort of OK for me — like a guitar or a bass into an amp. And yet at the same time, to have a whole bunch of things crammed into two speakers, which is what we all do, it's not that satisfying to me.”

Pat developed his own Orchestrion to record and tour with for his release named Orchestrion. Here he speaks about his inspiration to create and use one.

Linda: "I met Pat over 20 years ago after a concert and I've had the pleasure and the wonderful challenge of building instruments for him ever since. His desire for unique sounds has made me "push the envelope"with each of these 16 + special instruments."

PAT METHENY'S MANZER GUITAR COLLECTION (STILL GROWING):

Manzer flattop Manzer flattop (12 string) The Twins: Tiple/Methenytone (a very tiny Manzer) Sitar Guitar Classical flattop Classical fretless archtop 6 and 12 Little Manzer Classical (7 string) Little Manzer Steel string Studio Archtop Tiny Archtop 3 Baritone Guitars Pikasso

Linda: "I met Pat over 20 years ago after a concert and I've had the pleasure and the wonderful challenge of building instruments for him ever since. His desire for unique sounds has made me "push the envelope"with each of these 16 + special instruments."

PAT METHENY'S MANZER GUITAR COLLECTION (STILL GROWING):

Manzer flattop Manzer flattop (12 string) The Twins: Tiple/Methenytone (a very tiny Manzer) Sitar Guitar Classical flattop Classical fretless archtop 6 and 12 Little Manzer Classical (7 string) Little Manzer Steel string Studio Archtop Tiny Archtop 3 Baritone Guitars Pikasso

See Pat performing on his here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5uyv2jTZio