IBANEZ, NAGOYA, JAPAN, AND HOSHINO, BENSALEM, PENNSYLVANIA, 1985

Simple Minds guitarist Charlie Burchill gifted this custom Ibanez to Johnny Marr when The Pretenders and Simple Minds co-headlined Brazil’s Hollywood Rock festival in January 1988. According to Marr, the guitar was an early prototype for an intended signature model that never went into production. Burchill played a later iteration of this custom model during Simple Minds’ 1986 tour, including at the historic Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute at Wembley Stadium on 11 June 1988, when Marr joined the band on stage for their cover of Eddie Cochran’s ‘Summertime Blues’. Speaking to International Musician & Recording World magazine in May 1986, Burchill said of his custom Ibanez: It is perfect for me. I was a Strat fan for years… but Ibanez make their guitars a million times better. They're really innovative and technically they are great guitars, like the intonation is perfect… The guitar's got incredible options of pickups: two single coils and a humbucker, which splits so you can have the lot on or you can have two single coils and a humbucker, or three single coils, or the front with a humbucker. It's great. You can touch a button and it's there. [There is a] switch selector which gives you all the different combinations of pickups. You use it like a regular five position switch and then when you want, you just punch [the master button] and you've already preset the combination of pickups that you want. So for something really heavy you've got all three on and then you just punch [another button] and you're away into the lead mode, then back out [by punching the master again] and you're into your out of phase for rhythm.