Lemmy - Equipment

Equipment

Lemmy positions his microphone in an uncommonly high position, angled so that he appears to be looking up at the sky rather than at the audience. He said that it was for "personal comfort, that's all. It's also one way of avoiding seeing the audience. In the days when we only had ten people and a dog, it was a way of avoiding seeing that we only had ten people and a dog". The microphone used by Lemmy is a Shure SM57, very usual to miking guitar amplifiers or snare drums but unusual for human voice, providing less bass emphasis than the much more usual Shure SM58.

He has used Rickenbacker 4001 and 4003 bass guitars almost exclusively since his Hawkwind days, although some of these instruments were modified with the installation of Gibson Thunderbird pickups in the neck position. Rickenbacker produced a 60-bass run of Lemmy Kilmister signature basses, the 4004LK, which is fitted with three pickups, gold hardware, and elaborate wood carving in the shape of oak leaves. Lemmy currently uses a customised 4004 made by luthier TC Ellis.

He uses hot-rodded Marshall JMP Superbass II amplifiers from the late 1960s/early 1970s. Each amp, with a nominal output of 100 watts, is used with a 4x12 speaker cab and a custom-made 4x15 cab. He uses two such stacks, one on each side of the drum riser. For many years the amps were nicknamed "No Remorse", "Killer" (left side amp) or "Murder One" (right side amp) with appropriate nameplates. "No Remorse" was subsequently replaced by a new amp nicknamed "Marsha" when, as Kilmister said in an October 2004 interview, it "blew up". "Killer" and "Murder One" were believed to have been destroyed in Argentina when all the other equipment was stolen but this was later proven to be untrue. In 2006 Marshall designed new, prototype versions of "Murder One" which were then put into production, and the original amplifier was retired. A limited number of these bass heads have been released by Marshall in 2008 as the "1992LEM", a signature series copy of Lemmy's 1992 100 Watt Super Bass Head, "Murder One".

The phrase "everything louder than everyone else" sums up Lemmy's sonic approach, as he plays at the loudest possible levels. He uses the bridge pickup exclusively (giving his bass sound more definition) and turns all the tone and volume knobs on the bass up full. On the amplifiers, he turns off the bass and treble and he turns the midrange up all the way, with the volume and presence up to the "3:00" position. The result is a biting, mid-range, almost guitar-like tone which is somewhat distorted but not "fuzzed out" or "blurry", a formula well-suited to his use of open-string drones and power chords. Lemmy uses no effects pedals: the distortion is produced naturally by the amplifiers, as they are set at such a high volume. In the 1990s after a Motörhead show at Hultsfred, Sweden a radio reporter asked Lemmy "If you were to play here again in ten years, how do you think you would sound?" Lemmy replied "Same, but louder..."

Lemmy has occasionally played electric or acoustic guitar, notably on the acoustic song "I Ain't No Nice Guy" from Motörhead's March Ör Die album, the title track on 1996's Overnight Sensation, "Limb from Limb" on Overkill (on which he plays the second lead break), "Boogeyman" on Rock 'n' Roll, and a mouth harp on "Whorehouse Blues" from the Inferno album. On "Lost Johnny" by Hawkwind he sings, plays bass, lead, and rhythm guitars.

In September 1996, his Rickenbacker bass was featured in the Bang Your Head exhibition at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio.