Matthias Jabs

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Matthias Jabs
Background information
Born	October 25, 1955 (1955-10-25) (age 54) Hannover, Federal Republic of Germany
Genres	Hard rock, heavy metal
Occupations	Musician, Songwriter
Instruments	Guitar
Years active	1978-present
Labels	RCA, Mercury Records, New Door
Associated acts	Scorpions
Notable instruments
Gibson Explorer [[Dommenget "Mastercaster" Signature model]]

Matthias Jabs (born 25 October 1955) is a German guitarist and songwriter. He is a member of the heavy metal band the Scorpions. Before joining the Scorpions, Jabs had played for the bands Lady, Fargo and Deadlock.

Jabs joined the Scorpions after Ulrich Roth left in 1978. The first album recorded by Jabs with the Scorpions was Lovedrive. His guitar playing contributed significantly to their signature sound.

During the 1980s he had a 1963-64 black Fender Stratocaster, called his "trouble guitar", which had a Floyd Rose floating bridge and a Bill Lawrence L90 pickup, and it featured on many tracks that needed a tremolo, including "Blackout". A copy of this guitar with a black Gibson humbucker is seen on the 'Make a Difference Foundation' video filmed in Russia, with other guests including Ozzy Osbourne and Gorky Park.

Jabs favours Gibson Explorer guitars and designed a model for them, called the Explorer 90 (due to the body being 90% the size of a regular Explorer), in the late 1980s. He also has a signature Fender Stratocaster dubbed "Jabocaster". Nowadays, Jabs and the rest of the Scorpions play the German Dommenget brand of guitars, with all their signature models now made by them. His most recent signature guitar is his "Mastercaster" used mostly on stage and on their latest album, Humanity - Hour 1. Jabs is notable for his playing of a Talk box in some songs (such as "The Zoo" on Animal Magnetism and "To Be No. 1" on Eye II Eye) "Money and Fame" (Crazy World), "Can You Feel It" (Unbreakable), and "Media Overkill" (Savage Amusement).

Jabs had also once replaced the Marshall amplification logo on his amplifier cabinets with his own name, in the same font style as the Marshall logo. Besides Marshall, Matthias uses Wizard cabinets, Hiwatt, Engl, Fender Prosonic and Soldano amplifiers and cabinets, kitty hawk preamps, Dunlop picks, Seymour Duncan JB pickups, back in the 80's he uses marshall JCM 800 2210 amplifiers which you can see on the world wide live DVD's, Ovation 6 and 12 string acoustics, D'addario strings, talk box from Heil.

External links

• Matthias Jabs Website
• Dommenget Guitars Website