Martin Barre

Jethro Tull's guitarist for forty-three years and the author of one of rock's most-voted-for solos, played on a rig with almost nothing in it. He met Leslie West after Benefit, bought a 1958 Les Paul Junior the way he says everyone who met West did, and cut essentially all of 1971's Aqualung on it -- one P-90, one volume, one tone. The amps were Hiwatts, which the whole band was using, with a homemade treble booster in front because the Hiwatt had no front-end overdrive of its own; Barre's description of the box is a couple of capacitors and wires, and by his account it picked up radio stations along with the guitar. The exceptions on that record are worth knowing: Cross-Eyed Mary is a tiny unbranded amp he bought for two pounds, and My God is a small Fender Super.