Matthias Jabs

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

Jabs was hired to join the Scorpions immediately upon the departure of guitarist Ulrich Roth in August 1978. However Michael Schenker, younger brother of Scorpions rhythm guitarist/songwriter Rudolf Schenker had made the decision to leave his own band, UFO, and expressed interest at re-joining the Scorpions as lead guitarist (Michael Schenker had already been a member of the Scorpions and left the band after the recording of their first album Lonesome Crow in 1972). As a result, Jabs was dismissed very shortly after joining the band.

However, Michael Schenker proved to be very unreliable during this time period and would frequently turn up absent from the band's live shows, causing the Scorpions to contact Jabs at the last minute to fill in. After too many incidents of this happening, the band cut ties with Michael Schenker and permanently reinstated Jabs as lead guitarist, which he has been ever since. This is also a reason for the Scorpions 1979 album Lovedrive (Jabs' debut) featuring lead guitar tracks recorded by both Jabs and Michael Schenker. Jabs' playing was a large part of Lovedrive's fresh new hotter, heavier sound which became the band's signature and propelled them to superstardom throughout the 1980s.

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 was 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 Humanity - Hour 1 album. 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 80s he uses marshall JCM 800 2210 amplifiers which you can see on the world wide live DVDs, Ovation 6 and 12 string acoustics, D'addario strings, talk box from Heil. In 2010 Cort Guitars collaborated with Matthias to develop his signature line of electrics guitars called the Garage 1 and Garage 2.In the year 2000 he was awarded the city of Hanover plaque.

External links

• Matthias Jabs Website
• Dommenget Guitars Website

In 2010 Cort Guitars collaborated with Matthias to develop his signature series electric guitars called the Garage 1 and Garage 2