Adrian, Janick and Dave's guitars and Steve's basses

Here's the 1957 Kossoff in a later stage with the pickup rings in the official Number of The Beast video.

He's still clearly using a SuperD in the neck in the NOTB era.

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So this is from 1980-1981, probably 1981. It looks like a PAF in the neck position (the picture is not detailed enough to look directily at the pole pieces, but they seem to reflect light a little bit differently, so I'm going to take a guess here and say that it's a PAF and not a Super Distortion in the neck, which would then indicate the possibilty of him recording NOTB with a PAF neck pickup in his Kossoff Strat).


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This is the tremolo system he used for a couple of months early during the World Slavery Tour, it's a Rockinger Tru Tune Tremolo.
Adrian Smith also had that tremolo system installed on his two Lado's (now refitted with Floyd Rose Bridges)
Yup, and Adrian hated it. Black Lado was fitted with a gold Floyd during World Slavery tour. Silver Lado followed, but it's unclear when. Possibly before Somewhere On Tour.
 
It seems like he was switching back and forth. Possibly putting SD in neck to get more output, like he does with JB's now.
Yep, very much possible.
The picture posted above from Mandume definitely looks like a DiMarzio DP103 PAF.
So he might have experimented with it and later switched back to the SuperD.

Those were the analog days so he might just have adjusted whatever tube amp was available in the studio and/or live and adjusted the output the amp needed from the guitars neck pickup according to this. So if the amp did not have enough saturation or distortion on the neck, he would choose the SuperD.
 
Why? One of them was always played and it was played nore than the green Jackson.
It seemed to me that there was much more of the green Jackson in the last shows, but I could be wrong. Also, abandoning the sunburst seemed strange since he enjoyed it a lot and it looked like he preferred it over the other one. Could be something technical or just Adrian rotating axes without any particular reason.
 
It seemed to me that there was much more of the green Jackson in the last shows, but I could be wrong. Also, abandoning the sunburst seemed strange since he enjoyed it a lot and it looked like he preferred it over the other one. Could be something technical or just Adrian rotating axes without any particular reason.
Or... The weight of it, which is apparently more than a Les Paul.

Green Jackson was always making a comeback, as I called it at the beginning of the tour, since Adrian loves single coils for some cleans, like Powerslave and Killers. Seventh Son with a Lado was just... Strange.
 
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