![Array]](https://backingtracksfullcollection.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Array.svg.svg+xml "“I bought a tiger-stripe Les Paul and started playing it on stage. I broke the neck, got it back and it sounded better. Then I was even more attached to it!” Kirk Hammett on Gibsons, the magic of Greeny and why he thinks the age of active pickups is over 18"){kind=small}
Kirk Hammett’s wiry, wah‑scorched lead tones have been a core component of Metallica’s sound since the band reshaped the landscape of metal in the early ’80s. Now 63 years of age, Kirk’s youthful looks mask the fact that he’s been recording at the sharp end one of the world’s biggest acts for 40 years, after he replaced Dave Mustaine in the band in the spring of 1983.
And though Metallica’s juggernaut touring and recording schedule has clearly made extraordinary demands on the band’s members, four decades of music-making has also left Hammett with enough room to reflect on and evolve his sound far more than some might credit.
You might think, for example, that he still builds his sound primarily around active pickups. But, as our free-ranging conversation with the guitarist reveals, he’s more likely to get his gain sounds with much older tech these days – P.A.F.s mounted in a certain storied Les Paul formerly owned by Peter Green, of which he is the current owner and steward.
“There’s so much Greeny on the new album,” Hammett says. “I mean, when you hear a whammy bar, it’s not Greeny [laughs]. But I really only played two guitars on this album. Some albums I played, like, 16 guitars on. But on this album, it’s only two guitars: Greeny and my [ESP] Mummy guitar, that’s all I needed.
“When I put Greeny on the rhythm pickup, and I hear that neck tone, it’s just so much the neck tone that you want to hear,” he says.
“I mean, it just takes me… And the bridge pickup has so much bite and so much presence without being too trebly. It’s amazing because when I jam with other people and listen to the recordings afterwards, Greeny just stands out, you know? Put three different guitars together and Greeny will just have more presence than any other guitar.”
Kirk’s conversion to a sound based on (an admittedly remarkable) vintage Les Paul has been a long road, however, and it began long before he took ownership of Greeny, as he explored how to evolve his playing and make it as fearless, direct and honest as possible.
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We join him to talk about that journey, learn more about his feeling of connection to Green’s music, and the burgeoning range of guitars inspired by Greeny that is now being built by Gibson.
How does Peter Green’s music connect to your own musical world?
Well, Peter Green’s guitar style, even when he was improvising, every note was so perfectly played. He was a very, very thoughtful player… Every note counted with him – there were no throwaway notes and I love that about him. There’s any number of guitar players out there who just kind of throw away notes. I have a whole fucking condominium full of throwaway notes, you know, but with him, there were hardly any.
Green Manalishi… He wrote that sitting in his flat somewhere in London, right? It sounds like it was written in Mississippi in a shack on the edge of a swamp at two o’clock in the morning
I love the way he wrote. Oh Well – Oh Well I & II… Ever listen to Part II? Fucking darker than the first part. I mean, Part II sounds like a funeral dirge, it sounds like the end of the fucking world. Green Manalishi… He wrote that sitting in his flat somewhere in London, right? It sounds like it was written in Mississippi in a shack on the edge of a swamp at two o’clock in the morning. That song is so dark without relying on elements to make sure it’s dark, like heaviness or distorted guitar.
Literally from the first E minor chord, ‘Oh my God!’ You’re put in this place and when I hear that kind of playing, that kind of composition, instantly I go, ‘Wow, his mental makeup must have been really something for this kind of music to come out.’
Then I go to what he might have been experiencing and there’s a darkness. And I can relate to that because there’s some darkness in me, there’s some darkness in how I compose music. I totally relate to Peter in those terms, absolutely.
Greeny was obviously a pillar of Green’s sound – and now it’s become a pillar of yours. How does that feel?
It’s never lost on me that it was Gary Moore’s guitar and Peter Green’s guitar – the guitar will not let me forget that. And so in the midst of playing it, I’ll just get that impression and, all of a sudden, I’m playing a Peter Green lick or a Gary Moore lick… It’s kind of spontaneous, you know.
The thing with Greeny, it’s a unique guitar. It’s a blessed piece of wood, that’s all I can really say – somehow it’s blessed with an energy or vibration that’s super-unique. I’ve never really felt it in any other guitar.
Old P.A.F.s are so much more touch-sensitive and I’ve been trying to figure out for the last 10 years whether or not active pickups age well
You’re often thought of as a player who’s built their sound around active electric guitar pickups. What’s driven your move towards using Greeny with its P.A.F.s?
Well, old P.A.F.s are so much more touch-sensitive and I’ve been trying to figure out for the last 10 years whether or not active pickups age well. Because it’s a bunch of circuitry – but your traditional pickups, with [just] coils and magnets and wire, they have a tendency to age.
That ageing factor really makes P.A.F. pickups individual. Even the newer type of pickups, with traditional coils, magnets and wires, even those age [eventually] – like DiMarzio pickups. I put an old pair of DiMarzio pickups in a KH [Series S-style guitar], maybe it was an LTD, and I was amazed at how good it sounded to my amp setup. I thought to myself, ‘Maybe the age of active pickups is over.’
I’ll tell you what attracted me to active pickups in the ’80s, it was the fact that they had a higher output – a battery-assisted higher output. They’re basically less microphonic, higher output, which means lower noise. And that’s what I needed back then for Metallica: we were all about distortion, being loud, high-gain… just a fucking wall of sound.
But as I grew as a guitar player during the ’90s, I started noticing P.A.F. pickups. Man, that’s the sound that I grew up hearing with all these British guitar players that I loved. Even Michael Schenker’s Flying V had just stock Gibson pickups in it. Sometime in the ’90s, I just realised that you can push a P.A.F. pickup; you can take an amp and fully just gain it out.
That P.A.F. will just take it and take it. You really can’t do that with a high-output active pickup: you turn up the gain and then you’re lost and it’s noisy. Then the [tonal] distinction’s gone, the harmonic distortion changes, it’s not as touch-sensitive – and you can get away with a lie, it covers up a lot of your mistakes.
What I love about P.A.F. pickups is the clarity of it: clarity of note, clarity in a succession of notes… the [nature of the] harmonic distortion protects sensitivity. And you can’t really get away with a lot. You have to play well and you have to play with clarity, you have to hit every note. Something like legato, it’s easier with active pickups, not so much with P.A.F.s. But when you do legato [licks] with P.A.F.s, it sounds so much better to me.
I still like that EMG active-pickup wall of sound and it works for our older material. But there was a shift in me about 15 or 20 years ago where I realised that P.A.F. pickups, and stock pickups in general… I think you can push them way more than you can push EMGs and you could almost say I had it backwards. I should have started with just a regular pickup, pushing that and going, ‘Okay, EMGs are the next level.’
But no, I was, like, next-level first and then went to the more subtle thing – and I’ve discovered that the more subtle thing works for me. James [Hetfield] is the same way, he has the same opinion. He loves P.A.F. pickups and thinks P.A.F.s are great for lead – but, for him, the EMG active pickup sound is great for his rhythm sound and he really, really likes that rhythm sound.
You’re often associated with ‘SuperStrat’ style electrics. How did your path to becoming a Les Paul player begin?
When I first started playing guitar, I was listening a lot to Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton. So I got a Strat. But when I got the Strat, plugged it in, it was clean; it wasn’t full, it was that single-coil sound and it’s like, ‘Why doesn’t this sound like Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix?’ I realised it was the amp: the amp-pickup combination.
Once I figured that out then I just needed a different type of guitar. I got a Flying V, and then I was good. But I always wanted a Les Paul. I’m looking at pictures of Jimmy Page where the Les Paul looks so amazing, and I would just stare at him. I’d look at Gary Moore’s Les Paul – what a great guitar.
I always wanted a Les Paul, but it didn’t seem at the time to be the heavy metal [instrument] that I needed, which was a really fast guitar that was Strat-style, 24 frets, two humbuckers but with a whammy bar, active pickups… You weren’t going to find a Les Paul like that. And that’s what I wanted at the time to play all those early Metallica songs.
But around, I would say, …And Justice For All [1988] was when I actually started getting some disposable income and I bought a tiger-stripe Les Paul. I started playing it on stage and just loved it. I was in friggin’ heaven… I broke the neck on that, got it back and all of a sudden, it sounded better. Then I was even more attached to it!
And from then, not long after that I bought my first ’59 Les Paul Standard in about 1990, it just all kicked in for me. I love Les Pauls. I love Strats. I love ‘SuperStrats’. I love Teles, I love 335s, I love Flying Vs. And that’s about it.
What do you plug Greeny into when you’re at home? Hard to believe it’s a high-gain stack…
I have two of these Fenders [Kirk points to two Tweed Deluxe combos]. These Voxes are also amazing [he holds up what appears to be two small Nutube-based combos in front of his computer], and a new Carr amp. I’m basically plugging Greeny into anything that’s around me because Greeny likes amps, and amps like Greeny.
Greeny will make a shitty-sounding amp decent. It’s just one of those guitars. There are amps out there that like guitars… I have an amp where you plug in just about any guitar and it sounds wonderful. Just like certain mics love voices – have you heard that phrase? Greeny is the guitar that loves amps and amps love Greeny.
Jimi Hendrix has played it, Rory Gallagher’s played it, Jeff Beck, George Harrison. I mean, the list goes on and on and on…
No matter what the combination, Greeny always sounds interesting. Because it’s in the wood, it’s in the pickups – it’s a complete package. All you need to do is a little tweak here and there on the amp and then you’re good to go.
Like I said, it’s an amazing piece of wood and it’s been played to hell. I mean, Peter Green played it a lot, Gary Moore really fucking played it to hell, and I play it to hell. And other people played it, too: Jimi Hendrix has played it, Rory Gallagher’s played it, Jeff Beck, George Harrison. I mean, the list goes on and on and on…
How does the feeling of playing the real Greeny translate to the various Custom Shop and now Gibson USA replicas of the guitar?
I’ve realised the power that guitar has in terms of influence and inspiration. I am not elitist with that guitar and I’m not as protective as I should be. Because I think it really is the people’s instrument and so I’ll let anyone play that guitar – and when they play it, oh my God, their hands are shaking or they’re just playing differently. So I thought, ‘How can I share this with more people, outside of what I’m already doing?’
That’s what these Gibson reissues are doing now: it’s to try to spread that inspiration, spread that influence, spread that mojo. I mean, you’ll never have an exact Greeny copy because guitars are like human beings – so individualistic – but you can make a Greeny copy that looks like Greeny, feels like Greeny and 80 per cent sounds like Greeny.
And when I say ‘80 per cent’, the bridge pickup has to have that bark, that neck pickup has to have that beautiful tone that just draws you in. And then it has to have that out‑of‑phase sound in the centre, which I call the ‘Dragon Tone’. To me, it sounds like a Strat through a 100-watt Marshall – and Les Pauls are not supposed to sound like that! But Greeny has that and I just love it.
That Epiphone Greeny is now my couch guitar and I reach for it when I’m watching TV, like most guitar players are apt to do
The first thing I check when I get these prototypes is the middle position to make sure it has that out‑of-phase sound [correct]. I have to tell you, man, I’ve tried the Gibson Custom Shops. Those Greenys are great. Tom Murphy Greenys are really great.
The Gibson USAs are great, but my favourite version of Greeny is probably the Epiphone… the Epiphone Greenys, just by themselves, sound great and play great, and I was amazed at how I was playing an Epiphone and I didn’t want to put it down and it was delivering for me. It’s just on all levels. This was two or three weeks ago. That Epiphone Greeny is now my couch guitar and I reach for it when I’m watching TV, like most guitar players are apt to do.
I guess I’m most excited about that Epiphone because it makes the Greeny mythology, the Greeny influence, the Greeny inspiration available to everyone around the world who was motivated to get it. For me, it’s a super-powerful thing because I might be helping some young musician get a Greeny in their hands to play heavy blues like Peter Green or Gary Moore or come up with a song like Oh Well or Albatross or something.
Or maybe they’re just a Metallica fan, but then they come up with some weird, crazy, heavy metal/blues hybrid that no-one else has ever heard before. Maybe it’s because of Greeny. I don’t know.
I guess I’m most excited about that Epiphone because it makes the Greeny mythology, the Greeny influence, the Greeny inspiration available to everyone around the world
The main thing is the power of influence and power of inspiration. To me, it leads to the music of 20 years from now. So maybe it’s just an investment – in the hope that someone will take [a Greeny replica] and make great music that we can all enjoy in the end.
Those are my intentions. It’s not fucking status. It’s not finances. It’s not to see my name out there. My motivation is mainly musical and to go out there and put guitars in the hands of musicians who will make music that hopefully I will like in 10 or 15 years’ time.
![Array]](https://backingtracksfullcollection.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/1779850244_Array.svg.svg+xml "“People have it played at their wedding, and I’m like, ‘Why?’”: We speak to the duo behind one of the most uplifting songs of the 1990s 36"){kind=small}