Roger McGuinn

Roger McGuinn, guitarist and 12-string player with the Byrds, created the mid 60s "jingle jangle" sound that defined songs like "Mr. Tambourine Man." The sound came from a specific chain: a Rickenbacker 12-string with "toaster" singlecoil pickups, a treble booster, and a compressor, played into clean amps¹².

The jangle: compression and treble boost on a 12-string

The recipe behind the sound, as described on treblebooster.net's McGuinn artist page, is a combination of parts rather than any single one of them:

• a compressor
• a treble booster
• Rickenbacker "toaster" singlecoil pickups
• a semi-hollow maple guitar body
• 12-string construction

In the studio during the 1960s, McGuinn used a Fairchild 670 tube compressor right after his guitar, with the treble booster engaged, to add sustain and evenness to his tone³. Live, the setup was a Vox Treble Booster and a compressor in front of Fender amps¹. He created the 1960s "jingle jangle" trademark sound with the V*X Treble Booster along with his 12-string Rickenbacker².

McGuinn's tone was so dependent on compression that he had a compressor built into his Rickenbacker signature model, as Guitar World put it in a 2024 feature on guitar compression⁴.

Rickenbacker 12-strings and the built-in compressor

Before 1967, McGuinn played two Rickenbacker 360/12 models, and both were stolen³. His favorite guitar is the Rickenbacker 370/12 with the maple-glo finish³, and he was still playing his famous 12-string Rickenbacker with the Byrds in 1968³.

In 1988, Rickenbacker introduced the Roger McGuinn signature Rickenbacker guitar, a Ric 370 12-string with an onboard compressor based on the Dyna Comp⁵. The treblebooster.net artist page describes it as offering an onboard compressor similar to the Boss CS-2 model, with a switching option to pronounce the high end³.

The "toaster" pickups matter to the recipe. After 1969/70, Rickenbacker replaced them with the "hi-gain type" pickup, which has six iron polepieces, a ceramic magnet and more windings. The treblebooster.net page does not recommend the hi-gain type for the real McGuinn sound³.

McGuinn plays with his thumb and two fingers on the 12-string Rickenbacker, as an original banjo player³. For strings, he uses Pyramid Gold Flatwound strings in the gauges .010/.010, .013/.013, .010/.020w, .013/.030, .020w/.035 and .030/.0465³. For amplification, McGuinn himself recommends a Roland Jazz Chorus amp to nail his sound³.

Getting the sound with pedals

Two modern pedals aim squarely at this sound. The BSM RMG is a custom version of the Vox unit, built as a homage to McGuinn and his signature "jingle jangle" sound¹. The RMG signature model is based on the original V*X Treble Booster and was modified to produce the clean "jingle jangle" sound of McGuinn and the Byrds⁶⁷. Premier Guitar's 2007 press coverage described it as an homage to the famous Byrds guitarist, noting that with the tone pot set to maximum the unit produces a very glassy tone, the classic "jingle jangle" sound⁸.

BSM's related models sit around it in the range:

The other route is the JangleBox compressor. McGuinn loves the JangleBox and says it is a spot-on recreation of the compressor inside his signature guitar⁵.

The combination also works with modern pedals. MusicRadar's reviewer Trevor Curwen, reviewing the ThorpyFX The Fat General compressor, found that the McGuinn-favored combination of squishy compression and treble boost works great on electric 12-string for a familiar 60s jangle¹¹.

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