Thanks to Travis for a lot of the following information, and Mark for the amazing GP picture.

Josh's main guitar setup:  On stage, josh uses a variety of guitars. His main "Axe" being his prized Ovation GP's (GP stands for Guitar Paul, as in Les Paul,) of which he has three. The GP was a very well made Les Paul copy, as opposed to some of the other LP copies made at the time. The originally came in 4 colors. The GP's that Josh uses are a honey burst with what seems to be a flame maple top, a black, and a cherry burst color GP. These guitars either came with DiMarzio Super 2 pickups, or a Korean knockoff pickup. The parts were manufactured by Samick in Korea and assembled in North Carolina As many Queens of the Stone age and Kyuss fans know, this guitar can put out tone like no other. If you want one of these guitars, your chances are slim, only 250-1000 were made in a short run in 1984 and if you do find one it will cost you around $2,000, much more than the original price of about $400-600.

Josh's most recent amp setup: The amp josh is currently using on stage is a moderately rare vintage Ampeg Vt-22 amp. The amp has also been used in the past by the rolling stones. This amp is extremely loud, with 12 tubes, and 4 7027 A Power Tubes. On stage Josh uses 3 of these power houses on stage, each with their own 2X12 cab, and each putting out about 120w each. This amp was marketed with the slogan "88 pounds of devotion", and if you ever buy one you will find that the thing is built like a tank and almost never have to be fixed. See below for picture.



Josh's guitar in the No One Knows video: it's not his usual Ovation. Josh plays a Maton Mastersound MS520 in the video made by Maton Guitars out of Australia. Here's a picture of a sea-green MS500 model, which is very similar to the MS520 (Josh's is jet black with a white pickguard):



You can read an interview with Josh that focuses on his guitar playing here.

And here is a short piece about Josh's rig:

[from Guitar.com, by Jon Matsumoto]

When it comes to divulging the specifics of his guitar and amp setup, Josh Homme is like a patriotic solider caught behind enemy lines. He’s not going to give away any secrets if he can help it.

“I don’t do that only because my sound is important to me and I’ve spent a lot of years just working it over with little tricks here and there,” he says politely. “I almost feel like if you reveal too much of that you give away something that’s near and dear to you. It’s like you put it up on the altar and say, ‘Here, everyone take a slice.’”

However, Homme does reveal that his favorite on-stage ax is an old Ovation solid body guitar. He’s got about ten or 11 guitars in his collection, including a ’77 Gibson Marauder and Gretsch Corvette. He says he prefers buying used guitars at pawn shops.

“If you pick up a used guitar that’s a piece of shit because it’s been worn the wrong way, then you won’t enjoy playing it,” he notes. “But if someone has put the right wear marks in it, than it’s a beautiful guitar. That’s so personal. I’m not talking about something that you can easily fix, like the neck’s bent. It has to do with where all the wear marks are and where are all the switches are.”

Homme uses Ampeg heads and tube speakers. He appreciates the warm and smooth mid-range sounds they offer him. He disdains brittle high tones except when they are used for sporadic texturing of his guitar sound. He never employs more than three effect pedals at a time.

“I keep those rotating mostly because I get sick of them,” he says. “I don’t like to have a lot of pedals because you think you’re tap dancing. So I try to use pickups and I change the settings on the amp during the show or recording to do the work instead of a lot of pedals.”