Let's be clear: Martin Gore loves gear. He's accumulated so much of it, in fact, that he has his own shop on Reverb, based in Chicago, where folks can buy his own, personal, used gear (there's also things like signed CDs, as well). There's everything from Roland drum machines to synths, rack units to amps, with some items pushing $1,000 or more. And sorry, folks — at the time of this writing, every single item has been sold. All sales go to the nonprofit Notes for Notes, which operates after-school programs where kids can make music for free.

Other backstage videos from Depeche Mode concerts, such as this one on YouTube from the Staples Center in 2013, and this other one on YouTube from 2010, feature Gore's guitar tech Jez Webb taking viewers on a close-up, detailed tour through the meticulousness of Gore's tech. In a nutshell, Gore employs very particular pedal-amp-cabinet loops and effect combinations for each and every song. Change-ups and ad-libs can be made on the fly during shows.

It's clear from the equipment alone, even aside from Depeche Mode's musical palate, that Gore is a perfectionist when it comes to tones. Even by 1990's "Violator," as DMRemix cites Guitar World saying, Gore's writing had come to include "lyrical nylon-string melodicism, snaky blues patterns, slide and sizeable amounts of distortion." The band's shift to L.A. and exposure to musicians such as Trent Reznor may have played a part here.  

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