Lenny Kravitz learned plenty about vintage electric guitars from Tom Petty and Mike Campbell. But one of the best lessons came later, when a man facing jail time pulled into a parking lot with a car full of vintage instruments — including the Les Paul that would become Kravitz’s number-one studio guitar.

Kravitz says his education in vintage gear began when he opened for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers following the release of his album Let Love Rule. Campbell, in particular, owns a number of classics, including the Fender Broadcaster he calls “the guitar I can’t live without.”

“When Let Love Rule came out, I opened for Tom Petty, and he and Mike Campbell taught me so much about vintage guitars,” Kravitz recalled. “I’m talking about ’89, when you could still find good things at really great prices. I’d go with Tom and Mike to stores in each city, and at that stage I couldn’t afford the things that they could, but I felt that they were educating me.”

Once albums like Mama Said and Are You Gonna Go My Way turned him into a major star, Kravitz was finally able to put those lessons to use.

“I really started to pick up a lot of great guitars,” he said. “People used to show up in the parking lot, find somebody from the crew and ask them to tell me that they had guitars to sell.”

One encounter proved particularly memorable.

“I got word that this guy was in the parking lot selling guitars,” Kravitz recalled. “And he, unfortunately, was facing jail time and needed to get a lawyer. I went out to his car, and I probably bought five guitars that day.”

The haul included a ’57 Telecaster, an early-’50s Stratocaster and a ’53 Les Paul Goldtop conversion that quickly became one of the most important guitars in his collection.

“It became my number one studio Les Paul from that time to now. It’s got a great Les Paul bite, and the distortion is really smooth and even, from the high end to the mids to the low. It’s on the slightly cleaner side — the pickups are not hot, but they’re just perfect. This has been on every album since I got it, starting with Are You Gonna Go My Way.”

Over the course of his long career, Vince Gill has been a session artist, a member of Pure Prairie League, a solo giant and, today, a member of the Eagles.

And he’s done it largely with a range of Fender Stratocaster and Telecaster electric guitars, as well as a nice selection of Gibson and Martin acoustics.

Given his somewhat infrequent use of a Les Paul, Gill never felt a need to add a vintage ‘Burst to his collection. But a sad and deeply personal twist of events brought one into his life.

“I bought a ’59 Les Paul from my brother-in-law from my first marriage [to country singer Janis Oliver],” Gill told Guitar Aficionado in 2017. “We were great friends, and he owned this great ’59 sunburst since 1959.

“He’d played it his whole life but got sick a couple of years ago. He called me and said, ‘There’s not much they can do for me. I’m probably not gonna make it. You’ve always been my favorite guitar player. Will you buy my Les Paul?’

“I didn’t have a sunburst Les Paul in my collection, and I previously couldn’t justify the expense because I don’t play a Les Paul that much, But this one came along and I said, ‘There you go,’” Gill continued. “I got the one I was supposed to have. My friend played it for 40 years, and now it gets to live on and still make music.”

The 'Burst occupies pride of place in Gill's collection, which is largely housed in his home studio. Of his collecting habit, Gill, with a chuckle, told Guitar Player in 2022, “I’m sure I’ve got a couple of hundred guitars, but I don’t have a boat or multiple houses or cars. I wouldn’t say it’s out of control, but it’s borderline.”

Gill — who has earned more CMA Awards than any other artist — will take home a once-in-a-lifetime honor on November 19 when the CMA presents him with the Willie Nelson Lifetime Achievement Award. The country legend will join past recipients like Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson, in recognition of having “attained the highest degree of recognition in Country Music,” as well as for his humanitarian efforts and philanthropy.

"Vince embodies the very best of what country music stands for," Sarah Trahern, CMA's chief executive officer, said in a statement. "He’s a true trailblazer, one who gives back to the community, honors the roots of our genre, and even now, continues to share his talent with fans across the globe."

Gill is currently casting a long glance over his 50-year music career by curating a series of EPS, titled 50 Years From Home. The first disc, I Gave You Everything I Had, was issued October 17, with others scheduled for release over the coming year.

Steve Lukather had been playing guitar for six or seven years before his parents relented to his begging for a top-quality instrument, and his retelling of the story has brought him to tears.

Like countless other young players who grew up in the 1960s, the Toto and session-playing hitmaker says George Harrison, whom he first saw perform on The Ed Sullivan Show, was “the reason why I play.”

Lukather received his first guitar at age seven, but as he told the Musicians Hall of Fame & Museum in 2020, it was a “broken thrift-store guitar, which ironically, people now covet.”

“It was a crappy guitar,” Lukather says with a laugh. “One of my idiot friends knocked it over and broke the neck — not off, but it screwed up the headstock to the point where it wouldn't tune up very well.”

Despite the damage, he was stuck with the instrument.

“I had to play it because my dad would say, ‘You broke it, you're not getting a new one.’”

Lukather devised a way to get his hands on nice guitars.

“Instead of going to the toy store, I'd go down to Guitar Center in Hollywood every couple of weeks,” he says.

Unfortunately, those electrics were beyond his means.

One day, however, things played out a little differently when his dad agreed to drive him down to the store and added, “Maybe we'll buy an amp.”

“I didn't wanna push it, man,” he says, “my dad worked hard. He knew how much I loved it. When I'd get into trouble, they didn't punish me, they'd take music stuff away. A stereo or whatever.

“Anyway, I wanted to try out an Ampeg VT22, the one Keith [Richards] used on Exile on Main St. So they put me in a practice room, and I grabbed a Les Paul Deluxe. I crank the amp, and I'm ripping on it. People are looking, going, ‘Who's that playing?’ and it's just a little kid. I guess I was quite good for my age.”

His dad had left him to his own devices until eventually he came back to collect his son and take him home.

“He goes, ‘All right, let's get out of here. Let's get this stuff in the car.’ And I go, ‘What do you mean?’”

His father’s words stunned him.

“‘The amp and the guitar. It's yours.’”

It's at this point he starts tearing up, calling it a “huge moment” in his life, while revealing that the outlay saw his dad give up on getting the new car he wanted.

“I love my parents so much,” Lukather continues. “My dad sacrificed that for me. I got this great guitar, I man. I woke up in the middle of the night to polish it. And the smell of the case. It changed my life.”

His dad's caveat was that, now that he had pro gear, he needed to take lessons and honor his craft with the weight it deserves. As the five-time Grammy winner continues to work on a new Van Halen album with Alex Van Halen – they're currently searching for a singer after a big-name turned them down – suffice to say the investment paid off.

He’s since clarified his role in the record after the story of their collaboration blew up. Jimmy Page, meanwhile, has explained what sets Lukather apart from his peers, and the Toto man has named his best guitar in a chat with GP.

Some guitarists are quick to dismiss their instruments as mere tools of the trade. For others, however, a guitar can carry deep sentimental value. For Zakk Wylde, his famed “Grail” Les Paul represents exactly that: the instrument tied to the most pivotal turning point of his life. When he believed he had lost it forever, a small identifying detail on the guitar ultimately helped bring it back to him.

Wylde’s life changed dramatically in the late 1980s when he went from being a Randy Rhoads–obsessed guitar teacher to becoming his successor. At just 20 years old, Wylde landed the role of lead guitarist for Ozzy Osbourne, becoming the singer’s third full-time guitarist after Jake E. Lee concluded his two-album run with the band.

Wylde reportedly beat out several high-profile contenders for the job, including Dutch virtuoso Adrian Vandenberg—who would later join David Coverdale’s Whitesnake—as well as shred guitarist Chris Impellitteri. Wylde himself has suggested there may have been a reason the unknown newcomer ultimately got the nod.

Shortly after he joined Osbourne’s band, Gibson quickly offered him an endorsement deal. Around the same time, Wylde struck a deal with a friend, Scott Quinn, to acquire his dream instrument: a cream-colored 1981 Les Paul Custom.

Wylde used the guitar to write his first song with Osbourne, “Miracle Man,” paying homage to both Hendrix and Rhoads in the process. Soon afterward, however, he decided to move away from the direct visual association with Rhoads, who frequently played a cream Les Paul Custom during his time with Osbourne.

That decision led to the electric guitar’s now-famous bullseye paint scheme. Ironically, the finished result was not exactly what Wylde had originally envisioned. Yet years later, when the guitar was lost under dramatic circumstances, that imperfect paint job helped identify it and ultimately led to its return.

“Don’t ever sell your first guitar,” Wylde said in a recent interview with Thomann. “You’ve got too many memories attached to it. Never get rid of them, because it’s got the mojo.”

The story of how he lost the Grail is almost as remarkable as how he got it back.

Wylde and his band were traveling overnight from Dallas to Oklahoma after stopping to watch Dimebag Darrell perform with Pantera. While the band slept, a critical oversight occurred.

“I remember when we woke up in the morning,” Wylde recalled. “The guys didn’t lock the back of the U-Haul trailer on the back of the bus, so the door went up and gear was falling out onto the highway. The Grail fell out of the back of the trailer onto the side of the road.”

Fortunately, the guitar was protected inside a durable Gibson “Chainsaw” hard case, which allowed it to survive the fall. It was later recovered by an unknown passerby.

“I just figured it was gone forever,” Wylde said. “But somebody saw the thing on the side of the road, picked it up and brought it to a pawn shop.”

The person who found it quickly sold the instrument and moved on. But the pawn shop owner happened to notice something distinctive.

“The guy who had it in the pawn shop took off the pickup ring, and it had ‘Z.W.’ on the back of it underneath the pickup,” Wylde explained. “And he said, ‘This is Zakk’s guitar.’”

By that point—around the year 2000—Wylde and his signature bullseye design were widely recognized. That small identifying mark, combined with the guitar’s unmistakable look, allowed the shop owner to track down its rightful owner.

Wylde ultimately traded one of his signature Gibson models in exchange for the instrument.

“I swapped him one of my signature Zakk Wylde Gibsons—the Bullseye—for it,” he said. “Not a bad deal.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Wylde also reflected on some of his favorite memories with Osbourne — though he admitted at least one of those moments was far less enjoyable for the Prince of Darkness. He has also suggested that Osbourne had been considering a return to the sound of No More Tears for a future album before his passing.

Some purists believe you shouldn’t mess with classic gear combinations. A Les Paul through a Marshall stack. A treble booster and Vox AC30 à la Brian May or Rory Gallagher. These are the sacred formulas of rock tone.

But Jack White wanted no part of them.

In fact, he says he “decidedly hated” the most iconic electric guitars of all.

Speaking in a new interview with Reverb, White recalled how, as a teenager searching for his own voice, he rejected Stratocasters, Les Pauls and other widely used instruments — not out of rebellion for its own sake, but out of a desire to escape what they represented.

“In my late teens,” he says, “I decidedly hated anything to do with Stratocasters, Les Pauls, [or] any of the common instruments that you see everybody use.

“I thought it’s so overused, and so indicative of ‘white boy blues’ if you had a Stratocaster.

“I would rather try to find something that didn’t have any connotations already thrown on it. So I was attracted to Silvertones and Airlines and things that you just didn’t see on TV or on videos.”

That instinct would help define his sound — and his image.

White instead embraced pawnshop oddities, most famously his fiberglass-bodied 1964 Montgomery Ward Airline Res-O-Glas, which became a key instrument in the breakthrough success of White Stripes.

Its offbeat look and raw tone perfectly matched the band’s stripped-down, anti-establishment ethos — an approach that even Alex Lifeson of Rush has said resonates deeply with him.

At the time, White wasn’t trying to make a statement. He was simply trying to be different.

“In the ’90s, I had a Silvertone guitar in Detroit, I never saw anybody use that guitar,” he says. “I never saw anybody on TV, definitely nobody playing shows or anybody I knew that owned one. So when I was using it, it felt very unique.”

The irony, he later discovered, was that these forgotten guitars had once been everywhere.

“Then you start talking to older people, and it’s like, ‘When I was a kid, that’s all anybody had, was Silvertones.’ Nobody had enough money to pay for a real guitar,” he explains.

“[It’s] different time periods, you know. It’s about trying to find uniqueness, a new voice for yourself. I didn’t wanna use the same tool that everyone else was using.

“I’m glad I did that. I’m glad I had that desire to carve something out. Because once you do that, then you can rewind and put on one of those more common guitars and get something out of it.”

Ironically, White would later come full circle, releasing his own signature Fender Telecaster — albeit one loaded with eccentric features true to his outsider spirit. He’s also continued to pursue unconventional builds, even hiring Eddie Van Halen’s go-to luthier to create a guitar-bass hybrid.

In the same interview, White also revealed that his obsession with unusual gear once led him on an eight-year search for an amplifier he didn’t even know existed. Elsewhere, he’s shared the invaluable advice he received from Prince, and his candid thoughts on what separates rock players from blues guitarists.

A Ukrainian guitarist has completed the exhaustive process of restoring a Gibson Les Paul that was badly burned after a Russian drone strike hit the nation’s capital city last year. She calls it “the most challenging project I’ve ever worked on — both technically and emotionally.”

Luthier Tanya Shpachuk documented her efforts to return the blackened guitar — named Vlad after its owner — to a playable state. As a professional guitar tech working out of a Kyiv-based shop, Shpachuk was well-equipped to take on the challenge, but was also struck by the emotional weight that her restoration mission held.

“Being able to take part in this restoration feels like more than just fixing a guitar,” she writes in the description from her video series that documents the restoration. “It’s about bringing back a piece of our history, a piece of beauty and a piece of hope.

”I’ll do everything I can to make this guitar sing again, to honor its story, and to remind everyone that even after destruction, creativity and resilience will always find a way.”

Shpachuk calls the damage “heartbreaking.” The guitar’s body was charred and distorted, parts of its headstock were cracked, and several inlays had fallen out. Three of its four control knobs were destroyed, and the pickup mounting rings were warped by the heat of flames. It looked largely irreparable.

Shpachuk thought otherwise. She scraped away the fire-damaged finish, replaced a damaged pearl inlay on the fretboard and spent hours tirelessly working on the guitar, giving it a complete refinish and new hardware.

The newly restored guitar now sports a gorgeous Silver Burst finish and features a new mother-of-pearl inlay for its headstock. The original pickups still bear the scars of the drone strike, however, a reminder of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

That invasion, launched in 2022, saw the music community rally to the country's aid. Gibson recruited Slash, Paul McCartney and other artists for a fundraiser, while Pink Floyd released a song inspired by a historic Ukrainian anthem.

Shpachuk says Les Paul she restored stands as a testament to the Ukrainian spirit in what has been an extremely challenging time for the nation. She explains, however, that her decision to refinish the guitar went agains the wishes of some followers on YouTube and her Patreon page.

“I saw many comments suggesting leaving the damage visible as a reminder, because it looks 'badass,’” she says in the video description in part eight, the final video of the series. “But my focus from the very beginning was restoration.

“The message here is simple: we all want rebuilding — and we are capable of doing it.”

The video series ends, quite fittingly, with its owner playing the freshly revitalized guitar, via some lovely finger-picking. Parts one and eight are embedded here, but watch the entire series to get a true scale of the project and its poignancy.

What does it take to write a timeless hit prog-rock song? If you're an unknown Dutch group in the early 1970s, you couldn't do better than to combine an incessant crunchy guitar riff with a driving rhythm and something entirely left field.

Say, yodeling, for instance.

As Focus guitarist Jan Akkerman reveals in a new interview, a smorgasbord of influences were at work when the group created what became its trademark song, “Hocus Pocus.”

Written in 1971, the track's blend of incendiary Gibson Les Paul guitar riffs and yodeling has become a pop-culture favorite. It's been covered by artists across a myriad of genres, and was even featured in a Nike advertising campaign to coincide with the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

“Hocus Pocus” was born from a spur-of-the-moment jam, during which keyboardist, flutist and vocalist Thijs van Leer spontaneously broke out into a yodeling refrain that Akkerman latched onto.

“We were just jamming when our organ player started yodeling on the piece,” the guitarist explains to Guitar.com. “We said, ‘Yeah, man, keep on doing that,’ not realizing the consequences and what it would bring to the song.”

Van Leer related his own memories of the song's creation in a 2007 interview with Classic Rock.

“Shortly before leaving for England to record the second album, we were playing at a castle, when the guitarist suddenly played that riff,” van Leer recalled. “Then completely spontaneously Pierre threw in a two-bar drum solo and I started yodelling. It came from nowhere; a piece of pure improvisation, inspired by the fun of playing together.”

Even stranger is the fact that, until that day, van Leer had never yodelled before. Why did he pick such a pivotal moment to start?

“I still think it came from heaven,” he said.

It wouldn’t be the first, nor the last time, the Dutch group would set rock, classical and a generous smattering of jazz on a collision course. In reality, it’s the very natural consequence of Akkerman’s biggest inspirations.

“My guitar playing influences go much further than just the rock scene,” he continues. “I like jazz guitar players like Django Reinhardt, because of his approach to playing the melody, and also Wes Montgomery, in the way he uses phrasing. So in my own style, I tried to do a mishmash of those things.”

But the story doesn’t end there.

“I used to listen to a lot of Frank Zappa and really liked his eclectic approach to making music,” he adds. “[But] the main heavy rock guitar motif that is throughout the track is actually very Chuck Berry based.”

He also has another influence to thank. He played the song's infectious angular guitar riff on a late '60s Black Beauty Gibson Les Paul Custom. Akkerman says he chose the model after seeing the Dutch-Indonesian group the Tielman Brothers perform with one. Even then, he says, he knew “that’s going to be my guitar.”

“It had everything I wanted,” he says, although his dislike of the middle position prompted him to bestow it with the Filter’Tron pickups from his Gretsch White Falcon. Eventually, he restored to its stock humbuckers.

As reported by Guitar World, Akkerman paired the guitar with a Fender SS1000/XFL1000 Super Showman amp head, a product of Fender's much-derided CBS era. A Colorsound Power Boost distortion pedal was also used.

Over the years, "Hocus Pocus" has been covered numerous times. In the world of heavy metal, Iron Maiden and Helloween have both given it their spin, as have British violinist Vanessa Mae, California-based punk band the Vandals and American guitarist Gary Hoey.

Which version does Akkerman prefer?

“I think Marillion’s version is really great,” he says. “Steve Rothery is such a great guitar player that I’m actually very proud of that cover.”

But for all the song’s success, Akkerman doesn’t feel that an instrumental track like "Hocus Pocus" would succeed in 2025.

“Today, everybody does their own thing, and everything else is bad,” he bemoans. “And that gets pretty boring after a while, so because of that, I don’t listen to new music anymore.”

Eddie Van Halen may be best known for his Frankenstein Strat — a guitar hat married Les Paul tonality with Stratocaster playability and Floyd Rose trickery — but he was always keen to test-drive other guitars. Even if he might not have always treated them with the care their owners would have liked.

Speaking of one memorable night he played with Van Halen, Carl Verheyen says Eddie took a fancy to his Les Paul, and it nearly fell back into his possession, worse for wear.

The versatile Santa Monica-born session musician briefly joined Supertramp in the mid-’80s before pursuing a solo career.

But back in the 1970s, he was a performer in the L.A. area. Which is how he came to meet and befriend Eddie Van Halen.

“My band played opposite Van Halen a few times,” he says during a chat with Jon Stankorb. But it was one gig in particular that he remembers with a mix of fondness and fear for the well-being of his prized electric guitar.

“I remember that Eddie borrowed one of my Les Pauls. We had played a set and then they were going to play a set on a different stage in this sort of L-shaped building,” he details. “We ended our set with ‘I'm Going Home’ by Ten Years After, and they started their set with that, just to one-up us!”

In fact, the two Van Halen brothers were hugely inspired by Ten Years After's performance of the song in the Woodstock film. “The solo in the movie sounds pretty rough to me these days,” Ed told Guitar World in 2023. “But it had the energy, and that was what Ten Years After were all about at the time.”

Verheyen understood that a little bit of brash one-upmanship was never out of the question with Eddie Van Halen. It's what happened next that surprised him.

“They played 45 minutes, and when they were done, he walked over to our stage,” he continues. “And he goes, ‘Hey man, great guitar. Thanks.’ and he dropped the Les Paul from — I don't know — about three feet into the case, not realizing that these guitars don’t have bolt-on necks and they don't bounce.

“I said, ‘Ed, what are you doing!?’ but I think he was used to the Frankenstein Strats; you couldn’t hurt them.”

Reflecting on one of his most demanding recording sessions with Guitar Player, Verheyen had the chance to analyze and marvel at another next-level guitar player, and one that Eddie Van Halen was equally impressed by: Allan Holdsworth.

“I was instantly humbled when he showed me the chord voicings he used for the soloing changes in ‘Three Sheets to the Wind,’” Verheyen says of trying to keep up with Holdsworth’s wizardry. “My left hand couldn’t form the shapes quickly and cleanly enough. I limped home with my tail between my legs.”

Luckily, he refused to be beaten by the challenge – “the next morning, I locked myself in a room with a guitar. I refused to come out until I could [do it],” he says – and turned the mind-expanding experience into a fascinating lesson.

Verheyen has also delivered a whammy-bar masterclass for GP, having revisited it after falling in love with Jeff Beck's Guitar Shop.

Jeff Beck’s formative years were defined, predominantly, by his use of a Gibson Les Paul. But as he went from fresh-faced Yardbird to solo artist phenomenon, the Fender Stratocaster became his weapon of choice.

A recently resurfaced clip of him showcasing the Fender flagship axe’s versatility shows why he made the switch, and it has stark parallels with one of Joe Bonamassa’s viral guitar lessons.

The Yardburst LP, given a Custom Shop reissue in 2024, is a highly storied electric guitar. It was his go-to instrument during his Yardbird days, including his brief tandem with Jimmy Page, and has since been played by Lenny Kravitz's guitarist Craig Ross and Marcus King following the record-breaking auction of Beck’s gear last year.

When Beck teamed up with Beatles super producer George Martin for Blow by Blow, it was a peculiar and “cobbled together” Oxblood Les Paul that he coaxed his magic out of. But soon after that, he turned his back on Les Paul’s altogether.

After slamming Fenders as being “cheap in feel” during a Guitar Player interview in 1973, he countered it with, “You pick up a Les Paul and it's heavy and it really means something.” But, in his own words, Blow by Blow was the end of his Les Paul “fling.”

Speaking to Malcolm Gerrie on Sky Arts' "Jeff Beck Talks Music" in 2013, the avant-garde virtuoso preluded his glowing review of the Strat by addressing his lineage.

“I did play Les Pauls because, to be honest, I loved the way Eric [Clapton] sounded with [Cream],” he says. “You need the richness, and the Strat was too thin-sounding; the Tele was definitely too thin. The fatness of the Les Paul low-end was amazing.

“Then Jimmy [Page] came along and he almost had his fatter sound as Eric with the Strats, I thought ‘That's it.’”

Gerrie then asks him the eternal question: “What is it about the Fender Strat that you love so much?”

“Because it's endless color,” he replies, before mutating the guitar's voice in a myriad of ways, from snarling, overdriven bite to gentle, rolled off cleans, all achieved through manipulating its Tone and Volume controls.

“It's the same guitar,” he adds after showcasing the first two wildly different sounds before continuing the unfurl a range of different tones.

While the clip has its similarities with JoBo’s viral lesson, where he showcased the range of sounds one can get out of a Les Paul’s on-board controls, there are also similarities with the bluesman’s claim that the Strat is the “Swiss army knife of guitars.”

“You can do anything with a Stratocaster,” he explains to Guitarist. “I‘ve seen Strats perform all kinds of guitar music and flourish in that environment because of the third pickup.”

Beck, though late on the uptake, was prone to agree. He made the instrument sing like no one else.

Since his passing, Beck's Custom Shop Strat has ended up in the hands of John Mayer for a one-off performance, and Ritchie Blackmore has recently reflected on his genius, revealing that he wasn't always as positive-minded about his craftsmanship as his peers.

Meanwhile, Mick Rogers claims to own Beck's last-ever recording, but says there's one matter keeping it from being released.

In 2014, Joe Bonamassa was well-established, with 11 albums and one Grammy nomination under his belt. But his reputation as a gear connoisseur and teacher supreme wasn't quite on par until a viral lesson on the versatility of Les Pauls changed the narrative.

Reflecting on that video, which has 2.5 million views at the time of writing, 11 years later, the bluesman has revealed he was wholly unprepared for it. In fact, all he wanted was a martini and the chance to put his feet up after a grueling day.

“What stood between me and a martini was this 30-minute lesson,” he tells Tyler Larson and Jared James Nichols on the No Cover Charge podcast.

He was in at John Henry's, the famed gear hire warehouse in London, England, busy on the press trail for his Different Shades of Blue album. The record's release had been bolstered by his collaborative record with Beth Hart, Seesaw, scoring him his first of four Grammy nominations he’d had to this day.

His itinerary for the trip was exhausting. A chat with Guitarist magazine was the last task to check off. Or so he thought.

“We had a long day,” Bonamassa sighs. “I was there with my tour manager, Clay, and we're at John Henry's, and they're [Guitarist] like, ‘Okay, now that we're done with all this, we were promised a half-hour guitar lesson on camera.’ I'm like, ‘Nobody told me that.’”

That martini would have to wait a little while longer. Bonamassa opted to play ball.

“I go, ‘I could teach you everything I know in, like, 15 minutes, okay? I just can't teach you how to apply it. That's it's a personal thing,’” he continues. “But you know the feeling, of course, when you've checked out.

“So I quickly came up with something. I completely blagged the whole fucking thing. And then it was one of the first videos of mine that went viral.”

Having had a Dickey Betts Les Paul reissue plonked in his hands, and with an amp “way back” out of the way, he focused on the guitar he was holding. More specifically, he wanted to show viewers how to re-characterize the electric guitar’s voice by using its onboard controls. Or, as he charmingly calls it, the lesson was “the affirmation of how you don't know your own fucking instrument.”

“I said, ‘You realize that all of the sounds in your head can come out of this little thing right here.’ Forget these [strings/humbuckers] — it's how you tweak the knobs and how what you hear in here is being channelled through the guitar.

“What you have here is a plethora of sounds without having to plug into one pedal,” he says in the well-watched three-minute clip. “How? Well, you have your volumes, pickup selector, and the forgotten tone knob.”

He very quickly unfurls Eric Clapton's famous woman tone, followed by a mean Wes Montgomery impression, a “bright, clean sound,” and Johnny Winter/Freddie King–style guitar solo tones.

There's something about the pace with which he cranks through the gears here, clearly thinking about clocking off, that really accentuates his mastery of the Gibson singlecut. It also, as the lesson intends to, shows how diverse-sounding the instrument can be without looking to external sources for answers.

Yet, despite playing Les Pauls more often than any other model of guitar, he has recently hailed the Fender Stratocaster as the Swiss Army knife of guitars, outstripping the LP’s versatility.

He’s also given the backstory of one of his most obscure Les Pauls, Royal Albert, which he saved from 50 years of collecting dust under its previous owner’s staircase. The profit made on a guitar bought for £50 in 1967 is also outrageous.

But it wasn’t the Les Paul he placed above all others when picking which guitars to move away from his Nerdville home as the L.A. Wildfires closed in.

His lesson-giving days are far from over, either, as he tells Gibson, the days of mindless shredding are long gone, but adds that this one trick will always be a crowd pleaser.

Most guitarists have a story of buyer's remorse. But seller's remorse happens too. Just ask Bryan Adams.

The Canadian music legend let a piece of his music history go in the late 1980s and eventually came to regret it. The guitar was nothing special, he tells Guitar World, just a "stock, off the shelf" 1980s-era Gibson Les Paul.

That guitar, however, had a special connection. It was one of two electric guitars that dominated the creation of his 1984 album, Reckless. Although Adams’ third album, Cuts Like a Knife, is the disc that brought the guitarist, producer and songwriter his first real success, it was its follow-up, Reckless, that made him a global superstar, thanks to hits like "Run to You," "Somebody," "Heaven" and the smash "Summer of '69." Reckless took over the airwaves and went on to sell more than 12 million copies.

But, unlike the timeless “Summer of ‘69,” the Gibson didn’t see out the decade.

“There were two guitars on Reckless,” Adams says. "One was a 1960 Stratocaster." The other was the Les Paul.

“And the interesting thing about the Les Paul is that, around the end of the ’80s, I sold it. I thought, I’m never going to use this… I mostly use Strats." He also developed a connection with his Gibson ES-295 hollowbody. "I just didn’t play the Les Paul anymore. So, I sold it.”

By the late 1990s, his longing for the Les Paul began to grow, but he couldn’t recall what had happened to it.

“The internet started coming about, and I started seeing pictures of myself playing that Les Paul live,” Adams says. “I thought, Shit, I think I sold that.

“And sure enough, I had sold it. It was gone. I had no idea where it was.”

He found out in the unlikeliest way in 2005.

“I was signing records, and this guy comes up, and I'm thinking, Oh, he wants me to sign his guitar,” Adams recalls. It clearly wouldn’t have been the first instance he’d signed a guitar, by the sounds of it. But his first impression was wide of the mark.

“He said, ‘Hey, I bought your Les Paul years ago. I'm really in hard times — would you like to buy the guitar back?’

“I was like, ‘Oh, yeah!’ So, we did the deal right then and there.

“It had taken a bit of a beating since I'd had it,” he adds. “But the best thing about getting that guitar back was that I re-recorded 'Summer of ‘69' with it”

In fact Adams re-made a score of his biggest hits for the 2022 album, Classic, two years after Taylor Swift — who he says is the only musician to have done a cover of the track justice — did likewise with her back catalog.

Similarly, John Fogerty revisited his Creedence Clearwater Revival catalog after getting back the rights to his music following a 50-year legal battle. And, like Adams, he reacquired a long-lost guitar when his famous Rickenbacker 325 — heard across CCR's catalog — found its way back to him, courtesy of his wife.

For other lost-and-found guitar stories, see the mysterious journey of Nuno Bettencourt's Washburn double-neck, how George Harrison got back his kidnapped "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" Les Paul back, the tale of Randy Bachman's 1957 Gretsch 6120, and the story of how Bachman helped reunite Neil Young with his own beloved Gretsch 6120.

Lita Ford, meanwhile, rediscovered her stolen B.C. Rich Mockingbird in the hands of a guitarist auditioning to join her band, but she decided against asking for it back.

In a wild turn of events, Bryan Adams played with Eddie Van Halen during an all-star jam in 1996 that has since been dubbed "The show that was never supposed to be seen."

Tony Iommi had a dream guitar when he was growing up. Years would go by before he had a chance to get his hands on one, only to find he couldn't play it.

Today, Iommi is intimately linked with the Gibson SG, the symmetrical electric guitar also favored by AC/DC’s Angus Young. But he actually started his career with a Fender Stratocaster, the guitar he played during his short-lived spell in Jethro Tull.

Three years before then, he'd nearly given up the instrument entirely after suffering a horrific hand injury. While working in a sheet-metal factory in the heart of industrial Birmingham, Iommi lost the tips of two of his fretting hand fingers in a gruesome accident. Afterward, he was told he would never play guitar again.

The oft-repeated story goes that the factory's foreman visited Iommi at his home and put on a record by jazz guitar player Django Reinhardt, who was famously virtuosic despite having lost the use of the fourth and fifth fingers on his fretting hand in a fire. That encouraged Iommi to play on, but try as he might, his injury prevented him from playing the guitar he'd dream of owning: a Gibson Les Paul.

“I always wanted a Les Paul, but I couldn't play it because of my accident,” he confessed during a press event relaunching his signature Gibson humbuckers. “I couldn't get up my top frets.”

By then he had long made his peace playing the SG, a guitar he said “suited me perfectly.”

Iommi had intended to launch Black Sabbath's career with his Stratocaster and had even recorded "Wicked World," from their self-titled 1969 album, using the guitar. However, a happy accident changed the course of history. The Stratocaster's pickups broke down, and Iommi's backup guitar, an SG recently acquired in a dodgy car park swap, was put into action. Afterward, Iommi never looked back.

“The SG for me was comfortable,” he says. “I liked the shape, the weight, and eventually a ton of people started using it, because everybody would want a Les Paul in the early days, that was always the best.”

By 1970, he had a Custom Shop model, complete with a trio of humbuckers and a Maestro Vibrola bridge. The guitar made an appearance on Sabbath's Top of the Pops performance that year, but it was stolen soon afterward while Iommi was at a hotel.

Speaking at Gibson's press event, Iommi also attributed his pivot away from the Les Paul to a common complaint: “It was too heavy.” The SG, on the other hand, has been “perfect for me,” he said.

All those twists of fate — the accident, the changes they forced on his guitar playing, and his switch to the SG — played a role in Black Sabbath's sound and its impact on heavy metal.

But there was another key element: a modded Dallas Rangemaster Treble Booster. The pedal — the same model used by Brian May and Rory Gallagher — had been tweaked by a friend of Sabbath drummer Bill Ward to make it produce even more sustain.

“Other guitarists would say, ‘You can’t put that in front of the amplifier, you’re gonna overload it.’ And I would say, ‘I know — that’s what I want it to do!’” he joked in 2017. “That’s the sound you hear on the early Sabbath albums that everyone loves.”

However, like his Custom Shop SG, the Rangemaster was also on borrowed time as part of Iommi's rig.

“I hired a guy to rebuild all my amps, and believe it or not, he found it in my trunk and threw it away,” he exclaims. “I couldn’t believe it.”

Since no one knew what modifications were made to it, which has ultimately given the box far more sustain, a key part of his guitar tone was lost forever.

As Zakk Wylde prepared for a photoshoot shortly after becoming Ozzy Osbourne’s third full-time guitarist, he had a realization. His cream-colored Gibson Les Paul, known lovingly as the Grail, cut too close to the bone of the late Randy Rhoads’ much-played instrument. He needed a signature look, but the one he got back from the mod shop was not what he had asked for.

Wylde’s rise from unknown guitar teacher to Ozzy’s right-hand riff-slinger is well known. He’d beaten notable, fast-rising shredders like Adrian Vandenberg and Chris Impellitteri with his audition, and in doing so, changed both his career path and Ozzy’s by bringing a grungier brand of metal into the new decade.

Getting the gig also turned Gibson’s eye, who were quick to endorse the guitarist as one of their own. That afforded Wylde the chance to get his hands on his dream guitar: namely, the Grail, a 1981 Les Paul Custom then owned by his friend Scott Quinn.

“A friend of mine, Scott Quinn, who used to work at Garden State Music in New Jersey, made a deal with me,” he tells Guitar World. “I was endorsed by Gibson after I'd gotten the gig with Ozzy. Scott, a huge John McLaughlin fan, said that if I could get him a double-neck, he'd trade the Grail for it. Gibson hooked me up, and I made the trade.”

The Les Paul Custom came fully loaded with EMGs, high-powered active pickups that had blown Wylde's mind not long before the trade. For Wylde, it was the one.

“I'd played this guitar and been knocked out by how amazing it sounded and how well it played,” he reflects. “When I plugged it into my Marshall combo, I was astounded.”

He wrote “Miracle Man,” his first song for Ozzy, on the guitar, and it still had its stock cream paint job when they entered the studio to track their album No Rest for the Wicked.

It was only when it came to doing promo photos that Zakk realized a cream LP was Randy’s thing.

“After we'd recorded No Rest for the Wicked, I was gonna be shooting some photos and I realized I was gonna look like I was trying to be Randy, with the cream Les Paul,” he says, “so I sent it to be refinished.”

Zakk asked to have the guitar finished with a vertiginous-patterned design.

“It was meant to look like the poster for [the 1958 Alfred Hitchcock film] Vertigo,” Zakk explains. “But it came back with the bull's-eye.”

A quick Google reveals two different versions of the movie poster: one with a more intricate spiraling design, and another more akin to the bull's eye, but with thinner circles. It’s not clear which one he wanted, and that probably explains the mix-up.

Either way, the bull's-eye was what he got.

“I realized it was pretty cool anyway, and I’ve made it a signature look ever since,” he continues. “Most of the records I did with Ozzy featured this guitar.”

Then the cruel hands of fate snatched the guitar from him, and Wylde, with a heavy heart, consigned the formidable axe to the history books.

“Around 2000, it fell out of our gear trailer,” he says. “It came with one of those tough chainsaw cases, so it survived crashing onto the highway.”

Wylde wasn't certain about his electric guitar's fate until, aptly, a miracle happened.

“It turned up in a pawn shop,” Wylde reveals. “Someone bought it, realized it was mine and, three years after I'd lost it, contacted me and sold it back.”

The Grail has since been retired, and kept well away from highways, having launched his gear brand, Wylde Audio, in 2016 – just be sure to avoid this fake, AI-infested Wylde Audio website.

“I exclusively use Wylde Audio models now,” Zakk adds. “They're exactly the same as the ones for sale. They're already modded, because they're built to my specs, with the Tone Pros hardware, the EMGs and everything.” And if disaster strikes, the sentimentality wouldn’t be half as brutal.

Elsewhere, Wylde has discussed what he deems the five greatest riffs in rock history, and peeled back the curtain on his final meeting with Ozzy, the message he received from him afterwards, and how he never thought that this was the end for the Prince of Darkness.

New York City’s Met Museum is contesting claims made by former Rolling Stones guitarist Mick Taylor that he owns the “Keithburst” Les Paul that's set to star in its new 500-strong exhibition of vintage guitars.

In July, a source close to Taylor said the guitarist was “mystified as to how his property found its way into the Met’s collection,” having been stolen while the Stones were recording Exile on Main St. in France in 1971. Drug dealers took a total of eight guitars — including a Bigsby-loaded 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard belonging to Taylor — from the Stones' villa, Nellcôte, after Keith Richards failed to shell out for heroin he'd scored off them during the recording sessions.

Richards himself owned the Les Paul in the mid 1960s and performed with it in the Stones' 1964 appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. He sold it to Taylor in '67 when the guitarist was performing with John Mayall's Bluesbreakers. The Les Paul returned to the Stones' stable when the band hired Taylor to replace founding member Brian Jones in 1969.

Prior to then, the guitar had been photographed with Jimmy Page and used by Eric Clapton, who borrowed it from Richards for an early Cream performance after his own "Beano" Les Paul was stolen in 1966.

Met officials contest Taylor's claims that he owned the electric guitar in their collection, and say the instrument was not among those stolen from Nellcôte.

The museum states that a man named Adrian Miller became the guitar’s owner in 1971, but doesn’t explain how he came to take ownership of it.

It’s believed that Miller ultimately sold the guitar to Heavy Metal Kids founder Cosmo Verrico, who, as per an interview with the New York Times, “can’t recall how Miller acquired the guitar.”

The guitar had first resurfaced at a 2004 Christie’s auction, where it failed to sell. Taylor made no claim of ownership when the guitar went on the block, and it was purchased two years later by Swedish producer and Cardigans guitarist Peter Svensson.

The Les Paul was next owned by Dirk Ziff, who loaned it to the Met in 2019 as part of its Play it Loud exhibition in 2019. It was among the more than 500 golden age guitars Ziff donated to the museum earlier this year in what the Met has called a “landmark gift.” Those instruments are set to be exhibited later this year.

Taylor’s camp is refusing to back down. The New York Times says his manager, Marlies Damming, has formally requested that the museum “make the guitar available so that we can inspect it, and confirm its provenance one way or the other.”

There’s plenty more mileage in this story, it seems, as the mystery of what happened to the guitar endures. Its ties to one of the Stones' most celebrated albums, recorded in Nellcôte’s basement, pepper the story with even greater interest.

“It's got a raw sound quality, and the reason for that is that the basement was very dingy and very damp,” Taylor told the Guardian of the Exile sessions in 2010. “The roof leaked, and there were power failures. We had to deal with all that and go with the flow.”

Musicians would come and go from the sessions. “You didn't know who anybody was,” recalls Rolling Stone journalist Robert Greenfield, who visited the villa to interview Richards. Drug use was rife, even with children present.

A drug bust forced the band to retreat once more, this time to America, where the tapes were reassessed and turned into the resulting double-album Exile on Main St. under the guidance of Stones' lead singer Mick Jagger.

Memorial Day is almost here, and Guitar Center has launched an epic Memorial Day Sale, which offers up to 35% off a massive range of gear until May 28th. So, if you’re on the lookout for a new electric guitar, acoustic guitar, guitar amp, or effects pedal, then head on over for a browse while stocks last.

Just like last year, Guitar Center is currently having a massive sale on a wide variety of popular brands such as Fender, Epiphone, Gibson, Martin, Line 6, and more. It's a fantastic opportunity to snag some awesome deals. If you need some help navigating through the 800+ products on sale, we've highlighted a few top picks for you below. 

First up, we've found a whopping $200 off the Martin Special D, which is now down to only $849. This is a very special deal on an equally special guitar from Martin, the company that brought you the quintessential all-American flat-top. Martin invented the Dreadnought, and this all-solid Special D model features an x-braced Sitka spruce top and sapele (also known as sapele mahogany) back and sides.

Next up, and keeping things American, we have the stunning Gibson Les Paul Standard '50s, which has a generous $419 slashed off the price. This retro throwback delivers stellar vintage tones with a seriously chunky neck and outstanding finishing. 

Not a Les Paul fan? Well, you'll want to check out the gorgeous limited edition HSS Fender Player Strat. Now with a sizable $180 discount, this humbucker-equipped Strat is fiercely versatile and a total steal at this price. 

When Jeff Beck’s wife put the late virtuoso’s guitar collection up for auction last year, she did so in the hope that they would be “shared, played, and loved again”.

Even before that, John Mayer used his 2014 Custom Strat during Dead & Co’s shows at The Sphere, and, now, having bought Beck’s famed Yardburst Les Paul for $490,000, Matt's Guitar Shop is ensuring the guitar’s days continue to play out on stages across the world by lending it to Lenny Kravitz’s foil, Craig Ross.

The French store and showroom, owned by Matthieu Lucas, has been getting into the habit of acquiring hsitoric six-strings and lending them out to gigging guitarists, with Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong, and Sum 41's Deryck Whibley among those recently taking Steve Jones’ 1974 Les Paul Custom for a spin.

While Beck’s prized Oxblood Les Paul went for a staggering $10.7 million – making it the most expensive Les Paul ever sold at auction – Lucas felt bidders didn’t heed his Yardburst LP enough attention during the auction.

“To me, with my taste for Jeff Beck’s journey and my love for the British Blues Explosion, this guitar was the sleeper hit of the whole auction,” he tells Guitar World.

“Everyone was focused on other pieces, but the Yardburst showed up early in the sale – and that’s what made this beautiful, unexpected story possible. It felt like fate. A moment where everything aligned.”

Honored with a merticulous Gibson Murphy Lab reissue last year, the 1959 build was his weapon of choice during his short fire, but reputation enhancing, Yardbirds days, during which he enjoyed a fleeting partnership with Jimmy Page.

Ross became the first loanee of the history-steeped guitarist, putting it through its paces across the full European leg of the Lenny Kravitz’s recent Blue Electric Light tour.

“Funny thing – this is actually the first time I’ve ever lent one of my guitars out for an entire European tour,” he says. “I called Craig – I think he was in Germany – and told him the idea. He was immediately into it, super-happy.

“We locked it in a few weeks before the Paris show. Just days after the auction, I sent Craig a photo of the guitar, and he had the same reaction I did – this guitar is a living icon.

“Lending him the Yardburst meant as much to me as if it were going to Slash and Billy Gibbons” he extends, holding Ross’ talents in hig hregard. “People don’t always realize how lucky they are to hear Craig Ross live.

“Craig even mentioned that Jeff Beck used to love seeing him and Lenny play live! So it feels full circle. Especially when Craig played the Yardburst at Paris La Défense Arena – 45,000 people hearing that epic solo on ‘Bring It On’. Unreal.”

Ross, who co-wrote Kravitz's smash hit “Are You Gonna Go My Way” among many others, started his career playing days in Los Angeles, with his early band Broken Homes supporting the likes of Stevie Ray Vaughan and Guns N' Roses before a chance meeting with Kravitz changed his course. He also guested on The Black Crowes' 2001 album “Lions” playing on “Greasy Grass River”.

Though the guitar is back in Lucas’ possession, he doesn’t want it to be for long, promising, “it will be played again. On stages. In front of people. That’s the only future I see for it.”

In related news, former Manfred Mann's Earth Band guitarist Mick Rogers beleives he owns the last recording Jeff Beck ever made, but confesses that releasing it is another matter.

If you've ever thought the world of electric guitar is due for a P90 renaissance, you’re probably not alone.

In the past few months, diehard humbucker players like Joe Bonamassa and Warren Haynes have leaned into P90s. Last October brought the arrival of Bonamassa’s Epiphone 1955 Les Paul Standard, the first guitar in his Artist Series to feature P90 pickups.

Then, in mid March came word that Haynes’ new signature Gibson Les Paul Standard will also feature P90s.

Now we’ve learned that Bon Jovi guitarist Phil X is working with Gibson on a signature SG equipped with P90s.

It's quite an about-face for the humble P90.

The single-coil pickup has been made by Gibson since 1946. But with the arrival of the humbucker in 1957, the P90 took a backseat to its double-coil sibling.

But as many guitarists have discovered, P90s have a lot going for them. Crank ‘em up for rock and roll, dial ‘em back for country, or a little further for some glassy Tele tones. Available in soapbar and dog-ear formats, they are the same pickup in either mounting configuration, though some guitarists are certain they hear a difference. (And as you'll see, Joe has his own theory about this.)

As for that tone, it's more beloved than you might think.

Bonamassa himself declared, "Most people who are dyed-in-the-wool Gibson people, they'll say behind closed doors — when the internet's not watching — that their favorite pickup is a P90."

As Haynes told us, he chose P90s for a few reasons. In addition to giving him tones that are different from his go-to sounds, they allow him to change up his vibe without relying on pedals.

“I’m not depending on pedals for the majority of the sounds that I use,” Warren says. “I like to change the volume knob on the guitar to get a lot of different sounds that way, and P90s are definitely great for that."

Having spoken to Warren, we thought we'd ask Joe and Phil to weigh in on the subject. Here’s what they told us.

Joe Bonamassa

Although he’s admittedly a “humbucker guy,” that didn’t stop Joe Bonamassa from releasing a P90-equipped Epiphone Les Paul at the end of 2024 in a spectacular, vintage-inspired Copper Iridescent finish.

“I was using the Epiphone onstage the other night for a song or two,” Bonamassa tells Guitar Player. “I really liked the way it sounded. It sounded really great.

"But," he cautions, "you are subject to the same noise issues that a single-coil will produce — though that’s also part of the charm.”

That charm, which dates to the 1950s and 1960s when P90s were often found in Les Paul Jr. and SG models, has captivated the minds of some guitarists and left just as many dumbfounded. As for Bonamassa, a collector of such seductive relics, he says, “They all tend to sound pretty good.

“But my favorite P90 guitar is a 1961 SG Special in Polaris White," he adds. "It’s the Pete Townshend spec. That thing just roars!”

That said, Bonamassa generally reverts to his humbucking ways, though he admits to the versatility of a P90. “You can play anything on them,” he says.

At the same, he notes, “I can take a [DiMarzio] Super Distortion or a [Mighty Mite] Motherbucker and play straight jazz if I had to!"

He laughs at the idea of it all.

"They’re all versatile," he contends. "It’s the player. It’s not rocket science. Look, Les Paul himself didn’t play rock or blues, you know?”

Ultimately, while Bonamassa respects P90s enough to put them on a signature guitar, he’s not about to ditch humbuckers anytime soon.

“Oh, no,” he says. “If that was gonna happen, I would have done that years ago. I’m getting set in my ways. But like I said, it depends on the song, and the application.”

Your recent signature Epiphone Les Paul has P90s on it, which is a bit of a departure for you. What's the appeal?

Well, all my signature stuff is based on old guitars that I won, so the brown P90 Les Paul that we did last year is based on two original ones that I own from the ‘50s. We’d never done a P90 guitar, and they have that thing. They clean up really well; they roar. Juniors and Specials, sometimes they roar. They hit harder.

What tonal possibilities do P90s open for you that humbuckers or Stratocaster-style single-coils don’t?

They’re their own thing. With P90s, you’re generally talking about pairing them with an all-mahogany body, like a Junior, a Special or a Les Paul Standard. You usually have a maple top, which adds a little brightness, and a mahogany back. P90s tend to read in the high sevens and low eights [ohms], so they’re a very specific thing.

A lot of people even set their rigs to P90s and set their gain structure to the P90. I guess I have to break that code because my rig is set for humbucking pickups, so the gain structures are different.

If you were to alter your rig to accommodate a P90, how would you do it?

Generally, if I’m using a P90 guitar, I’m playing rhythm. I love a P90 through a Fender Deluxe, a Vox, or even a JCM45 Marshall, you know? That’s like instant Who Live at Leeds. The P90s are great for power chords. You hear all the notes in-between, and they’re very articulate.

What’s the trick to intermingling P90s with effects pedals?

I find that P90s take boost pretty well, though sometimes you don’t really need to boost at all. They have plenty of gain. Plus, I don’t use a lot of gain to begin with.

There’s an argument to be made that P90s are more versatile than humbuckers since they run the tonal gamut from rock to blues to country.

It depends on the wood [of the guitar]. I’ve seen P90s jammed into Telecasters, and I’ve seen a bunch in a Les Paul context, but they are pretty versatile. Everybody tends to trade up to a PAF, but that’s a different animal altogether.

So P90s are very versatile, but they’re not like Fender pickups, which tend to be more scooped in the midrange. P90s tend to have more midrange and a little more output.

Some guitarists are certain dog-ear and soapbar P90s sound different. Have you ever found anything to back that up?

It’s just the cover. I can’t hear the difference between plastic, you know? It’s the same pickup under the soapbar and the dog-ear. [laughs]

And yet some players swear by dog-ears over soapbars, and vice versa.

Those people are full of shit. [laughs] I’m sorry, but tell me you don’t know anything about guitars without telling me you don’t know anything about guitars. [laughs] It’s the same fucking square magnet; it’s the same pickup! [laughs] It’s like going, “I prefer the sound of Bakelite versus polystyrene versus plastic.” If you can hear those nuances, my hat’s off to you.

What do you think they’re actually hearing?

Here’s the thing: Generally, the dog-ear is put in a Les Paul Junior, and a Junior is different than a Les Paul Standard. There’s no maple cap, and it’s all just mahogany, so the wood is going to change the nature of the guitar with the pickup in it. If you put a maple cap on a Les Paul and stick the same pickup in there, it’s going to sound different because of the maple.

You’ve got a signature Epiphone Les Paul with P90s, Warren Haynes has a signature Les Paul Standard with P90s, and Phil X is working on a signature SG with P90s. Are we experiencing a P90s renaissance?

I don’t know. I mean, Warren historically has been a humbucking pickup guy for his whole career since I’ve known him, for 30 years. I was surprised to see that he went with the P90s. But everybody’s tastes change, and everybody has different needs and applications.

Phil X

Seeing as Phil X is the lead guitarist for Bon Jovi, one of the more iconic glam rock bands of all time, you might assume he's into hot-rodded Strat-style guitars. Unless you've seen him play live, you might now that he's hooked on old-school P90 pickups.

According to Phil, P90s give him all the tonal options and versatility he needs to tackle Bon Jovi’s iconic catalog, as well as his music with his solo band, the Drills.

He tells Guitar Player, “What I like about the P90 is, if I have the volume on 10, it’s angry rock and roll, full of angst and spit.

“Then, If I turn it down to seven, I get Telecaster country sounds. And when I turn it down to three or four, I get beautiful, glassy cleans. It doesn’t get muddy or murky; it’s nice and bright and in your face.”

Phil loves his P90s so much that he’s working on a signature SG equipped with them. Currently in the advanced prototype stage, the guitar features a thicker body and neck. Phil calls it "my favorite."

“I love how it feels when I’m wearing it or sitting with it. I just did three shows in Texas, and I played that guitar every night. I was like, ‘Man, this is the one.’ I’m really excited for it to be released by Gibson in the next year or so.”

Phil’s love for the P90 pickup is clear, although he admits that, due to its hum-laden and perceived uncontrollable nature, not everyone agrees.

“A lot of people are listening with their eyes instead of their ears,” he says. "They’re like, ‘Oh, no, that’s a P90, it’s gonna sound like that.’ I’m like, ‘No, wait until you hear it.’ "

He recalls a studio incident when he was playing a 1966 Gibson ES-330.

"It has nickel-covered P90s,” he says. “When I plugged into a Marshall and hit an A chord, everyone ran in and said, 'What’s that guitar?'

"That guitar was magical, but it was the P90 that took the magic and made it undeniable.”

What first turned you on to P90s to where you developed a signature unit with Arcane?

I just find them super dynamic. I really got accustomed to the P90 that I did with Arcane, which was called the PX-90. We tried different gauges of wire, different winds, and stuff like that. We settled on this one magic recipe, and it was amazing.

Does your attack change when you’re playing with P90s?

It all comes back to how dynamic they are. If you pick close to the bridge, they’re going to be really bright. And if you pick closer to the fretboard, then it’s going to be darker. Every pickup does that, but it’s more articulated with a P90.

Do P90s alter your amp choices?

It’s funny you asked that because my approach does change with the amp. If I use an old [Marshall] Plexi, I know I can’t hit the guitar as hard because it’ll fart. [laughs]

Are your amp settings much different from when you’re playing with humbuckers or Strat-style single-coils?

I don’t know if there’s much of a difference. I know when I plug into an amp, if I’m not familiar with it, I start with everything at 12 o’clock and then flavor to taste. And I find that the P90 has enough bite, so I don’t have as much presence up on the amp, but it’s never a bass thing.

A bass thing?

No matter what guitar I use, I feel like I have to have the bass to where it’s not thumpy — but I want it to be violent, like unchained, you know? I'm talking about that low thing, where you hit it a little too hard and it goes sharp, and then you back off and it’s in pitch, and it’s got a violent sound to it. For me, the P90 does that way more accurately than, say, a humbucker.

Do you find that P90s are effective for Bon Jovi’s music, given that many of those songs were recorded with Strat-stye guitars back in the day?

If I have a P90 in an SG or Les Paul Jr. guitar, and I’m playing “Raise Your Hands," then I’ve got the guitar on 10. But if Jon wants to go into “Lost Highway,” which is a country song, without me changing guitars, I’ll pick a P90, because I can just change the volume to get what I need. I'll put it on 10 for “Raise Your Hands,” and drop it to seven for a more country sound on “Lost Highway.”

So the P90s offer you more tonal options and versatility than a humbucker or a Strat-style single-coil.

I think so. If I only have a guitar with one P90 in it, which is usually when I play with my band, the Drills, that’s all I need. And when I want to get that woman tone, I just roll off the tone knob, and it gives me a beautiful woman tone. It’s clearer than a humbucker when you roll the tone off.

See, with me, no matter what pickup it is, it’s always about clarity.

What are your observations on how P90s interact with effects pedals?

It depends. If you use overdrives, you’ve got to watch how much overdrive you put on a P90 because it hums, you know. You get that single-coil hum, though I’ve always been able to control it by facing Mecca or something similar.

Are P90s ever so uncontrollable that you can’t use them?

It’s not uncommon to be in an old stadium in Europe, and you show up at soundcheck and your tech is like, “We can’t use any P90s or any single-coils today because there’s a broadcast station right next door, and the hum is ridiculous.” [laughs] So there’s that!

Having said that, is the dreaded P90 hum as outrageously bad as it’s made out to be?

Well, I’m used to it. You just adjust and acclimate. For instance, if I’m in a room that’s kind of buzzy and I’ve got to play something like [AC/DC’s] “Back in Black,” I’ll literally be rolling down the volume knob in between chords. [laughs]

But at the same time, there’s always a place that you can face where it’s not as bad. And I don’t use a lot of gain, so I can get away with it. But a lot of people say, “Hey, how do you get rid of the hum when using a high-gain amp or with all my overdrives on?” I’m like, “Yeah… that’s not gonna work.” [laughs]

You’re working on a signature P90-equipped SG with Gibson. What’s the story there?

It’s just everything that I’ve been saying. Every time I picked up a Junior or anything with a P90 in it, I was always like, “Oh, man, this is what I like! This is what I really dig. I can do anything with it.” And also, every time you play in front of a bunch of guitar players, it’s like research.

So I’d have two guitars, one with a P90 and one with a humbucker, and I’d be using the P90 guitar all night. And I’d have five or 10 guys come up to me and go, “Man, I thought the P90 guitar was gonna be your spare, but you used it all night — and you got every tone out of it.” I’d respond by saying, “Yeah, that’s what it does; it does everything.”

Why is your signature SG your favorite above other P90-equipped guitars you have?

Well, I’m a bigger guy, so the SG feels like a smaller guitar sometimes, depending on my mood. But with the prototype that I’ve been playing lately, Gibson made the body an eighth of an inch thicker, which is amazing for weight and balance. So we made the neck even bigger. I’ve got a ’57 Goldtop neck profile on it.

Do you think the thicker body impacts the tone of the guitar?

I don’t think so. I love punch and clarity, and to me, the punch and clarity of that guitar are way more apparent with the P90. But the thickness and the weight of the guitar didn’t change that all that much. It’s more of a feel thing.

You’re primarily a rock player, but do you feel P90s, like the ones in your upcoming signature SG, are also well-suited for players within other genres?

I think it could be used by anybody. I mean, the neck pickup also sounds fantastic for jazz or blues. And then, the treble [bridge] pickup is just everything. You can get twang by turning it down, and you can get a punch in the face by turning it up.

You’ve got a signature SG with P90s on the way, Warren Haynes just released a Les Paul Standard with P90s, and Joe Bonamassa recently dropped an Epiphone Les Paul with P90s. Are we seeing a P90 renaissance?

I think you’re onto something! [laughs] I personally think it’s amazing that it’s resurfacing like that. I’m seeing more P90s all over the place, but it’s not the heavier rock players that are doing it; it’s mainly the guys that play blue and more classic rock.

I always tell people, “Man, it’s gonna sound great. Let me plug in and listen to what it sounds like before you make your decision.” Once I start playing, their eyes get wide, and it’s like, “Man, that sounds amazing!”

Warren Haynes has a brand, spanking-new signature Gibson Les Paul Standard out, and his message is clear: “This guitar, and with these pickups,” he tells Guitar Player, “instantly gives you a recognizable sound — but also a variety of sounds.”

The instantly recognizable, variety-inducing pickups in question are P90s, an interesting development, seeing as Haynes has long been a humbucker devotee. Then again, veteran players using P90s in the modern era have become a trend.

Joe Bonamassa’s signature Epiphone 1955 Les Paul Standard has them, and Phil X’s impending signature Gibson SG, which is still in the advanced prototype stage, has got them, too.

As for Haynes, he’s simply looking for a six-string voice from his electric guitar that matches his own.

“When I listen to B.B. King, Bonnie Raitt, and people like that, their voice and guitar sound like the same thing,” Haynes says. “It was always important to me for that aspect to be the case.”

There are other enhancements beyond the P90s to help Haynes in his tonal quest. His last humbucker-equipped signature Les Paul Standard featured what Haynes calls a “buffer preamp,” which allowed him to reclaim the guitar’s top end when the volume was rolled down.

However, this new Les Paul Standard is different: It features a 15dB boost, which Haynes refers to as a “clean boost,” which mainly impacts Les Paul’s midrange. “I just like having these choices,” Haynes says.

“I haven’t really explored all the options yet,” he adds, “but the sky is the limit. I just want to keep using it more and more and more and utilize that feature as much as possible.”

His signature Les Paul is just one big new development for Haynes, who previous told us his valuable tips for blues and rock guitarists.

On Monday, March 17, at the Capitol Theater, Haynes is paying tribute to the Grateful Dead’s Phil Lesh, who died on October 24 2024, via Unbroken Chain: A Celebration of the Life and Music of Phil Lesh. “Myself, Jimmy Herring, Rob Barraco, and John Molo are bringing back the Phil Lesh quintet,” he says.

“That was the version of Phil Lesh and Friends that stayed together the longest,” he explains. “The chemistry in that band was fantastic from the very beginning. We all love that band immensely and are excited to get back together and pay tribute to Phil.”

As for how Lesh impacted Haynes specifically, he says: “We all consider ourselves to be brave souls who are willing to make changes, but when you start playing with Phil, you realize that his whole reason for being, musically speaking, is to explore the moment.”

After that, Haynes won’t have much time to reflect, as he’s hitting the stage with the Brothers, featuring Allman Brothers alumni Derek Trucks, Oteil Burbridge, and more, on April 15 and 16 at Madison Square Garden. “It’s fantastic,” Haynes says. “Our last Garden show was five years ago. Everybody is excited to do it again.”

Beyond the excitement, celebrating the Allman Brothers isn’t just about championing the band’s legacy but bringing it back to where Haynes started.

“I joined in 1989, and it was an opportunity I could never have envisioned,” says Haynes, who has previously shared with us the important role ABB guitarist Dickey Betts played in his life. “It just changed everything. It opened doors… it opened every door imaginable for me.”

“So, Derek and I have been playing together in the last six months or so,” he says. “It’s kind of just been an organic, natural progression leading up to this. We’re all really stoked.”

You’ve got a beautiful new signature Gibson Les Paul Standard out. Why did you choose the Standard?

We’ve [Haynes and Gibson] been talking for a few years now about a different signature model Les Paul, and I’ve been kind of digging P90s the last few years and thought it might be nice to switch it up, you know? It really is a beautiful instrument, and I’m very happy with it.

The Les Paul Standard typically comes with humbuckers. What led you down the P90 path?

They’re something different for me. I’ve been a humbucker guy most of my life, but everything I play a guitar with P90s, I’m like, “Wow, this sounds really good.” So a few years ago we started talking about making a Les Paul Standard with P90s. It’s just a nice combination.

How do P90s suit your tonal needs compared to humbuckers?

They’re a little brighter .They’re not quite as full range as the humbuckers. So it kind of started me wanting to find some tones that were different from my normal go-to sounds. And then, when I started experimenting more with the P90s, I was like, “Oh, this adds to my tonal range!”

How so?

With different sounds that inspire me to play differently. Because as much as we’re all happy with the sound that we work on through the years and get dialed in, I think most guitar players are also looking for other sounds to be equally inspirational.

When you say your “normal go-to sounds,” what does that mean exactly?

I always strive to get a really big, fat warm sound, you know — full range. It has more tonal bottom and low-to-midrange tone than some people are opting for. But to me, it’s always been important for my guitar sound to be similar to the sound of my voice.

P90s are interesting because if you crank them, you’ve got rock and roll; if you roll them back toward the middle, you get country; and if you roll them all the way back, you almost get clean, glassy Tele sounds. Do you feel like you’re getting a fuller spectrum of sounds and more versatility with the P90s?

Yeah, possibly. I mean, you definitely get options that aren’t there with humbuckers. Most of the sounds I enjoy come from the guitar anyway. I’m not depending on pedals for the majority of the sounds that I use. I like to change the volume knob on the guitar to get a lot of different sounds that way, and P90s are definitely great for that.

To that end, have the P90s led to any alterations to your rig as far as amps or with the minimal pedal setup you deploy?

So far I haven’t made any alterations. I’ve been doing a lot of dates with my band, promoting Million Voices Whisper, my new solo record, and I’m using different amps for that tour anyway. I’m using a Paul Reed Smith amp, a Homestead amp, and 2x12 cabinets instead of 4x12 cabinets. The translation is instant when I switch to the P90s, so I haven’t had to make any adjustments. But who knows what the future might bring?

Specifically, what does that “instant translation” sound like when you use the P90s with your current rig?

They’re not quite as hot, but the sound translates right off the bat. I’ll continue to experiment with them as time goes on. But when I switch back and forth from my first signature model guitar, which has humbuckers, and I then plug in the new guitar with the P90s, it instantly is the tonal change I’m looking for without turning knobs.

There’s a 15dB boost switch on this guitar. How did that come to be, and how do you utilize it?

That was Gibson’s idea. It was kind of in response to my last signature Les Paul that had that. I guess they called it a “buffer preamp,” a similar switch that engaged this circuitry that allowed all the top end to back when you turn the volume way down. So we wanted to do something similar but different with this modification.

How do you like it compared to your last signature guitar's “buffer preamp” option?

I really like it. I’m not exactly technically sure how it achieves what it does, but it’s a really nice tonal option. For me, just having that extra kind of tonal option is really important. With the other switch on my original Les Paul, I used it sometimes, but only in certain situations.

On a Gibson Les Paul, when you turn the volume way down, the top end kind of goes away. So the original switch on my first signature model brought all that top end back. This is different; mostly, the midrange is affected — but they’re calling it a “clean boost.”

Would you say a guitar like yours, with P90s, is best for a blues-rock-leaning player, or is it versatile enough for any genre?

It’s hard to say… they’re kind of more old-school-sounding. It’s hard to define what somebody might be looking for in the sound of their pickups, you know? To me, it’s always been kind of a “yes” or “no” kind of thing. You plug it in, and you like it, or you don’t. If you don’t, you look for something else.

There seems to be a trend happening. You, Joe Bonamassa and Phil X are working individually on Gibson/Epiphone guitars with P90s. Are we seeing a P90s renaissance?

Maybe in the way that we’re all looking for new inspiration, you know? Some of us have been playing humbuckers for a long, long time, but these P90 pickups work really well. The advent of the humbucker was based on how noisy single-coil pickups were in the old days. The task has always been to get that sound without the hum. These newer pickups really accomplish that in a surprising way.

What is old will eventually be new again…

Yeah… you know, I’m always in search of new inspiration. Sometimes, that’s an old idea, like, “Oh, I haven’t done this in a while.” You try it, and you go, “Yeah!” and it inspires you to play differently or write something, which is always welcome, too.

You’ve got two shows with the Brothers at Madison Square Garden on April 15th and 16th. Will you adjust your rig?

I’m not sure what I’m going to use yet. I may go back to an old Marshall, but Derek [Trucks] and I used a lot of Paul Reed Smith amps in the latter days of the Allman Brothers. I’m going to do some experimenting and probably won’t decide until the week of the show.

What’s your favorite Allman Brothers track to jam on?

Songs like “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed” and “Whipping Post,” and the ones where we really stretch out and take into a new direction every night, are the most fun from an improvisational standpoint.

So, you know, “Mountain Jam,” and any of the ones where we take a different approach—but you never know because inspiration is coming from everywhere within that band. We’re all just kind of bouncing off each other.

What have the Allman Brothers meant for you as a guitarist?

I was always a huge fan and always utilized a lot of Allman Brothers influence, but once I became a member of the band, that aspect of my playing took on a whole ‘nother meaning. It was appropriate for me to utilize even more of that influence than I would have in any other situation, you know? Learning from those guys night after night, year after year, was just truly inspirational.

On March 17, you’re celebrating the life and career of Phil Lesh at the Capitol Theater.

Phil impacted all of us deeply. He was such an influence and inspiration not just as a musician and songwriter but from a philosophical standpoint. Musically speaking, his view of what music can be — and should be and could be — is kind of unparalleled.

Can you quantify Phil’s impact on you?

He was never afraid of where the moment might lead. It could go into dangerous territory, where the band is on the verge of falling apart, but I’ve often said that he had just as much fun in those moments as he did in the ones that were obviously coming together. That’s a beautiful thing. It’s something that we all learned from him, and he made a ton of amazing music in the process.

The history of rock music is littered with broken guitarists whose cherished six-strings were swiped from the backs of vans, and even from the side of the stage. But George Harrison may be the only guitarist to have ever had one kidnapped.

It seems that nearly every guitar Harrison touched during his decorated career has become embroiled in some kind of drama or mystery. There was his house-of-mirrors-styled Futurama guitar, which he bought before Fender Stratocasters arrived in the U.K.’s borders in an attempt to replicate his hero, Buddy Holly. That instrument sold for a record-breaking $1.27 million at auction last year.

Then there’s the uncertain fate of his Gretsch Country Gentleman, thought to have been destroyed in the mid ’60s — although recent revelations have cast doubt on that narrative. Yet another of his Beatles guitars, purchased in 1967 during the making of The Magical Mystery Tour, is shrouded in mystery.

Still, the story of Lucy, his cherry red 1957 Gibson Les Paul, is perhaps the strangest of all. It's the guitar Eric Clapton used to record his lead and solo work on the 1968 White Album track “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” Harrison played it on that album, as well as on Abbey Road and across his solo career.

But somewhere in the middle of all that — in 1973 — the guitar was stolen from Harrison's Beverly Hills home. It was subsequently purchased and transported across the Mexican border, leading the former Beatle to launch a TV plea for its safe return. Clearly, the guitar meant everything to him.

Even before Harrison owned it, the guitar had a star-studded history. Manufactured at Gibson's plant in Kalamazoo, Michigan, the Les Paul was originally a goldtop and had PAF humbucking pickups, which were offered on goldtop Les Paul's only in 1957 and '58.

The guitar's earliest-known owner was the Lovin' Spoonful's John Sebastian, who purchased it in 1965. The following year he gave it to Rick Derringer, then performing with his group the McCoys. The finish was badly worn at the time, so Derringer had it refinished by Gibson in the same clear red color typically used on Gibson SGs.

Afterward, Derringer sold it to Dan Armstrong Guitars in New York City. Not many days afterward, Eric Clapton purchased it for himself. He never played it much, though, and in August 1968 he gifted it to Harrison. Clapton would soon be briefly reunited with it when he recorded "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" with the Beatles on September 6.

Harrison clearly loved the guitar, and it seemed to have found its permanent home within his collection, until it was stolen. The story goes that it was quickly sold to a music shop, Whalin's Sound City on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Rather than wait the required 30 days to determine if the instrument was stolen, Whalin sold it within a few days to a Mexican musician by the name of Miguel Ochoa.

Harrison managed to trace the guitar to Whalin's, and then to Ochoa, as he revealed to Guitar World in a 1989 interview.

“I called him up,” Harrison explained. “I said, ‘That's my guitar. I want it back, and I'll give you your money back.’ He said, ‘How do I know it's really you?’

"I said, ‘Okay, I'll meet you.’

“A meeting was arranged, but the guy just took off, jumped in a car, and drove to Guadalajara and kidnapped my guitar!”

By coincidence, Harrison’s former sitar mentor Ravi Shankar happened to be in the Mexican city at the time, and was due to make a TV appearance. Harrison seized the opportunity to put the heat on Ochoa.

“Ravi went on TV saying, ‘He's very upset because his guitar's been stolen and it's in Guadalajara!’" Harrison explained. "Then he read the guy's name on TV!”

It was a genius plan — but Ochoa was still playing hardball.

Eventually, Harrison and Ochoa reached a deal: The guitar would be returned in exchange for a Les Paul of the same period. Harrison managed to find the perfect specimen at Norman’s Rare Guitars — the famous vintage guitar store that played a role in the Country Gent mystery. The instrument selected was a sunburst ‘58 Les Paul, and it seemed sufficient compensation for Ochoa.

“I finally got it back,” Harrison said. “It was a really good guitar, and also it had that personal thing, because it was the 'Guitar Gently Weeps' guitar that Eric played.”

Lucy has remained in the safe keeping with Harrison's family since his death, while Ochoa's Les Paul — dubbed the Ransom guitar — has changed hands several times over the years and taken on greater value thanks to both its status as a Les Paul 'Burst and its role in Harrison's guitar history. Ochoa sold it a decade later, and it ended up on the auction block in 2022, where it fetched $312,500.

Last year saw “the largest seizure of fake musical instruments in history,” as U.S. Border Protection officers seized $18 million worth of fake Gibson guitars. The seizure highlights the costly issues that fraudulent electric guitars present to both manufacturers and consumers.

The interception of over 3,000 wannabe Gibsons came after U.S. Customs collaborated with Gibson, U.S. Homeland Security Investigations. and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. The number of agencies involved demonstrates how intricate the operation was.

Recognizing that the everyday player may need a little help spotting a fake, YouTuber Robert Baker has enlisted all-star help for a useful video. With the assistance of Gibson’s Tom Murphy and Joe Bonamassa at the fore, the team of guitar aficionados have examined a fake Les Paul to pinpoint the giveaway signs that players should be on the lookout for.

It seems Baker has personal experience on the line here. The fake guitar in question is from his own collection.

“A lot of us have friends who have, unfortunately, purchased some of these thinking they were real,” Baker says. “It’s just heartbreaking to see someone spend so much money on something fake.”

However, he says there are “subtle things that are wrong with these,” that, if identified, can spare other guitarists similar levels of heartache.

Bonamassa and Murphy are joined by a number of other specialists who identify faults over the length of the 44-minute video.

The guitar's headstock quickly comes under scrutiny, with Bonamassa calling it “Way off.” Gibson has been notoriously possessive of its headstock shape and sued Ibanez over the headstock shape on its budget Les Paul builds in 1977.

The headstock in question here relates to its shape, the fact that the logo on the headstock is a decal rather than a silkscreen. The body, meanwhile, sports a striking white binding that stands out. In this case, for the wrong reasons.

“I don’t know of any Gibson guitars that possess that,” says Murphy of that latter feature.

Other facets of the guitar to come under fire include its finish, the quality of its veneer, its truss-rod cover, cavity, tuner machine spacing, uncharacteristically small side dots, and beyond that, the shape of the pickguard, height and angle of the nut, and the position and shape of its control knobs. All these, the eagle-eyed team agrees, betray its imposter status. Clearly, they needed a harder challenge.

Great lengths are undertaken later in the video, including slicing a chunk of the body off with a razor blade. In previous cases, the depth of the veneer has served as an indicator of a guitar's status as a real or imposter.

It’s an extreme measure, granted, and one no sane person would take if there was even the faintest belief that the guitar could be genuine, but the task force weren’t in the mood for half measures, it would seem.

Of course, the power of hindsight is a mighty thing, but even a glance at the below image published by US Customs and Border Control showcasing a portion of its haul, show that razor blades aren't always necessary. The guitar on the far left with the cream finish and bright edging in particular, feels like an instant give away based solely on the strangeness of its colorway.

Sure, Gibson has been guilty of finishing some of its LPs with rather questionable paint jobs, but this one seems a bridge too far. The Zakk Wylde Bullseye imposter, meanwhile, is let down by its lack of gold hardware — legitimate models feature a gold bridge and tailpiece.

However, not everyone is as well versed these details, and amateurs — including parents shopping for birthday presents — are sitting ducks without proper guidance. To that end, Gibson has promised to “caution customers about fraudulent products sold on e-commerce platforms and other sources” in the wake of last year's multi-million-dollar seizure.

Away from his day job with Roxy Music, Phil Manzanera has forged a successful solo career over the course of 50 years. To date, he’s released 10 solo albums, each of which showcases his musical eclecticism. As the recently released 11-CD box set 50 Years of Music testifies, Manzanera is not one to adhere to formulas. His forward-looking, innovative guitar style has been the connecting thread on each outing.

Guitar Player was recently invited to Manzanera’s West London recording studio to discuss the guitars that provided the sonic blueprint for his solo work and his recordings with Roxy Music. As he explains, these guitars have strong track records.

“I basically used the same guitars all the way through my solo album recordings,” he says. “Starting with Diamond Head [Manzanera’s 1975 debut solo studio album] the guitars were my red Firebird VII, a Telecaster and a Gibson Les Paul. And on the track called ‘Lagrima,’ I used a Spanish guitar.

“When it came to amps, I had a Hiwatt with a WEM speaker cabinet, which I used with Roxy too, a Yamaha rotary speaker and a Fender Twin. The Hiwatt had been modified where it had a 30-watt switch on the back of it, so it could be driven into distortion. For effects, I had a Pete Cornish pedalboard with a fuzz built into it and distortion, and a Revox Tape machine that me and Brian Eno used to do stuff together on. I used it in Roxy too,

“From 2000 onward, I started investigating those Roland amps that went with the Roland [synth] guitars and used a couple of those Roland VGA-7 V-Guitar amplifiers on the 2001 Roxy reunion tour. When we got to the very last tour I did with Roxy in 2022, my setup was completely different. I’ve now got a huge cabinet; basically, just a speaker in a box, offstage, a tiny little Fender Pro Junior amp onstage, and a new pedalboard made by Australian Daniel Steinhardt.”

With the amp lineups out of the way, Phil took us for a visit to five of his favorite guitars from his career.

1965 Gibson Firebird VII

“It’s a reverse body, in Cardinal Red," Phil details for us. "It’s got gold-plated hardware, a bound ebony fingerboard with block markers, reverse headstock with tuners behind it."

Although it's among his favorite guitars, Manzanera notes that others have found it rather difficult to play. “These guitars weren't that popular as they were rather big and slightly awkward shaped compared to a Strat or a Telecaster,” he says.

Still, he's a huge fan of it. And, as he explains, the guitar was a particularly lucky purchase.

“I found this guitar through an ad in the back of the Melody Maker magazine in 1973," he recalls. "The ad said, ‘Red Gibson Guitar for Sale.’ And because I had bought a red Höfner CS Galaxie as a child, I thought, I’d take a look. I’d never heard of a Firebird at that point.

“I went to this very posh house in [London's] Regents Park, the door opened and it was an American college kid whose parents had come over from Kalamazoo, Michigan. He'd been given the Firebird for his 16th birthday or something and he obviously didn't want it. I took one look and said, ‘Thanks, I'll have it!’

“It cost me £120. I walked off with it, and to my delight it sounded fantastic. It just records beautifully and likes analog tape especially. At that point in my career I needed some flash kind of guitar as I'd been using a white Strat, which was great, but I really needed a signature guitar and this became my signature guitar. It's on the inside cover of the second Roxy Music album.”

1965 Gibson Non-Reverse Firebird

As Manzanera explains, this guitar was most famously used on 801 Live, the album by his experimental rock supergroup 801, which he formed in 1976 while Roxy Music was on hiatus. The band performed only three live concerts, which resulted in 801 Live , as well a 1977 studio album, Listen Now. The band’s members included Brian Eno, bassist Bill MacCormick, former Curved Air keyboardist Francis Monkman, slide guitarist/vocalist Lloyd Watson, and drummer Simon Phillips, who would go on to perform with Judas Priest, Mike Oldfield and Toto.

“I found this in a Shepherd's Bush secondhand shop for around £180,” he explains. “It's been modified with three humbuckers, and it’s got these little switches to the right, which gives you different combinations of the pickups. People tell me that the reason why it's got such a distance between the tailpiece and the bottom of the guitar is that there used to be a Bigsby or some kind of tremolo on it.

“The guitar’s claim to fame is that I used it on the whole of 801 Live. That album was just the one recording done at the Queen Elizabeth Hall — we only performed three gigs. And it was that guitar combined with the Hiwatt top and Yamaha rotary speaker cabinet and my Pete Cornish pedalboard that created the sounds that on the record.

“You’ve got to remember too, that Brian Eno was treating my guitar as well, so the signal from my guitar was split one way to my amps and stuff and the other way to his VCS3 synthesizer. I think by then Brian had the suitcase model of the VCS3 [the EMS Synthi A]. You can hear his treatments, especially on the intro to the whole album where it’s just the guitar being played through the echo with the Revox tape recorder and stuff, but also Eno’s treatment going through a Revox as well, and coming back as a combination of sounds.”

1951 Fender Telecaster (modified)

“I bought this from an ad in the back of Melody Maker magazine in 1974. It had the original pickups, until 1975.”

More than losing its original pickups, the rare Telecaster was given an overhaul that, in retrospect, diminished its value. And it was all at the suggestion of Eric Stewart and Lol Creme, the guitarists from the English band 10cs.

“I was friends with all the guys from 10cc, and Eric and Lol said, ‘Phil, why don't you get Ted Lee in Manchester to soup up your Telecaster?’”

Known far and wide as Ted the Sprayer, Lee had worked for Barratt's music store in Manchester, where he refinished guitars. He laid claim to refinishing John Lennon’s 1958 Rickenbacker 325 and George Harrison’s Gretsch Duo Jet in black, and doing the same for Tony Hicks of the Hollies and others who wanted the same finish. Lee would go on to perform similar work for Simply Red, Adam & the Ants, King Crimson and Phil Manzanera.

“In those days, we had no idea about the value of guitars and everything, so I said, ‘Okay, great,’” Manzanera explains. “Ted said he could sand it down, re-lacquer it, change the frets to Gibson frets, stick a humbucker in it and it'll be fantastic. And I said, ‘Great, let's do that!’ So it got done, thus rendering it valueless. If it was an original 1951 Telecaster, it would be worth six figures or seven.

But as Manzanera explains, “I was interested in the playability of the guitar. And it's an absolute dream to play, it’s so easy and sounds absolutely fantastic. It doesn't necessarily sound like how a Telecaster is meant to sound because of the humbucker, but it is just absolute magic and completely different and makes you play in a completely different way to the Firebird.

“I've used it on everything. It’s on 'Love is the Drug' and on lots of other Roxy stuff as well, not to mention every album I’ve done since. It provides a nice alternative for lead playing to the ‘57 Les Paul.”

2000 Gibson Custom Shop Les Paul Custom

A black 1957 Les Paul Custom is among the guitars for which Manzanera was best known during Roxy Music’s heyday. However, it was borrowed. After using it for 15 years, Manzanera had to return it to the owner. “I was devastated,” he told Guitar Player in a 2023 interview. On this latest visit, Phil further explained the guitar’s significance onstage “Any Roxy tour we did where we played ‘In Every Dream Home a Heartache,’ I played that Les Paul for the solo at the end. It’s the same guitar I used when we recorded the song.” In 2000, Manzanera had the Gibson Custom Shop in Hamburg, Germany, create this replacement for him, which features a few personal touches.

“I took advantage of this moment to put a little logo at the bottom,” Manzanera says. “And actually, the scratch plate was given to me by Chris Spedding; he had a guitar maker, who made some special guitars with that scratch plate, and he gave it to me. I added it on just to make it a little bit more unique.

“The guitar plays beautifully. It has got this great sustain, and with echo it really kicks ass.”

2022 Gibson ES-335

“This is my latest addition, which I got in 2022 for the Roxy Farewell Tour. When I first started with Roxy in 1972, I had a brown ES-335 with a Bigsby tremolo arm on it. I used to use it mainly for feedback and stuff like that, especially on the tracks on the first album. It was a great sound source for Eno too, because he used the feedback for guitar treatments. But in general it's too jazzy for Roxy.

“However, it did work out on the song “If There is Something” [from Roxy Music’s self-titled debut]. We extend the middle section and I go into some soloing, and it's just got a beautiful, sustained tone for the solo. And really that was the main reason I got it — to use it on that song.”

Scott Gorham revealed how a troublesome guitar led him to make a simple modification to every Gibson Les Paul he’s played since. The defining moment came, no less, at his audition for Thin Lizzy in 1974.

Gorham was born in America, but in 1973 set out for England on the advice of his brother-in-law, Bob Siebenberg, who was drumming for Supertramp. As Gorham tells That One Guitar, he arrived with two guitars he’d purchased with money earned from various odd jobs: a Fender Stratocaster and a no-name Japanese Les Paul.

Unfortunately, Gorham didn’t land a spot in Supertramp. When the expense of living in London became too much, he was forced to sell the Fender.

“My cash vacated my wallet really quickly,” he explains. “And the only asset I had was the Fender, right?"

To his good fortune, he quickly found a buyer: Supertramp’s Roger Hodgson. “So any guitar that you hear on a Supertramp album, that's that Fender Stratocaster,” Gorham attests.

But as a result, when the opportunity to audition for Thin Lizzy arrived in 1974, Gorham had only the Les Paul copy to perform with. Bassist Phil Lynott and drummer Brian Downey were holding trials at the Iroquo Country Club in London, where Gorham fought it out with other hopefuls.

“I had to go to the audition with this horrible black, Japanese Les Paul-ish guitar that, really, on the day, started to fall apart, right in front of everybody's eyes,” he says. “Which was very embarrassing.”

During the audition, the screws from the pickguard came undone and the plate “went dangling down,” he says. “Both Phil and I, we were both on our knees trying to find this damn screw. And I said, 'Ah, forget it.' And I just ripped the scratchplate off."

As everyone knows, Gorham won the audition and went on to use better guitars, including a couple of real Les Pauls. But after the audition, he made one modification to every example of the model that he's played.

"Afterwards, I looked at that guitar, I went, 'You know, that looks so much better without the scratchplate,” he says. “So every Les Paul I'd had after that, if it had a scratch plate, that was the first thing that went. I took that scratch straight up because I love that shape of the Les Paul. And I just thought the scratch plate ruined it."

As Gorham recently told Guitar Player, acquiring a real Les Paul — a Deluxe — made all the difference. But it wasn’t until he bought a Les Paul Standard that he felt he had the perfect setup.

“I had always been waiting for the day when I could get enough money for it. I felt like I was suffering with the Deluxe,” he adds with a laugh, referring to his previous model of guitar. "By the time we had done Nightlife, in 1974, I was able to get my hands on all the things I wanted and got things dialed in."

You've heard his soaring solos on classic cuts like Toto's "Hold the Line" and feasted on his immense songwriting and rhythm cops on titanic tracks like "Africa." But beyond the licks, like most of us, Steve Lukather is one hell of a gearhound.

Sure, he loves his signature Music Man axe's but make no mistake — Luke has a killer collection of vintage guitars, such as a particular late-‘50s Les Paul Standard that you'd have to pry out of his cold, clammy fingers once he's six-feet under.

Elsewhere, Luke has his regrets, which also happen to be Gibson-related. More on that below.

But all in all, though his gear is mighty, and his skill as slick as it comes, it's Luke's personality and warm sense of humor that shined most when he dialed in with GP to talk guitars and pedals.

What's the one piece of gear that you can't live without, and why?

You have to remember I've been playing Music Man for over 30 years now. They've developed from the earlier, simple ones to be more high-end sophistication. I'm loving my Luke 4s, man.

These are the guitars that I really play and really love, particularly the wood. They're consistently great guitars and they work for me.

Is there a vintage guitar that you can't live without?

Of course. My 1959 Gibson Les Paul sunburst. It’s the holy grail, baby. It has a huge history of hit records. George Harrison played it, and it's just got a lot of history. I love that guitar. I found it through a drum tech friend, who said, "Man, Luke, you need to get one of these before they're out of control expensive."

That was in 1979. I picked one up for four grand in a music store in Arizona, and it was just appraised for… let's just say, a whole fucking lot of money. [laughs] I just retired it for a little while after realizing, "I don't want to take this thing around."

Otherwise, I'd be like my bro, Joe Bonamassa, who probably has to hire an armed machine gun staff to stand around his guitar rig. [laughs] But he enjoys and loves those guitars, and I love him for that.

What's the one guitar you'll never play, and why?

The one that I have the least amount of bond with might be a Gretsch. Not because they don't sound great or look cool; it just doesn't feel as comfortable in my hands. I don't know why; maybe it's a little too round of a neck.

I'm not really sure. They're cool guitars; I'm not saying they're not. But you wouldn't see me using one unless it was for something very specific. I've played them before, but I've never owned one.

What's the one guitar you still long for, and why?

One that makes me play really fucking good. [laughs] People will laugh when they read that and go, "Yeah, I can dig that."

I'd wager that any guitar will make a player like you sound good!

Oh, come on, man! I've had a great run. I'm really grateful for my little, teeny piece of acre of the insanity of the music business. I've had a great run, man. I'm grateful and humbled by that. I'm still fooling everybody, so don't tell anybody. [laughs]

What pedal is always on your pedalboard, and why?

When it comes to pedals, I'm a pretty simple guy. But I suppose some kind of delay will always be in the loop, and I will just give it a little throw. I'm not delay crazy like I was in the ’80s. [laughs]

Back when all the new stuff first came, it was like, "Oh, wow, let's turn it all on and see what happens " It was a very excessive decade in every possible way. That's all I can say. Take that any way you want, but when you think about it, you go, “Oh, now it all makes sense" [laughs]

Tell us about your coolest find.

It would have to be the 'Burst. How could it not be the 'burst? That's the most valuable thing I have. Just to have a real one that was legit… I got the “thumbs up” from Joe Bonamassa. [laughs]. So that's got to be the one.

Tell us about the one that got away.

My '58 goldtop Les Paul. I went through a period of purging about 25 years ago, where I thought, "Oh, I haven't played this thing in at least 20 years." And then, I realized its history after I sold it and thought, "Why'd I do that?"

On the other hand, I only paid a couple of grand for it. What I got offered for it was insane. And my daughter, the oldest, was going to college at the time. I said, "Well, this will take care of that," And I was just like, “Well, fuck… I wish I hadn't done that." So, that's the one, for sure.

Few guitarists are as passionate about vintage kit as Joe Bonamassa. He admits that he doesn't bother much with new gear and estimates he owns "maybe 10" new guitars.

But when it comes to vintage guitars, Joe's got everything from late-‘50s Gibson Les Paul Standards to quirky Fender Esquires, rarer-than-rare Flying Vs and more. Much more.

But what's cool about Joe is that he's not just a collector but a user of vintage electric guitars. At any given moment during a show, he might bust out a '59 Les Paul or a '55 Strat, such as his beloved “Bonnie Strat," which he calls “the best Strat" he owns.

To get to the hear of the matter, Joe Bonamassa dialed in with GP to talk about his beloved vintages curios, the Strats he favors Strats and more.

If you could have just one guitar, what would you choose?

Even though I'm a Les Paul guy, and I've made my reputation with that, I always say that if I had to do a gig with one guitar, I could pretty much get all the sounds I require out of a Fender Stratocaster.

I can get the really dark chewy sound out of the middle pickup and clean bright Tele stuff out of the bridge. And if you want the woman tone, it's all within the tone controls. The Strat will do everything if you just fiddle with the volume and the tones. You can get there with the different gain structures.

Generally, with a good maple-neck Fender Stratocaster, I can do my entire gig without switching guitars seven or eight times.

Is there a particular vintage Strat you can't live without?

My favorite Strat is one that I call the Bonnie Strat. I call it that because Bonnie Bramlett engraved her name on the back of the body in 2018 when she sang with us at our show. It's a 1955 Fender Strat, with a hardtail, and no trem.

She asked me to engrave my name onto her very famous guitar that everyone from Jerry Garcia to George Harrison. She brought the guitar with her into the studio in Nashville, and she's like, "Joe, I'd be honored if you'd carve your name into it with this knife." She whips out this blade, and I'm like, "You kidding me?"

First of all, it's hard to sign your name with a knife into an acoustic guitar; it's not as easy as it looks. I was honored by that. So when she came to our gig in St. Louis a few months later, I said, "Bonnie, I got a guitar for you to engrave your name in. I'd be just as honored, so bring your Dremel." She goes, "Oh, I'm there, honey."

I have videos of her with a Dremel, carving her name into the back of my '55 hardtail. It'll forever be known as the Bonnie Strat, and it's my best Strat. Every pickup position is just exactly how I hear a Stratocaster guitar sounding.

What's the one guitar you'll never play, and why?

I have a hard time with archtops, like Gibson Super 400s. There's nothing wrong with Super 400s or those big jazz guitars, but for a loud electric player like me, it's just a hard guitar to get under control. They're just big and unruly, but many players have used Super 400s. I mean, look at Steve Howe, a guy who could rock an ES-175 or Super 400 with Yes. That shit is loud and awesome.

What pedal is always on your pedalboard, and why?

I would say an [Ernie Ball] Cry Baby wah-wah pedal. I don't use the wah a lot, but it does something. Without it, it just feels wrong if it's not there. I'm kind of a straight in [the amp] kind of dude. If I'm sitting in with someone, I just like a high-powered Fender Twin. It does everything. It roars and cleans up well; all you need is a cable.

What's the one guitar you still long for, and why?

That's one I honestly don't have an answer for. I own everything. [laughs] I don't want to sound bourgeois, but I own everything I've always wanted.

What guitar did you long for the most before you found it?

Well, it's not a guitar. The longest journey from discovery to acquisition has to be the Lowell George Dumble Overdrive Special. That took 15 years. If you break down my favorite slide players, they're all essentially cut from the same cloth. Lowell had one Dumble amp, and I used to study that. But it doesn't take an Ancestry.com DNA test to know what this amp was built for. If you play that style, it gets there real quick.

Through iconic gigs with Aerosmith, as a solo artist and with the Hollywood Vampires, Joe Perry has been known for playing his red 10-string B.C. Rich Bich, his oft-favored and ever-changing Frankensteined Burned Strat and his Gibson "Billie" semi-hollowbody guitars, to name a few.

However, one electric guitar from Perry's 600-plus-strong collection stands out: a 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard 'Burst. While the guitar has meaning, if you've seen Perry perform live, you'll know he's not one to stagnate on one guitar for more than a song or two. "I always buy stuff that I know I'm going to use or that looks interesting," he says.

That checks out, as dozens of oddballs reside within his collection. "Some of those guitars might not be the hippest guitars in the world, or whatever, but it's always inspiring to pick up something that's got a different sound to it," he says. "You tend to play differently. That's where the ideas come from."

Returning to the 'Burst in question, Perry first came upon the guitar in the early ’70s after trading a '60s Guild Starfire, for it. The guitar stuck with him throughout the decade, during which time he wrote He was thick as thieves with the ’Burst until the early ‘80s, when he sold the beloved axe to a music shop in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

That's not surprising, as Perry admits to clearing proverbial decks when he left Aerosmith in '79 and after divorced his first wife in the early ’80s. The ’59 'Burst was just another casualty. What's more, Perry was searching for new sounds and wanted to avoid being chained to a guitar so closely related to his image onstage and in the studio with Aerosmith.

But it didn't take long for regret to set in. "There's a fair amount of guitars I don't have anymore that I wish I did," Perry says.

When looking back at the story of Joe Perry's '59 Les Paul, one has to understand that when Perry sold it, it wasn't an uncommon occurrence. Ace Frehley admits to doing the same thing around the same time, although the former Kiss six-stringer was funding a gambling trip, not rebuilding his life.

So there are stark differences. And who could blame Perry for wanting a change and some extra cash in his pocket as he embarked on a solo career?

Another point to consider is that while 'Bursts were going for decent dollars in the early ’80s, they sure weren't going for the six-figure numbers that late-1950s Les Paul Standards command these days, let alone one played by the guitarist of a legendary band.

As a result, Joe’s guitar was long gone by the time regret set in. When Aerosmith regrouped and rolled into the '90s on a wave of success via Permanent Vacation, Pump and Get a Grip, he had no idea where his favored 'Burst was.

Little could did he imagine that his guitar had made an appearance on MTV in a music video for Guns N' Roses' "November Rain.”

By then, Perry was deep into his search for the guitar. "We were starting to make some money after the band got rolling again," Perry says. "I thought It would be great to track down a couple of guitars that I'm missing. I started making phone calls around Boston and looking around.”

Remarkably, it was his bandmate Brad Whitford who hipped Perry to the news that his ’Burst had landed with another famous owner.

"I remember being in the studio, telling my guitar tech, 'I'm trying to track down my Les Paul,’ when Brad walked over,” Perry explains. “Brad said, ’Your Les Paul? I know where it is.’ He pulled out a guitar magazine with Slash's collection.

“And there it was. That's when I found out Slash had it."

Ironically, Aerosmith had shared the stage with Guns N' Roses in '92. In fact, Perry and Slash were pals. As a result, the guitarist felt emboldened to ask his friend for his guitar back. "I called him," Perry says. "I told him, 'Hey, I'll pay whatever you paid for it.'"

Slash wasn't having it. "He begged me not to ask. He said, 'Please don't ask me that.' But I'd call him every once in a while, just to see how he was, and I'd ask him, just as a joke.” Perry says, "I understood. If I had one of Jeff [Beck]'s guitars, I wouldn't wanna give it up. I definitely understood how he felt about it."

While most of Perry's pleas were joking in nature, the pressure of owning the iconic ’Burst was too much for Slash and had caused an unspoken rift between the two guitarists. "He wasn't around," Perry says. "I tried getting in touch with him, and I realized he didn't want to be asked anymore. It was getting in the way of our friendship."

So Perry mended things with Slash. "I said, 'I'm not going to ask you anymore — not even in kidding,’” he explains.

The 'Burst remained with Slash into 2000. By then, the guitarist was four years out of Guns N’ Roses and deep into his solo career, with his ’59 ’Burst in hand.

But while Perry had stopped asking Slash about the guitar, little did he know his wife, Billie, had taken up the cause. Slash and Perry shared the same lawyer, and she’d been communicating through him to Slash, trying to get the ’59 ’Burst back in Joe’s hands.

By then, after years of owning the guitar and building a collection, Slash was ready to part with the guitar. Joe’s 50th birthday bash was coming up and it seemed the perfect time to reunite him with his instrument.

And Slash had a plan.

Perry had hired Cheap Trick to perform at the bash. “They asked me what I wanted for my birthday, and I said, 'I want to play a set with you guys. I want to play your songs,’” Joe recalls. “I love those guys.

“So I got up to play a short set with Cheap Trick. And that's when they handed me the guitar."

Just like that, for the first time in nearly two decades, Perry was reunited with his long-lost '59 Les Paul ‘Burst. "I played the set with that guitar," he says. "It was an amazing night, I'll tell you. But I mean… I got my guitar back. I couldn't thank Slash enough. And I got to play with Cheap Trick!"

In the years since, Perry hasn't let the infamous ‘Burst go. The odds are that the guitar will be with him until the end, which is fair. Even though it's not his main guitar, the ‘Burst’s legend will be forever tied to Perry's towering legacy, and vice versa.

At 74, Perry remains a guitar junkie. His collection continues to grow, ebb and flow, and it is always functional. But no matter the space between plug and plays, the iconic ’59 Aerosmith 'Burst remains. Over the years, its legend has grown, with Gibson's Custom Shop even producing faithful recreations of Perry's prized Les Paul.

Though nothing compares to the original, which reminds Perry that there are other guitars he let get away. "I wish I had a few of the pieces I lost at the end of the '70s," he admits. "But I still have some stuff, like custom Aerosmith amps and a lot of old foot pedals.

"There's a fair amount of guitars that were sold or stolen. I don't have the guitar, the [early-70s Fender] Strat, that I played 'Walk This Way' on; I wish I did. But I've got my Les Paul back, thanks to my wife, Billie, and thanks to Slash."

A woman looking to sell an electric guitar to raise money for the construction of a children’s hospital has helped reunite a former Guns’ N’ Roses member with a rare prototype guitar that he thought was lost forever.

Featured in a recent episode of the TV show Pawn Stars, the seller, Gabby, was looking to raise $5,000 for the black, striped Gibson Les Paul, only to find out its one-of-a-kind backstory made it worth four times that amount.

Back in 2014, then-current Guns N' Roses (and former Sixx:A.M) guitarist DJ Ashba was working with Gibson on a signature model Les Paul, and its first prototype saw a lot of action onstage with the hard-rock giants. It then went missing, only to show up at America's most famous second-hand store a decade later.

The guitar had been donated to Gabby and her boyfriend without any paperwork or backstory to help with their fundraiser for building a brand-new children’s hospital. As such, she had no idea of its heightened value.

“I'm so excited to see which guitar it's gonna be,” Ashba told the show’s cameras before going into the store. “I'm praying to God it's the one I'm hoping, because I lost one years ago that meant the world to me.”

It didn’t take long to confirm that the guitar was indeed his long-lost love.

“I can recognize this guitar a mile away,” he said after greeting Gabby and show host Rick Harrison. “This right here is the Holy Grail. There's only one of these made in the world.

“This was the prototype of my signature Gibson,” he explains to starstruck GN'R fan. “Once we locked in on this design, Gibson only made 100 of them. I actually played it on some of records with Sixx:A.M., and a lot with Guns N' Roses. I abused it. There's even still probably beer stains and stuff on it.”

On its surface, Ashba’s signature model sticks tightly to the traditional Les Paul template. However, a deep dive into its electronics shows how it’s deviated from the norm.

“The weird thing when I joined Guns N' Roses is that playing a Les Paul, obviously it's the right guitar for the sound of the band, but I could never get used to the two volume knobs,” Ashba explains. He'd primarily played an Ernie Ball Music Man Axis guitar in his pre-GNR days. “So I had them take one off. So there’s only one volume, two tones.”

A kill switch was cleverly disguised as the original three-way pickup switch to maintain the guitar’s original look. The pickup switch itself was relocated to be beside the guitar’s two control knobs.

There’s also another clear sign that this guitar is a prototype and not a production model: DJ Ashba's name is inscribed on the truss-rod cover.

“It's a really special guitar, I would love to have it back,” Ashba says.

Harrison offered Gabby the princely sum of $20,000 for the guitar, and subsequently struck a deal with Ashba offscreen for its return.

It certainly makes for one of the more interesting guitar reappearance stories. However, it doesn’t quite match up to the remergence of John Lennon’s Framus 12-string acoustic, which sold at auction in April for $2,857,000 having been discovered in the attic of a house in the rural British countryside.

The acoustic guitar hadn't been played for 50 years, having played a key role in The Beatles' Help! album and its partner film.

Jimmy Page has played a number of electric guitars over the course of his career, including the Danelectro 3021, the Fender Telecaster, the Gibson Les Paul Deluxe and the double-neck Gibson EDS-1275, most famously used during live shows to perform Stairway to Heaven, among other classic Led Zeppelin songs.

But the guitar with which Page is most closely linked is his 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard with a sunburst finish, a guitar he played for many years of his career with Led Zeppelin. Page had owned and played a three-pickup Les Paul Custom in the early Sixties and played a Fender Telecaster while with the Yardbirds. He was still playing the Telecaster when Led Zeppelin played their first gigs in 1968.

But early the next year, Page bought the Les Paul Standard — his first — from Joe Walsh (who, Page says, “insisted that I buy it, and he was right”), paying $500 for it. He used it to record Zeppelin II that May. The guitar became and remained his favorite guitar throughout his years with Zeppelin, and as he acquired others, he started referring to it as Number 1.

Over the years, Page gave due credit to Eric Clapton for pairing up the Les Paul with a Marshall amp. “Eric was the first one to evolve the sound with the [Les Paul] and Marshall amps,” Page told Trouser Press in a 1977 interview. “He should have total credit for that.”

But Page continued that evolution in the Seventies with Led Zeppelin, demonstrating to guitarists what the Les Paul was capable of in the right hands.

In this vintage video, Page talks about his Number 1 and some of its unique aspects, such as the sealed Grover tuners and the push-pull knob that splits the bridge humbucker and lets him achieve a tone similar to that of Peter Green’s fabled Les Paul.

The clip was shot in 2003 when Gibson visited Page, presumably to create a reproduction of the model. In 2004, Gibson copied Page’s Number 1 for the company’s second run of Page signature models, with aging by luthier Tom Murphy. This run was limited to 25 copies signed by Page and a total of 150 copies with the Murphy-aged finish.

Earlier this year, Gibson rekindled its relationship with the Led Zeppelin legend, teaming up with him to create a new line of signature guitars, the first being an ultra-exclusive recreation of Page's 1969 EDS-1275 double-neck. Only available via the Gibson Garage, the meticulously built model is limited to a run of 50 Page-signed and -played instruments, at a cost of $50,000 each.

Jimmy Page has played a number of electric guitars over the course of his career, including the Danelectro 3021, the Fender Telecaster, the Gibson Les Paul Deluxe and the double-neck Gibson EDS-1275, most famously used during live shows to perform Stairway to Heaven, among other classic Led Zeppelin songs.

But the guitar with which Page is most closely linked is his 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard with a sunburst finish, a guitar he played for many years of his career with Led Zeppelin. Page had owned and played a three-pickup Les Paul Custom in the early Sixties and played a Fender Telecaster while with the Yardbirds. He was still playing the Telecaster when Led Zeppelin played their first gigs in 1968.

But early the next year, Page bought the Les Paul Standard – his first – from Joe Walsh (who, Page says, “insisted that I buy it, and he was right”), paying $500 for it. He used it to record Zeppelin II that May. The guitar became and remained his favorite guitar throughout his years with Zeppelin, and as he acquired others, he started referring to it as Number 1.

Over the years, Page gave due credit to Eric Clapton for pairing up the Les Paul with a Marshall amp. “Eric was the first one to evolve the sound with the [Les Paul] and Marshall amps,” Page told Trouser Press in a 1977 interview. “He should have total credit for that.”

But Page continued that evolution in the Seventies with Led Zeppelin, demonstrating to guitarists what the Les Paul was capable of in the right hands.

In this vintage video, Page talks about his Number 1 and some of its unique aspects, such as the sealed Grover tuners and the push-pull knob that splits the bridge humbucker and lets him achieve a tone similar to that of Peter Green’s fabled Les Paul.

The clip was shot in 2003 when Gibson visited Page, presumably to create a reproduction of the model. In 2004, Gibson copied Page’s Number 1 for the company’s second run of Page signature models, with aging by luthier Tom Murphy. This run was limited to 25 copies signed by Page and a total of 150 copies with the Murphy-aged finish. 

Earlier this year, Gibson rekindled its relationship with the Led Zeppelin legend, teaming up with him to create a new line of signature guitars, the first being an ultra-exclusive recreation of Page's 1969 EDS-1275 double-neck. Only available via the Gibson Garage, the meticulously built model is limited to a run of 50 Page-signed and -played instruments, at a cost of $50,000 each.

Gibson has produced a dizzying amount of Les Pauls since its introduction in 1952, but the company believes its new updated Les Paul Studio will be “the one” guitar that players reach out for time and time again.

Studios have typically been meat and potatoes guitars to stand as the most affordable Gibson Les Pauls on the market. While its revised model comes with a fairly modest price tag of $1,599, it’s been bestowed with features usually reserved for higher-end LPs, as well as receiving some choice upgrades, too.

Designed to be “the guitar you won’t be able to put down,” it's been created with an ultra-modern weight-relieved mahogany body for increased comfort, and topped with a carved plain maple cap. That tonewood combination promises “brightness, definition, warmth, and midrange punch” in equal measure.

Its SlimTaper profile mahogany neck, which plays host to a 22-fret medium jumbo fingerboard, has been glued in for “increased resonance and sustain.” Sculpted with a 12” radius and given binding – a first for LP Studios – Gibson assures players that they will “love how this instrument feels in your hands.”

Its hardware specs bring together Vintage Deluxe tuners, a Graph Tech nut, a fully adjustable aluminum Nashville Tune-O-Matic bridge, and a lightweight aluminum Stop Bar tailpiece that no Les Paul would be complete without.

But it’s with the electronics that some of the key changes have been made. A pair of Gibson Burstbucker Pro pickups have dedicated volume and tone controls, and a push/pull for coil tapping. Rounded out with a standard three-way switch, those appointments bring it closer in line with a Les Paul Standard, as such trimmings are usually reserved for higher-end Les Pauls.

Studios, as their name implies, were built to perform in the studio, so aesthetic appointments were typically omitted to keep the price down. Here, though, Gibson has made sure it looks the part via a choice of Ebony, Blueberry Burst, Wine Red, and Cherry Sunburst gloss nitrocellulose lacquer finishes.

Unfortunately, Gibson is not rolling out its luxurious Dark Purple Burst again, after unveiling it earlier this year.

The guitar has been tried and tested by gigging musicians, with Beauty School Dropout guitarist Bardo calling it “an all-around workhorse, without sacrificing the classic styling and quality I expect from Gibson.”

Country player Kenzi Lewis has praised its smoothness, light weight, and “amazing tone,” while Argentina's Ivan Singh said it “feels like home.”

The new build augments a score of new Gibson releases, including the return of its Victory electric guitar, an Epiphone Jimi Hendrix 'Love Drops' Flying V, and signature acoustic guitars for Johhny and Roseanne Cash.

“The Les Paul Studio is the essential Les Paul, reimagined and updated for today’s players who want more than just another guitar – they want their guitar,” says Gibson.

The all-new Les Paul Studio is available now for $1,599, and each model comes with a soft-shell guitar case.

Head to Gibson to learn more.

Gibson has released a new 1959 Les Paul replica to commemorate the late Jeff Beck’s time in The Yardbirds, but only 130 will be made. 

Today, Jeff Beck is remembered as a formidable and highly influential electric guitar player, predominantly as a solo artist, but it was his time in The Yardbirds that helped launch his career. 

The band had a matchless production line of next-best-thing musicians, with Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page also cutting their teeth in the band.   

As such, the company's latest history-honoring release focuses on those early days of Beck’s career, with the ‘59 ‘Yardburst’ a faithful recreation of the guitar he plied his trade with in the Yardbirds. 

Mirroring the specs of its progenitor, it offers a one-piece lightweight mahogany body with its Murphy Lab-aged tops and Dark Cherry Sunburst finish aiming to replicate the appearance of the original as closely as possible.  

There’s also a '50s rounded C-profile mahogany neck, 22-fret Indian Rosewood fingerboard, Custombucker pickups complete with white bobbins – a key feature of Beck's guitar – and a black three-ply pickguard. 

Each of the 130 models in this limited run are handcrafted by the artisans at the Gibson Custom Shop in Nashville, Tennessee, offering a unique way for fans to celebrate Beck’s potent legacy.  

Though its release comes 18 months after Beck’s passing at 78, his wife Sandra Beck has explained that he was involved with the project’s early steps. 

“Jeff was enormously proud to have owned the original of this guitar,” she says. “He was aware and fully supportive of the amazing job and love that Gibson Custom provided to create this instrument and would have hoped that this guitar would give hours of pleasure to those who play it.”

Each instrument ships in a specially aged Lifton hardshell case, with memorabilia celebrating Beck’s Yardbirds legacy and illustrious solo career.  

Beck would continue to play his beloved ‘59 Les Paul after parting ways with The Yardbirds in 1966. It played a key role in the early Jeff Beck Group albums before he transitioned to an Olympic White Fender Stratocaster. 

His 2014 Custom Shop Strat has recently been seen in the hands of John Mayer, playing it during Dead & Company’s ongoing Las Vegas residency at The Sphere. 

The Gibson Custom Jeff Beck ‘YardBurst’ 1959 Les Paul Standard is available now for $9,999.

Head to Gibson for more information. 

By the late-80s, Kramer, Charvel, and Jackson had established something of a stranglehold on the electric guitar market, but Guns N’ Roses producer Mike Clink believes that Slash – via the band's 1987 debut album, Appetite For Destruction – helped tilt the balance back in Gibson’s favor. 

Guitarists like Eddie Van Halen, Mick Mars, and Randy Rhoads, very much the poster boys of '80s guitar, had budding guitar players all over the world drooling over their preferred models. As such, the Les Paul, strongly associated with the ‘60s blues rock movement, fell out of fashion with younger musicians. 

In a new interview with Guitar World, Clink explains how Appetite For Destruction created a whole new appetite for Les Pauls.   

“It’s a special guitar that clearly means a lot to him. That’s his baby,” he said of Slash's original Les Paul.

“When we did Appetite, it was that Les Paul into a Marshall. With the popularity of that record, all the aspiring guitar players wanted a Les Paul. I feel like he did a lot to bring the Gibson Les Paul back – not that it necessarily ever went away, but there was a big rise in popularity after [the band's] debut.”

Appetite for Destruction was released in July 1987 and catapulted the band to stratospheric success. It still holds huge sway today – Sweet Child o’ Mine, since Spotify’s relatively recent launch in 2006, has accumulated well over a billion hours of playtime. 

Tone-wise however, its success went against the current. 

“At the time there were all these hair bands playing other brands in competition with Gibson,” Clink continues. “When Guns N’ Roses broke, guitar players started saying ‘I need that tone: a Les Paul into a Marshall!’ The success of that record brought those guitars back into mainstream popularity.”

Ironically, the Les Paul that was used extensively on the album wasn’t even a Gibson at all – it was a Kris Derrig-built replica.

The luthier was based out of MusicWorks, a guitar store located in Redondo Beach, California. He’d constructed the ‘59 Les Paul replica with highly figured book-matched maple, notably without the cherry-tinted edges of the originals.   

Its inherent tonal magic came from a pair of Seymour Duncan Alnico II humbuckers with black-and-white “zebra” coils and some vintage electronics that Derrig sourced from the shop. 

But the minor detail of the guitar not actually being a Gibson didn’t bother the firm, which duly reaped the rewards of the album’s popularity. 

Slash officially joined the Gibson family in 2010, working with the multi-faceted gear brand to recreate the Derrig Les Paul and, this time, stamp the Gibson name on its headstock. 

“Getting the Derrig was an interesting sort of perfect storm,” Slash recalls. “I went from having no identifiable sound during the basic tracks for Appetite to getting this guitar, with these particular pickups, played through a particular rented Marshall amp. All those contributing factors made for a really great guitar sound that has served me ever since.”

Those Seymour Duncan humbuckers would later become the template for Slash's signature pickups, with the Marshall head, as Clink details, a Frank Levi mod. 

“He was not doing well, but had continued doing mods for friends of mine. The amps he worked on are still around and still exist. He was only doing those mods for friends and special people.”

Joe Bonamassa’s love for and knowledge of vintage gear is vast. Recently, he sought to share the stories behind his own legendary guitar collection by inviting online gear retailer Reverb into his Nerdville museum for an ultra-nerdy mini-documentary.

Bonamassa first let Reverb’s camera peruse his gear collection in 2014. Suffice to say, in the intervening eight years, the bluesman has made multiple additions to his collection.

“I look back at the 2014 documentary and that room seems so empty,” Bonamassa reflects early on, “like, where is everything, did I get robbed?!”

The YouTube documentary therefore made for a comprehensive catch-up, which is packed to the rafters with anecdotes involving seances, trash bag guitars, and Korina kitchen cabinets.

Highlights from the near-40-minute film can be found below, but take note: this list is by no means exhaustive. Watch the full video on Reverb's YouTube channel.

The 'Trash Bag' Flying V 

Of Bonamassa's many new purchases, a $200,000 Flying V that was found in a trash bag stands out. As JoBo explains, the niece of a Bay Area gospel musician named Gino Landry didn’t know the treasure she had come across when she found the guitar wrapped up in a bin liner among her uncle’s belongings.

She estimated she could get a quick $500 out of it; Bonamassa knew otherwise. A 1958 Gibson Flying V, it is a notably rare example, as it hails from the firm’s original run of Korina Vs. Gibson later switched to mahogany bodies after disappointing initial sales.

Though it needed some work to get back up to speed, especially beneath Bonamassa's fingers, the guitar sold for 400x higher than Landy’s original valuation.

Tommy Bolin’s “cursed” Les Paul Standard 

That isn't the strangest way he’s accumulated gear, though. Bonamassa also owns a 1960 Gibson Les Paul Standard, formerly belonging to Tommy Bolin, which he fears might be “cursed”.

The instrument was played extensively by Bolin, who wrote one album, Come Taste The Band, with Deep Purple before his passing in December ‘76 aged 25.

During a seance, the seller asked Tommy Bolin's spirit for permission to sell his guitar to the revered bluesman – and his spirit promptly approved of the deal. Soon after, however, the seller buried a duffle bag of cash he earned from the deal somewhere in the Utah desert, before dying unexpectedly in a car crash.

"If you're a treasure hunter," says a perpetually dry-humored Bonamassa, "I'd start in Moab."

Korina kitchen cabinets 

Bonamassa may be known for his ability to shred the blues, and his songwriting skills have earned him many accolades, but now he can add ‘interior designer’ to his résumé.

His newly re-modeled kitchen, for instance, includes a full set of Korina kitchen cabinets, which come complete with handles fashioned out of Stop Bar tailpieces plucked from Gibson electric guitars.

As Bonamassa explains, the inspiration came from a story he had heard about Elinor McCarty, the wife of Gibson president Ted McCarty, who oversaw the firm’s golden age of guitar building.

In the light of the poor sales figures of the ‘50s Flying Vs – one of which would end up in Bonamassa’s museum via a trash bag – Elinor took advantage of the left-over Korina.

“Allegedly,” Bonamassa says, “she took the extra Korina from the Gibson factory when they shut down the Vs and Explorers… and built kitchen cabinets.”

Prized possessions

Always on the hunt for new gear, as the above stories attest, Bonamassa has been focusing on re-homing family heirlooms in his quest to acquire more vintage accouterments, veering away from an arguably inflated second-hand market.

“That's the thing I'm into: finding uncirculated things,” he says while holding a Les Paul that had passed through several generations of one family. “There's less of it, but it's still out there.

“People want to know their family heirlooms are going to a place where they'll be appreciated, loved, and played; I tick those boxes.”

The Les Paul Custom responsible for the solo on Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights has sold for £21,500 (approx $27,500) at auction. 

The figure vastly surpasses the estimated £10,000 it would accumulate at the auction at Gardiner Houlgate in the UK. Before fees, the winning bid clocked in at £17,000 (approx $21,824). 

The 1974 Les Paul Custom was played by Ian Bairnson, who had a broken arm at the time of tracking the chart-topping hit. 

Bairnson passed in 2023, aged 69, with Kate Bush taking to her website to remember his talents.   

She said: “We lost touch after we worked together on my early albums but I remember he had a lovely, warm smile and he played the inspired solo on Wuthering Heights with a broken arm. He was still wearing the cast! He was in a lot of pain but soldiered on and like all great artists, he truly suffered for his art.” 

Auctioneer Luke Hobbs had said the price “was quite deserved,” despite the fact that modifications to the guitar had impacted its value. 

“The guitar itself – in original condition – is worth probably £5,000,” says Hobbs. “With the modifications that it had, probably more like £3,000-4,000. That guitar has done significant work over the years.” 

The guitar sports a cherry sunburst finished maple veneer on a mahogany pancake body, and an ebony fretboard. There's a buckle rash patch on its back, with “further dings and marks” noted by the auctioneer. 

According to Gardiner Holgate, Bairnson’s modifications include replacement Tom Holmes Vintage Style humbucker pickups with aftermarket coil switches.  

However, its desirability at auction has surpassed expectations. 

“I have been quite blown away by the response to the sale of his collection [which includes 12 of his guitars],” Hobbs told Antiques Trade Gazette. “In this same auction, we are offering the ex-Whitesnake guitarist Bernie Marsden’s collection as well as guitars owned by Eric Clapton, Gary Moore, Peter Green, and many more.

“The reaction to Ian Bairnson’s collection has so far surpassed interest in some of these mammoth names in the guitar world. I think that says it all!”

It's fitting that the guitar would exceed expectations at auction when the song it was used to track itself exceeded initial expectations. 

Released in 1978 as a tribute to Emily Brontë's classic gothic novel, it became the first UK number one written and performed by a female artist. It topped the charts in six countries in total, including Italy and Australia. 

Bairnson bought the guitar in 1974, and it quickly became his go-to six-string. It featured throughout his work with his band, Pilot, as well as with the Alan Parsons Project and Kate Bush's first four studio albums.  

The guitar sold with its original hard case, featuring a ‘Pilot’ stencil logo.  

For more info on the guitar, visit Gardiner Houlgate.

A recently resurfaced interview has detailed how Leo Fender wanted to work with Les Paul long before Gibson was convinced of his electric guitar concept. 

The Les Paul may have gone on to become what is arguably Gibson’s most famous and iconic instrument, but there was a brief period where Fender tried to ally with Les Paul himself to develop his solidbody prototype. 

The interview, dating back to 2009 and brought to light by MusicRadar, sees Les Paul explaining how Fender actually saw the value in his vision long before Gibson did. 

Les Paul and Leo Fender were friendly with one another at the time, moving in the same circle of guitar innovators while Les Paul was creating “The Log,” the progenitor to the Les Paul guitar.    

Fender, an astute businessman, smelled an opportunity. 

“At that time Leo wanted me to be partners with him – for it to be the Fender guitar: the Les Paul Fender,” Les Paul explains in the interview. “When he approached me with the idea, he brought over a guitar and he gave it to me and I have it here.”

Although revered in guitar-building circles, Leo Fender wasn’t personally a guitarist, something Les Paul viewed with trepidation. And so, Paul held firm to the hope that Gibson would come around to his concept. 

“I thought, if I'm gonna do this I'm going to go with the biggest company in the world: Gibson,” he said. “Why should I fool around with some guy who is not a musician? I should go to the Gibson people.”

The problem was that ‘Going to the Gibson people’ wasn’t an easy task. Initial conversations didn’t bear fruit. 

Gibson had built its reputation by building mandolins, harp guitars, and other hollow-bodied instruments. It had produced the first ever solidbody electric guitar in 1941, with the ES-150 originally marketed as a Hawaiian guitar, but Les Paul's blueprints weren't proving enough to convince them to sanction his design's production. 

In the end, Leo Fender did play a key role in the Gibson Les Paul’s history, but not how he had hoped. In the fall of 1950, Fender released the Broadcaster, a precursor to the Telecaster. Its success made Gibson reconsider Les Paul’s proposal. 

“The Gibson people turned [The Log] down and they continued to turn it down all the way to 1950,” Paul remembers. “Then in 1950, they called me and say, ‘Would you bring that gadget in?’” 

The first artist-approved production model was delivered in 1951 with the help of Gibson and Ted McCarty. Guitar Player had the honor of pouring over the now-iconic instrument in 2021, before it sold for $930,000 at auction.  

The heavily-modded guitar featured a host of Les Paul-handled DIY jobs. It would go on to change the course of history – for the electric guitar and the Gibson brand – forever. 

Gibson has teamed up with Blackberry Smoke’s Charlie Starr for the latest addition to its signature series, a loving recreation of Starr's 1956 Les Paul Junior. 

Like the original model, the new replica features a mahogany body and a glued-in, '50s profile set neck boasting a 22-fret Indian rosewood 'board with acrylic dot inlays, plus Grover tuners and numberless Amber Speed control knobs.  

Starr's original model has been with the musician throughout a career that has produced acclaimed eight studio albums, transforming Blackberry Smoke into one of the biggest Southern rock bands in the world. 

Of the instrument, Starr says: “It's beaten and it’s Frankenstein-ed. It has a lot of modifications and changed parts. Most of that stuff happened in the '70s. This guitar [the signature model] is a recreation of that idea.” 

Speaking about how he came to own the guitar, which had a storied past even before he laid his fingers upon it, he explains: “I moved to Atlanta in the early '90s from East Alabama. Atlanta was the closest big city. 

“Soon after I moved there I started going to the mom and pop guitar stores, and I happened upon that guitar in Clark Music in Atlanta. It's no longer there but I met a lifelong friend there, and he sold me that guitar. He was like a matchmaker. I walked in and he's like ‘You play guitar? Come over here.’ 

“It belonged to Rick Richards from the Georgia Satellites, who is one of my favorite guitar players ever,” he continues. “He pulled it off the wall and it was love at first feel. We bonded, that guitar and I, pretty instantaneously.” 

Unfortunately for Starr, the store was after $650 for the '50s six-string, a fee well out of reach for the then-upstart musician. 

“At that point, I was 21 years old and he might as well have said six million,” he details. “But I said ‘I tell you what, I've got some other gear and a little cash.‘ A deal was made and it's been with me ever since.” 

Tonally, its character comes from a single P-90 pickup in the bridge position. Citing influences including Keith Richards, Johnny Thunders, and Mick Ralphs, Starr says, “I think without even knowing it, I had an affinity for the P-90 thing.”

Its spec is complete by a nickel adjustable wraparound bridge with locking studs. It comes with .010 - .046 strings and a Historic Les Paul Junior gator skin hardcase. 

Inside that case, players can find a Gibson accessory kit, a Charlie Starr signature ceramic slide to recreate his innovative playing style, and a “Hey Ya'll” sticker, in reference to the misspelled sticker found on the back of Starr's original model. 

The guitar features on the band's latest album, Be Right Here, which benefitted from a slimmed-down set up in the studio, with Starr and co. embracing the magic of little guitar amps, a lá Eric Clapton and Duane Allman. 

It is available in a faithful ebony, as well as a dark walnut finish (satin nitrocellulose lacquer), with only 250 of each being produced. 

The Charlie Starr Les Paul Junior costs $1,999. 

Head to Gibson to learn more. 

Gibson has unveiled its latest high-end Les Paul, an exacting Custom Shop recreation of Ed King’s famed “Red Eye” 1959 Les Paul Standard. 

The guitar is named after the bright red area of finish near its toggleswitch. It's an eye-catching example of Gibson’s famous ‘Burst era of Les Pauls and has been in the possession of six-time Grammy winner Jason Isbell since shortly after the Lynyrd Skynyrd guitarist passed in 2018. 

Given that the “Red Eye” model is a part of the company's very-top-of-the-line Collector’s Edition line of guitars, Gibson utilized 3D scanning and “ultra-precise Murphy Lab aging techniques,” to translate every fragment of wear, tear, and personality of the original into the copy. This is a limited run, with only 59 models being produced. 

Legend has it that the guitar had been displayed in a store window, causing the finish to fade. However, the price-tag hung off the toggleswitch, obscuring a portion of the guitar’s body from sunlight.

Consequently, that left much of the pigment behind it unblemished, resulting in the guitar’s dramatic ‘red eye’ visage. The bold red of the original finish also remains beneath the pickguard.  

That’s a quirk that Gibson was eager to reproduce with these faithful replicas. It even went one step further by having Isbell, who was involved with “every step of the process,” hand-select the figured maple tops for the builds. 

The guitar even comes with its own history-honoring Gibson cost, with the company sparing no expense in ensuring that every nuance of the guitars stayed as true to the original as possible. That goes some distance in explaining its weighty $22,000 price tag. 

Ed King purchased the guitar in 1982, and it remained a cherished part of his collection until his passing. 

Several months later, as told by Guitar Player, Christie Carter of Carter Vintage Guitars in Nashville invited Isbell to play King’s guitars for the shop’s YouTube channel. 

That included strumming the ’73 Strat that starred in Sweet Home Alabama, and a host of gold-top Les Pauls. Then he spotted the “Red Eye” – which was famously stolen from King at gunpoint in 1987 – on a stand. King's mission to retrieve the guitar took him a decade. 

“Ed had a beautiful collection of instruments,” Isbell told GP in a 2020 interview. “He didn’t just get good vintage guitars – he got the best versions of pretty much everything.”

“I never thought I would need a ’Burst,” the one-time Drive-by Truckers guitarist continued. “I mean, nobody needs a ’Burst, but I never thought that I would want one, as expensive as they are. I’ve got a ’61 [Gibson ES-] 335 that’s just incredible, and I’ve never heard a Les Paul that could beat it.”

But there was a steely determination from the guitarist to gather the required funds, leading to him asking his manager to find some methods of getting the necessary money that didn't involve touring the world four times over. 

“I said [to my manager] ‘Can you book me some private shows? No war criminals.’ It just so happened that BitCoin was taking off that year, so I wound up at a bunch of weird BitCoin birthday parties and paid for that guitar without having to dip into anyone else's life. 

“I met some interesting people,” he adds, “and went to some parts of the Hamptons that I’ve not been to before.” 

Some choice changes have since been made to the guitar to preserve its original hardware. The tuners and tailpiece have been replaced with retrofits, and Isbell suspects the pickup covers to be New Old Stock. 

He has also refretted the guitar – King was rumored to have undertaken a partial refret himself – but otherwise, the original guitar remains largely intact. Indeed, the pickups and wiring harness are from February 1959.  

That beloved spec is what Gibson has painstakingly set to deliver here. It features a lightweight one-piece mahogany body, a mahogany neck, and a Brazillian rosewood fretboard – a key feature of the original. 

The 24.75" scale length build delivers 22 medium jumbo frets and aged cellulose nitrate trapezoid inlays, with four Gold Butyrate pots split evenly between Volume and Tone. 

It’s stocked with two un-potted Custombucker pickups, their wear mirroring the original, with an ABR-1 No-Wire bridge, lightweight aluminium stop bar, and Kluson tuners.  

The Custom Shop “Red Eye” ships in a Les Paul Protector Series hardshell case that is packed with extra treats to make that sizable price tag feel a little less frightening.

Those extras include a Jason Isbell guitar strap – made by Savas from Midnight Blue Wild Alligator leather with a chain stitched and an inlaid Red Eye emblem – two rubber “beer bottle” style strap locks, a certificate of authenticity booklet, and reproduction hangtags. 

Isbell says he instinctively knows when a guitar is going to be good or not, and that was the case during his first encounter with the “Red Eye” – even before plugging it in. 

“When I was a kid me and my dad would go shopping for fishing tackle. He’d take the rod and say ‘go stand over there, put the end of the rod on your throat’ and he would hold the handle of the rod and I would talk,” Isbell remembers. “If he could feel it in his hand, it was a pretty good fishing rod. 

“It’s that way with a good guitar. Every point that you touch on that instrument, you feel the vibration moving. I would know if the ‘Red Eye’ was a good guitar even if I was stone deaf, just because you can feel it vibrating.”

Only 59 examples of the ultra-limited edition guitar made, and each will be sold for $21,999.  

Head to Gibson for more information. 

Memorial Day is here, and Guitar Center has launched an epic Memorial Day Sale, which offers up to 35% off a massive range of gear until May 29th. So, if you’re on the lookout for a new electric guitar, acoustic guitar, guitar amp or effects pedal, then head on over for a browse while stocks last.

Just like last year, Guitar Center is currently having a massive sale on a wide variety of popular brands such as Fender, Epiphone, Gibson, Martin, Boss, Blackstar, and more. It's a fantastic opportunity to snag some awesome deals. If you need some help navigating through the 800+ products on sale, we've highlighted a few top picks for you below. 

First up, we've found a whopping $150 off the Martin Special D, which is now down to only $899. This is a very special deal on an equally special guitar from Martin, the company that brought you the quintessential all-American flat-top. Martin invented the Dreadnought, and this all-solid Special D model features an x-braced Sitka spruce top and sapele (also known as sapele mahogany) back and sides.

Next up, and keeping things American, we have the stunning Gibson Les Paul Standard '50s P-90, which has a generous $200 slashed off the price. This retro throwback delivers stellar vintage tones with a seriously chunky neck and outstanding finishing. 

Not a Les Paul fan? Well, you'll want to check out the gorgeous limited edition HSS Fender Player Strat in Sienna Sunburst. Now with a sizable $130 discount, this humbucker-equipped Strat is fiercely versatile and a total steal at this price. 

Shop more Memorial Day sales

• Amazon: Today's top deals on Fender, more
• Fender: 30% off Player, Affinity, more
• Fender Play: 50% off w/code guitarworld50
• Guitar Tricks: Get 1 month of lessons for just $1
• IK Multimedia: Up to 67% off Total Studio 4
• Musician's Friend: Up to 40% off Gibson, Martin
• Native Instruments: 50% off Guitar Rig Pro 7
• Positive Grid: Savings on the OG Spark
• Reverb: Like-new, used, and vintage gear
• Sweetwater: Huge Memorial Day pedal sale
• Waves: Bag 3 plugins for 60 bucks
• Yamaha: Shop the huge Spring Sale

We’re always on the lookout for a good deal on guitar gear here at Guitar Player but to be honest it’s been a little barren on that front over the past few weeks. Thankfully, Musician’s Friend is here to save the day with some stonking guitar deals of up to 40% off in their Guitar Fest sale.

With massive discounts on guitars from big-name brands like Fender and Gibson, as well as some excellent pedal deals from Universal Audio, Walrus Audio, and Line 6, it’s the perfect opportunity to pick up your favorite gear for less. These savings are only available for a limited time however and with the sale ending on March 24th, you’ve only got a couple of weeks to bag yourself a bargain.

There’s a second sale happening as well, although it’s for Musician’s Friend members only. If you don’t have an account you can sign up for free and by spending above $99 on accessories, you’ll get a massive 20% discount on your whole basket. It’s a great opportunity to stock up on essentials like picks, strings, and straps - all you need to do is enter the code MEMBER when you check out to claim your offer. 

We’ve already had a look at the sale to see what’s on offer, and we’ve picked out some of our favorites for you here. First up, this Fender Vintera Limited Edition 50s Strat caught our eye thanks to its road-worn finish and a huge $330 discount. With a Player Series humbucker and two vintage-voiced single coils, this is a fantastically versatile instrument that will deliver a wide variety of tones. The soft ‘V’ neck feels absolutely lovely, and we already broken-in look adds even more classic vibe to its looks.

One of our all-time favorite multi-effects and pedal amps has got a massive discount, with the Line 6 HX Stomp reduced from $699.99 to just $549.99. That’s a hefty reduction of $150, or 21% on one of the most versatile pedals ever made. Use it to replace your rig entirely, or just add to an already existing pedalboard, whichever it is, the HX Stomp will give you quality tones and with a regular update path, even more amp and effects models in the future.

Finally, we love the look of this Gibson Les Paul Traditional Pro V with a satin finish, but we love the $500 discount even more! Now down to just below the two grand mark, it’s got a weight-relieved Mahogany body with a set Mahogany neck and asymmetric neck shape for ultra-comfort. The two Tradbuckers feature an underwound neck position and overwound bridge pickup, giving you excellent versatility in combination with the push-pull volume and tone knobs. 

For the majority of his seven-decade career – particularly in its second half – electric guitar hero Jeff Beck was synonymous with the Fender Stratocaster. Beck's own signature Strat has been in production – in one form or another – for over 30 years, and it's almost impossible to picture the legend in the latter half of his career without one.

Beck's love affair with Leo Fender's most famous creation, however, wasn't without its rough patches. 

Indeed, when Beck sat down for a chat with Guitar Player in 1973 – at the peak of his Les Paul era – the guitarist minced no words about what he saw as the Strat's lesser qualities. 

“Fenders are cheap in feel,” Beck – always a straight shooter – told GP at the time.

“You pick up a Les Paul and it's heavy and it really means something – it means business. The Fender was nice because you could grip it like a weapon and really chunk out the chords, but when you came to the more subtle stuff it wasn't there.

“After a while I got so used to the Les Paul, there was no turning back,” Beck added. “I picked up my Fender and thought, ‘How the hell did I ever play this?’”

Within just a couple of years, however, Beck – never one to creatively and sonically stand still – became disenchanted with the Les Paul.

Around 1980, feeling limited by both the Strat and the Les Paul, Beck began a brief, informal partnership with Ibanez, developing a never-realized signature model that featured the double-cut body of a Strat, the dual-humbucker configuration of a Les Paul, and a mind-boggling control layout.  

At the time, a Guitar World investigation into the partnership revealed, Beck was also being pursued by Fender, which was eager to return Beck to the Strat fold.

Eventually, Fender's wooing succeeded, with the company creating a signature model that (originally) featured a bridge humbucker and the thick U-shaped neck Beck preferred. 

When asked to compare the Strat to a Les Paul in a 2009 interview with Guitar Player, Beck said, “It’s a totally different animal. One is for very subtle and, I would say, more musical things that you can distract and abuse. You can’t do it with a Les Paul. It’s too delicate. It’s got a very delicate tone.”

The big day is less than a week away and the Black Friday guitar deals are well and truly here - and they don't come chunkier than $700 off the Gibson Les Paul Traditional Pro V at Guitar Center. Available in the stunning Desert Burst finish, this is a serious guitar at a seriously discounted price. 

The Les Paul is a tonal powerhouse, offering players infinite sustain, a powerful mid-range bark, and a creamy warm tone not found in other guitars. It's no surprise then that so many aspire to own a Gibson Les Paul one day. That said, the rather sizable price tag can make them unobtainable, so this is a rare chance to snap one up for only $1,799. 

Featuring a weight-relieved mahogany body with mahogany top, a 24.75"-scale mahogany neck with a 22-fret compound-radius rosewood fingerboard, dual Gibson Tradbucker pickups with coil-split, coil-tap and phase, a Nashville bridge, aluminium tailpiece and locking Grover tuners, the Traditional Pro V is a classic guitar with 21st-century appointments.

We gave this Les Paul 4/5 stars in our review earlier in the year and praised its build quality and the plethora of tone-crafting options onboard. For us, this is a Les Paul with great tonal choice and the classic beauty you'd expect from this famed singlecut. So, if the $2k+ price was putting you off before, now is your chance to pick one up.

Want a Les Paul but the price is still a bit too rich? Check out our guide to the best Epiphone Les Pauls right now. 

On this day, in 1964, the Rolling Stones made their historical debut on The Ed Sullivan Show. The band kicked off their appearance on live national television to rapturous applause with a rendition of Chuck Berry’s Around and Around (originally the flip side to his 1958 Johnny B. Goode single).

Later in the show, the Stones performed their Time Is On My Side single. It was already creeping up the Billboard Hot 100 charts by the time the band appeared. It eventually peaked at number 6 the following month. It was the Stones' first hit on American soil as the British Invasion got underway following the Beatles’ record-breaking appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show earlier in February that year (when an estimated 73 million Americans tuned in to watch). 

As is obvious from the video, the audience struggles to contain themselves and Sullivan has to ask for quiet several times when trying to introduce them. In fact, CBS got many complaints after the broadcast and Ed Sullivan is said to have declared: “I promise you they’ll never be back on our show. It took me 17 years to build this show and I’m not going to have it destroyed in a matter of weeks.” 

The Stones’ manager tried to change Sullivan’s mind, but Ed wrote back before he would even consider booking them again, "I would like to learn from you, whether your young men have reformed in the matter of dress and shampoo.” 

But for guitar players, The Rolling Stones’ appearance is most notable for Keith Richards’ use of a 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard. According to Gibson’s Head of Product Development, Mat Koehler, this was “the shot heard around the world,” that eventually brought the now iconic ‘Burst to the fore of the electric guitar world.

GP spoke to Richard Henry, a UK-based guitar dealer who has traded numerous ‘Bursts over the years, including the famous ‘Greeny’ Les Paul Standard. Now owned by Metallica’s Kirk Hammett the same guitar once belonged to guitar heroes Peter Green and Gary Moore.

He has also crossed paths with the infamous ‘Keith ‘Burst’ – a guitar that has passed through the hands of many a guitar legend over the decades…

Speaking of Richards’ old axe Henry told us: “The previous owner was a guy called John Bowen, who traded it in at Selmers [music store in London]. Keith bought it from there and famously used it on The Ed Sullivan Show in ’64.

“Later [in 1966] Clapton used it at the Windsor Jazz and Blues Festival. Jimmy Page also used it in the studio. Ian Stewart, the Stones’ Road Manager, sold it to Mick Taylor who used it with the Bluesbreakers. Taylor brought it back into the Stones’ camp when he joined the band. There’s footage of him playing it at Hyde Park [in 1969.]

The rumors are it either got stolen at the Marquee [Club in London], or it got stolen in France at Villa Nellcôte. It then eventually ended up in the hands of Cosmo Verrico from the Heavy Metal Kids. He had it for a short while and then sold it to [UFO and Whitesnake guitarist] Bernie Marsden.

“Bernie had it for about a week and flipped it. Later it went to a guy called Mike Jopp who owned it for many years. Dave Brewis at Rock Stars Guitars sold it for Mike to an American investor. I think it currently resides in a private collection in New York.

“Someone asked me what I thought was the most historically important ‘Burst. I said it’s not Jimmy Page’s. It’s not Peter Green’s [Greeny]. It’s not Mike Bloomfield’s. It’s not Eric Clapton’s. And it’s not Jeff Beck’s. It’s Keith Richards’ because he was the first pop star to use a ‘Burst.”

Elsewhere on the show, Brian Jones plays a prototype Vox MK III “Teardrop” guitar  and Bill Wyman plays his trusty Framus Star Bass. 

Keith Richards is interviewed in the current issue of Guitar Player, onsale now and available to buy here.

“Do you remember when you got your magic Les Paul?”

So asked Andy Ellis of Peter Green in the November 2000 issue of Guitar Player. The guitar in question was none other than Green’s 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard, a legendary instrument that the Fleetwood Mac founder used to write and record many of the group’s seminal blues cuts, including “Black Magic Woman,” “Oh Well” and “The Green Manalishi (With the Two-Prong Crown).”

Green’s Les Paul was considered “magic” for its out-of-phase sound, a nasal tonality missing from the typical Les Paul repertoire. 

Oddly, Green didn’t think much of the assessment.

“I never had a magic one,” he replied to Ellis. “Mine wasn’t magical... It might have looked similar to others from a distance, but it was an old-fashioned one with a funny-shaped neck – a kind of semicircle neck. It just barely worked. The pickups were strong, but I took one of them off. I copied Eric [Clapton]. 

"I heard him play one night, and he was on the treble pickup all night long. It sounded so good, I thought I’d take my bass pickup off altogether. Try and wait for the same luck. As if it was luck! It takes a lot of genuine practice and worry to get a sound like that.” 

ELLIS: But judging from all the Fleetwood Mac photographs, you must have put the pickup back on your Les Paul.

GREEN: I put it back on the wrong way around so that the poles – the pickup screws – were facing in the opposite direction. People would say to me, “You got that special out-of-phase sound.” I don’t know what out-of-phase is. Phase for what? Phase – it sounds like a good name for a group. 

Mind you, it didn’t make any difference to me. People would say that I got a special sound and try to force me to agree, but I don’t think so.

As it happened, Ellis already knew the “secret” behind the sound of Green’s Les Paul. In 1994, he’d approached Jol Dantzig, then with Hamer Guitars, to have him build a custom dual-humbucker guitar inspired by Green’s Les Paul. Ellis told the story in the same issue in which his Peter Green interview appeared. 

By the time of his visit to Dantzig, Green’s Les Paul had long been the main instrument of Gary Moore, who had befriended Green in the late '60s and purchased the guitar from him a few years later, in the early '70s. 

“As we discussed the wiring possibilities,” Ellis wrote, “Dantzig recalled that Gary Moore stopped by the Hamer factory in the early '80s with Green’s Les Paul.

“I asked if I could check out the wiring," remembered Dantzig, "and I carefully examined the pickups and their controls. Everything looked totally stock – the pickups were wired in phase – but I knew they didn’t sound stock when played together. 

“I used a compass to measure the pickups’ magnetic polarity. I discovered that one magnet was oriented north-to-south while the other was oriented south-to-north. The pickups were magnetically out of phase – this was the secret we’d all been searching for!"

“Dantzig agreed to incorporate magnetically out-of-phase pickups and reverse the neck pickup in the custom Hamer,” Ellis continued. “I sent a pair of Antiquity humbuckers to Seymour Duncan, requesting that he flip the magnet on one. Before I could explain why, Duncan said, ‘Ahh – you want the Peter Green mod.’”

So did the wiring replicate Green’s nasal tone? The answer, Ellis said, was an unequivocal yes. 

“In a dual-pickup setting where each humbucker has its own volume pot, you can bleed the relative phase shift to create timbres ranging from a piercing howl to a subtle treble boost.”

But as Ellis points out, the resulting tone isn’t the same that you get from wiring humbuckers out of phase. It seems that magnetically out-of-phase pickups are responsive to pitch, creating an entirely different sort of sound. 

“Oddly, the resulting sound is sweeter and more musical than what you get from wiring humbuckers out of phase,” Ellis writes. “Magnetically generated phase shift seems to respond to pitch changes – the higher the note, the more pronounced the effect. Chords and bass notes don’t have the thin, shrill sound of out-of-phase wiring, yet high notes played on the top strings have a pronounced hollow cry.”

In the years since Ellis wrote his story, Green’s guitar changed hands several times. Moore sold the guitar in 2006 for financial reasons. It eventually ended up in the hands of Metallica’s Kirk Hammett, who purchased it in 2014. 

Back in 1993, Johnny Van Zant wrote “The Last Rebel,” a song for Lynyrd Skynyrd’s album of the same name. Its lyrics paint a picture of a defiant but tired soldier left on a battlefield: “You can see the shadow of his past written in his eyes... His friends are all gone.” Coming from a band that sang about “Sweet Home Alabama” – and did so with a decidedly southern accent – the impetus seemed obvious. But in fact, “the boy with his old guitar” who’s “got a dream that will never die” was actually someone closer to home for the singer.

“That one was about Gary,” Van Zant explains. Gary Rossington, Skynyrd’s mainstay guitarist, was the only founding member to be part of the group’s entire active career, until his death on March 5 at the age of 71 after long-term health issues, primarily heart-related, took their toll.

“I just started thinking about Gary being the last of the three who started this band,” continues Van Zant, who’s been Skynyrd’s frontman since 1987, filling the shoes of his brother Ronnie, who was killed in the October 1977 plane crash that put the band in dry dock for a decade. “We made it into him being a soldier. That was my thought with that song: He was one of the soldiers, and he fought through to the end. He was the last rebel, man. Forever.”

There’s no question that, at the time of his death, Rossington was the heart and soul of Lynyrd Skynyrd, even if his health prevented him from joining the band onstage regularly during the past couple of years. He began playing with Ronnie Van Zant and late Skynyrd guitarist Allen Collins during the mid ’60s and was the force behind Skynyrd’s resumption back in 1987. He saw the group through its 14 studio albums and numerous live sets and compilations. Rossington was writing up until the end, too, penning material for a proposed farewell album that, so far, is represented only by the aptly named 2020 single “Last of the Street Survivors.”

“I didn’t mean to be the last original, or the last man standing, but here it is,” Rossington said back in 2018, when Skynyrd announced the album and a planned two-year farewell tour that was scuttled by the COVID-19 pandemic. But that role resonated with Rossington, and he felt a purpose in playing the music he’d created with Van Zant, Collins and other deceased bandmates such as bassist-turned-third-guitarist Ed King, drummer Bob Burns, bassists Larry Junstrom and Leon Wilkeson, keyboardist Billy Powell and guitarist Steve Gaines and his sister/backup vocalist Cassie Gaines, who were also killed in the 1977 plane crash.

“It’s heavy,” Rossington acknowledged at the time. “I’m just happy to still be doing it, going out and spreading the word about Skynyrd and all the great songs, and talking about Ronnie and Allen and Steve Gaines, and Leon and Billy and all the guys we lost, just keeping them alive. And every time we play, I feel the other guys’ spirits with us, and they’re helping and making sure everything is all right. So I feel like there’s a whole bunch of people up on that stage.”

Through the group’s many incarnations, Rossington’s presence was the essential tie to the band’s legacy, a black-clad, hat-wearing, Les Paul-slinging embodiment of credibility, speaking softly but hitting hard with his guitar, whether it was the fire of “Free Bird” or the aching gentleness of “Simple Man.”

“Gary Rossington played a very integral part in the creation of all of that,” notes Rickey Medlocke, the Blackfoot founder who played drums in Skynyrd circa 1970-’71 and rejoined as a guitarist in 1996. “His presence and his talent was a very important part of the music and that band. If you go back into the early years when I first joined the band, just watching those two guys, Gary and Allen, work on those parts and the dual leads that would become great songs later on... It was Gary’s sound and the tone and his connection with Ronnie in writing the songs that brought it all together.”

Adds Van Zant, “I always thought Gary played like he acted. He was a shy guy, kinda quiet, and he had that mysterious quality, playing guitar with the long, drawn-out sustain. And the riffs he came up with and his leads were always like his personality. You could really hear the guy in his playing.”

Born in Jacksonville, Rossington found his first passion in baseball, playing sandlot and in organized leagues, with aspirations to one day join the New York Yankees. He actually met Van Zant and Burns through the sport, playing on different teams. They became interested in music as teens, however, and wound up playing the Rolling Stones’ then-current single “Time Is on My Side” in the carport of Burns’ home, the same day Van Zant had struck the drummer with a pitched ball.

“The music was changing us,” recalled Rossington, who was raised by his single mother in West Jacksonville after his father died, shortly after Gary was born. She fronted the eight dollars for his first guitar, a Sears and Roebuck Silvertone, and he later named a prized 1959 Les Paul “Berniece” after her. (It now resides in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland.) “We still loved baseball, but we were connecting with the Stones, the Beatles – what we were hearing on the radio.”

And, he acknowledged with a laugh, “The girls were starting to like the rock stars better than the jocks. So there was that.”

With bassist Larry Junstrom, they formed the Noble Five, which became the One Percent before taking the name Lynyrd Skynyrd from Leonard Skinner, the strict gym teacher at Robert E. Lee High School who suspended Rossington for having long hair. Van Zant’s father, Lacy, cajoled administrators into letting the maverick aspiring rock star back into school, although Rossington ultimately dropped out to concentrate on the band.

Jacksonville had a vibrant music scene, recalls Medlocke, who got his music jones from his grandfather Paul “Shorty” Medlocke, a touring bluegrass musician. There was a preponderance of teen clubs – the Woodstock Youth Center, the Good Shepherd, the Riverside Women’s Club – as well as the Comic Book, which was all ages until midnight, when the kids were sent home and the liquor came out.

“Ronnie’s mom and dad would come out to my granddad’s dances, so that’s how I knew Ronnie – and then got to know Gary,” Medlocke says. “We all played the teen centers, and we intermingled with each other. You were able to trade conversations back and forth of who you were into, who you liked at the time, what record was out that was best. With Gary, it was all about the music. Nothing else. That’s how we all bonded.”

Exerting a particular influence on Rossington at the time was Paul Kossoff, then playing lead guitar with Free. “We saw them live once,” he remembered. “We saw them play right up close, and they just blew our minds. That’s when we really got serious about playing and working hard. We worked every day and night after that, so they helped us make it and were such an influence on us. And I just love ’em to death.”

Medlocke, meanwhile, had a front-row seat to that impact. “Paul Kossoff was so huge for Gary,” he says. “He had a 1959 Gibson Les Paul. Well, Gary ended up getting a ‘59 Les Paul. And then out of that Gary created his own thing that was a very integral part of Lynyrd Skynyrd: the sound.”

There were other sources of course, including the then-burgeoning Allman Brothers Band that was planting a flag for the South in rock and roll in a different manner than the likes of Little Richard and Sun Records’ Tennessee gang – Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins.

But Rossington claimed that the idea of southern rock as a genre was not intentional on Skynyrd’s part. “We were just rock and roll, y’know?” he explained. “We were labeled southern rock through writers. ’Cause all of a sudden a lot of southern bands were doing great – us and the Allmans, Charlie [Daniels], Wet Willie, Marshall Tucker, the Atlanta Rhythm Section – it was a whole new scene taking off down here, and they needed to give it a name. I was proud to be from the South. We always were. But we didn’t think about the South as part of the sound. It’s just who we were.”

The southern heritage did come with baggage, though. “We showed the Confederate flag when we started out,” Rossington acknowledges. “We didn’t mean any kind of harm or hard feelings or anything racist. It was just ’cause we were a southern band, and we were just really proud of that, and [the flag] was more a part of the culture down there. But when it started to upset people we understood, so we stopped using it.”

Skynyrd were one of Jacksonville’s most popular bands by 1970, when they headed to Quinvy Studios in Sheffield, Alabama, to record early demos, including a first crack at “Free Bird.” Later, the group checked into the famed Muscle Shoals Sound Studios with Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section guitarist Jimmy Johnson and bassist David Hood, the studio’s co-founders, who Medlocke says “really showed us what the difference between recording and playing live was all about. We really cut our teeth in there.” The band members were also still finding their way as songwriters. “We used a lot of D - C - G progressions,” Rossington told Guitar World in 1993. “It’s all about what you do with them.”

It was at Muscle Shoals, in fact, that “Free Bird” began to take flight. After some experimentation Collins found the chords for “the slow part,” as Rossington calls the song’s first half, which is how Skynyrd began to play the song in the clubs. The lyrics were inspired by a conversation Collins had with his wife, which was ultimately fleshed out by Ronnie Van Zant.

“Ronnie could never quite come up with a melody, but Allen kept playing it over and over again, and it finally clicked with Ronnie,” remembers Medlocke, who was playing drums during the sessions. “It was a magic moment.” Except, he explains, “It was actually a love song and they played it like that, and it never quite went over.”

Van Zant came up with the idea to extend the end, according to Rossington, who created the chord pattern that he and Collins began soloing over. It was the frontman who urged them to keep stretching it out.

“To us it was just a love song, and it had a lot of great guitar playing at the end for me and Allen to do,” Rossington said years later. “But it was really just a simple love song he wrote. We didn’t know it would do anything like it did, but it was mind-blowing. And it just hit.”

In 1972, the group’s onstage ferocity hooked Al Kooper, a music impresario from New York City who had played with Bob Dylan – most famously as the organist on “Like a Rolling Stone” – and founded the Blues Project and Blood, Sweat & Tears, among other groups. “I heard them play for six nights in a row at a bar [Funochio’s in Atlanta],” recalled Kooper, who at the time had launched a label called Sounds of the South. “And by the sixth night, I offered to sign them.”

Skynyrd was aware of Kooper’s reputation and seduced by his stories. ”We were Hendrix freaks, and [Kooper] had played with him [on Electric Ladyland], so we wanted to hear everything we could about him,” Rossington said. Despite a lot of head-banging between their sensibilities, Kooper produced Skynyrd’s first three albums, all of which hit the Top 30 on the Billboard 200 and ultimately went Platinum, or better.

“He had a lot of ideas, but we just kinda had a band and we had all the songs written,” Rossington said. “We argued a lot, because he wanted to put in different things and different techniques or keyboard parts. We locked horns with him a few times. Ronnie and him would argue about things, and me and Allen Collins would write our own leads and have it down pat what we thought was best for the song, and [Kooper] would say, ‘No, go out and play it different’ or ‘Do this.’

“I remember on ‘Sweet Home Alabama,’ Ed King did the solo and the song is in D, but Ed played it in the key of G, which worked but sounds a little different. And him and Al Kooper fought for days about that. [Kooper] hated that solo and Ed liked it, and they fought over that for a while. But it all worked out, and turns out it’s a great solo.”

There was also some drama around “Simple Man” from the band’s 1973 debut, (Pronounced ’Lĕh-’nérd ’Skin-’nérd), which Rossington wrote with Van Zant and considered one of his all-time Skynyrd favorites. “[Kooper] didn’t want us to do that song. He didn’t think it went anywhere and didn’t say much,” Rossington said. “But we loved it. So he had to go to New York on a quick weekend one time, and we recorded ‘Simple Man’ without him there. And when he got back he heard it and went, ‘Oh, wow, that’s great. Let’s do it,’ and he played organ on it, so it worked out in the end.”

“I really enjoyed the time I spent with them and the music that they made,” says Kooper, who will join Skynyrd in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year. “And I think they were grateful. They had been with a couple of people before me and it didn’t work out, and it worked out this time.”

After those first three albums, however, Skynyrd hit a creative malaise due to a combination of booze, drugs and exhaustion from heavy touring, including opening for the Who. Ed King departed in 1975. That left Rossington and Collins to make Gimme Back My Bullets, Skynyrd’s lowest-selling album to date, as a two-man unit. But the addition of Gaines, who was suggested by his sister, fired things back up just in time for the group’s landmark 1976 live album, One More From the Road.

“Me and Allen were just getting by with it and doing all right with it, but we missed that third guitarist for double leads and more power-packed rhythms and stuff,” Rossington said. Skynyrd actually had several songs written quickly for a new studio album, but, Rossington noted, “We were due to do an album, and our new producer, Tommy Dowd, had [engineered] Live Cream and Wheels of Fire and a bunch of other [concert records], so it seemed like a live album was a good idea.

“We had just gotten Steve a month or two before, so he was really new and hadn’t played that much with us, and some of the songs we hadn’t gotten around to teaching him yet.” Rossington laughed at the memory. “He’d just jam along or play what he knew of ’em, and it was great and we all loved him for that. It was nerve-wracking, but it worked out better than we could’ve hoped.”

Coming in the wake of live album hits by Kiss, Peter Frampton and Bob Seger, One More From the Road was a Top 10, triple-Platinum smash, with an 11-and-a-half-minute version of “Free Bird” that eclipsed its studio predecessor, and was even a Top 40 hit.

Skynyrd took that momentum into 1977’s Street Survivors, arguably the band’s best studio effort and its highest-charting title, reaching number five. The free bird was flying high when the Convair CV-240 airplane transporting the band to a show in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, crashed near Gillsburg, Mississippi, killing Van Zant, Steve and Cassie Gaines, assistant tour manager Dean Kilpatrick and the two pilots. The rest of the band and crew suffered severe injuries. As far as Rossington was concerned, “we were through. There was no way to still be Lynyrd Skynyrd without Ronnie and Steve and Cassie. It just wouldn’t be right.”

After a bit of time, Rossington and Collins launched the Rossington Collins Band, which released two albums and disbanded in 1982. Rossington and his wife, Dale Krantz-Rossington, started the Rossington Band, which released another two albums, but the guitarist gradually warmed to the idea of putting Skynyrd back together.

“The last thing we did together as a group was have a plane crash. We’d like to go out on a better note than that,” Rossington explained in 1987, as he, Powell, Wilkeson, Ed King and drummer Artimus Pyle regrouped for a tour, with Johnny Van Zant singing. Collins had been paralyzed in a 1986 car crash but served as a co-musical director for the troupe. The trek was designed as a one-off tribute tour but quickly became a full-scale resumption that led to nine more studio albums and some rather characteristically heavy road work.

“I never dreamed it would go on this long,” Rossington said 20 years later. “We really thought it was over after [the crash]. But we got a lot of fan mail and stuff saying, ‘Please keep going, we love having you back.’ And there were so many promoters saying they were getting a lot of requests. We decided that if we could write together, get something happening that was good and new, then maybe we could go on.”

Van Zant, who put aside a new solo record deal to take part in that initial tour, says now, “I think there was unfinished business there for Gary and the other guys. Of course it was very scary, and very intimidating. The first thing I told them was, ‘Listen, I can’t be Ronnie. I’m gonna be me,’ and they said that’s what they wanted. And it worked out.”

Lynyrd Skynyrd 1991 was the band’s first studio album since Street Survivors and the first of a streak of new music that’s so far run through 2012’s Last of a Dyin’ Breed. Four years after that, Rossington and his wife made their own album, Take It on Faith, their first outing outside of Skynyrd since the Rossington Band’s second album, in 1988. Produced by David Z, the set featured an all-star lineup of players, including the late Richie Hayward of Little Feat fame, Delbert McClinton, Bekka Bramlett, Double Trouble keyboardist Reese Winans and others, as well as songs co-written by ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons.

“It was just spontaneous,” Rossington said shortly before its release. “It only took a couple of weeks of recordings and a few overdubs and we were done. I got to use my Dobro on a song, and then I actually took a few different guitars up there to play in Nashville. I didn’t use my Les Paul a lot – maybe on half of it. I tried to get some different kinds of sounds, to sound different than Skynyrd. It was such a fun thing to do.”

Rossington had already begun having heart problems by that time, and some Skynyrd dates had to be canceled during the previous year after he suffered a heart attack. But the guitarist had no interest in succumbing to those health issues and dialing down. “I just take every day on faith,” he said. “I guess when it’s my time, I’m ready. I’d rather be playing and living life up than… Like Neil Young said, it’s better to burn out than to fade away. I’d rather just burn out in the next 10 years than sit in a rocking chair and look at the trees blowing in the wind. It’s just in my blood, y’know?

“I’m just an old guitar player, and we’ve spent our whole lives and the 10,000 hours of working to understand how to play and do it. So I think once you’ve got something going for yourself, you should keep it up and keep your craft going. When you retire, what’s next? I like to fish, but how much of that can you do, right? So I want to keep doing what I do now.”

Krantz-Rossington agreed. ”After Gary’s [2015] problem, we really had a serious talk about just letting it go for now and being happy to be alive,” she says. “But after a few days, he was just miserable, and he said to me, ‘I would much rather go out kickin’ it than sitting here in my chair.’ And that was the last time we talked about it. After that we just decided to ask for God’s mercy and do it till we drop.”

“Gary was a trouper, man,” Medlocke adds. “The guy was a tough individual.” Even when Rossington was off the road, he and Van Zant consulted with him as an active part of the band’s leadership, reporting in from the road, going over set lists and other arrangements. Van Zant’s usual salutation was, “Captain Kirk? Spock calling,” while Medlocke would discuss their shared passion for The Andy Griffith Show and Gunsmoke reruns. “He was still part of the band, even if he wasn’t there,” Van Zant says.

Both Van Zant and Rossington himself had said there would be no Skynyrd without the guitarist, with Rossington predicting, “I think it’s gonna have to end when I’m gone – not that I’m so great, but because of all the legalities and stuff.” But less than a month after his passing, the band, along with Krantz-Rossington, issued a statement that Skynyrd would indeed continue, with the approval of all other interested parties.

“I’ve been here over 27 years now,” Medlocke, says. “I’ve been here to see quite a few members move on, pass away, and it doesn’t get any easier. We had been at a crossroads several times about whether to go on or whatever, and we had always maintained that it wasn’t about each individual or anything like that. It was about the music that was created by those guys – Ronnie, Gary, Allen. So we made the decision to carry on with the music because, bottom line, the music is what is important.”

Van Zant confesses that “my heart was so broken that I couldn’t imagine going on,” but other voices intervened. “Talking to the estates and various people and talking to fans, I’m like, ‘Oh God, yeah, they’re counting on me to carry this on.’ Y’know, what kept me going was calling [Rossington] and having these conversations. He was my cheerleader. So now I’m gonna have to remember his voice to keep my spirits up and keep me going.”

What lies ahead for Skynyrd is open-ended. Van Zant and Medlocke talk about finishing an album, which would include other songs Rossington co-wrote. But mostly they want to honor their last rebel as well as those that went before him. And they flip a big middle finger to those who would say they can’t.

“People have beat us up over the years: ‘Ah, you guys ain’t nothin’ but a freakin’ tribute band,’ and ‘blah, blah, blah,’” Medlocke says. “There’s a lot of Lynyrd Skynyrd tribute bands out there, but none of them holds it as dear to their hearts as the guys who have been there as long as we have. We have the history; I played on the first [recording] sessions. We just know that we have to portray the music with the integrity and the sound and the love as close as we can to when it was originally created. It’s only right.”

The following article originally appeared in Guitar Aficionado in 2012. 

Although he was born in 1977, Joe Bonamassa is already a seasoned blues veteran. Having traded licks onstage with B.B. King at the tender age of 12 he made his solo debut a decade later with the album A New Day Yesterday.

He was destined to be a guitar aficionado, growing up as he did behind the counter of his parents’ music shop in upstate New York, Bank Place Guitars. At 14, he received a $5,500 inheritance from his great-grandmother and used the windfall to acquire his first vintage instrument, a 1954 hard-tail Stratocaster, from a local seller.

“It had a few issues as a collector’s piece but certainly wasn’t a bad beginner guitar,” said Bonamassa. “But I wasn’t satisfied with just one old guitar. By my late teens I had vintage examples of all the classics: a 335, a Telecaster, and others.”

Bonamassa reflected on a period in the mid 2000s when his guitar buying became so frenetic that he often found himself purchasing an instrument, only to remember later that he already had one – or three – almost identical examples. “It got to be so gluttonous,” he recalled. “I’d be on tour in a place like Japan, jet-lagged and ready to start my day at four in the morning. No Starbucks would be open, so I’d just go to the website Gbase and throw something on the credit card.

“I ended up with all these guitars I didn’t even play – a bunch of old [ES-5] Switchmasters and ES-350s and even four Trini Lopezes – guitars that were killer to look at but not useful to me on the stage or in the studio. Finally, I just said, ‘Garage sale!’ and got rid of a ton of stuff.”

By 2012, Bonamassa had pruned his collection to a mere 90 guitars, half vintage instruments and half recent models, mostly Gibson Custom Shop guitars that “sound and play killer and look just like the originals, if you saw them from row G.”

At the heart of the collection was a trio of that most desirable of solidbodies, the sunburst Les Paul Standard, comprising two 1959s and a 1960 with a 1959 neck profile. But the stable also included less coveted pieces, such as a 1969 Grammer Johnny Cash flat-top acoustic.

“You’ve got to see this special guitar,” Bonamassa said as he bolted from the couch and disappeared into a laundry room. He returned with an old, heavily stickered case. “This one is so rare I just had to have it, even though I’m not much of an acoustic guy,” he said, nimbly fingerpicking a series of ninth and 13th chords. “Now everyone who plays it wants it. It sounds incredible and just seems to have a lot of songs in it.”

Another unobvious collector’s piece was Bonamassa’s 1972 Gibson ES-355TDC, its twin humbuckers bearing the embossed Gibson logo on their covers. The guitar hails from what many consider to be a dark period in the company’s design and quality control, but Bonamassa sought it out because of its similarity to the ax played by blues legend Freddie King.

“This was my first and only eBay purchase,” he said. “I ended up in a pitched battle to win it for $2,900 – a steal considering that these are harder to find than a ’59 Les Paul or even an original korina Flying V.”

Bonamassa directed us out of the courtyard and upstairs to a small room where he displayed a nice cross-section of his collection: the ES-355, along with a 1961 ES-335, a 1963 Gibson Firebird I, 1953 and 1954 blackguard Fender Telecasters, a 1955 hardtail Stratocaster, a 1932 Martin 0-17, and a 1970 Martin D-41.

A trio of brown cases – two Liftons and a Stone – were placed on the floor, each holding one of Bonamassa’s three ‘Bursts. The guitarist tenderly unlatched each case and revealed the guitars. Their gorgeous maple tops appeared faded into varying shades of scarlet and amber, and they glowed, as did their owner as he gazed upon them.

“I could’ve bought a house or these three-quarter-million-dollar guitars. I chose the guitars in a heartbeat. I love them. They’re like my children,” he said, with emotion.

His ‘Bursts at his feet, Bonamassa held forth on the subject of originality and his overall philosophy as a collector. “Refrets don’t bother me, but the pickup rings have gotta be right, the pickguard has gotta be right, and I’ve gotta open up that electronics cavity and see some vibrant original solder. I’ve seen some really good fakes out there, and it really bothers me. People are getting scammed for real money by guys who steal original parts to put on fake guitars. 

“I’m not a spiritual guy,” he continued, “but if you buy a guitar with a scratched-out serial number, chances are it was stolen at some point, and therefore it’s not good karma to play it. I find, on the other hand, that guitars with good histories don’t fight you. Somehow, they tend to stay in tune and play better. So all my guitars have got to be clean and honest. Playing wear is just fine, though.

“Check out the worming on the back of Principal Skinner,” he said, lifting his favorite ‘Burst from its case to show where the finish has succumbed to an oversized Seventies-era belt buckle. “Honest playing wear.” 

The ‘Burst triplets make an appearance on Driving Towards the Daylight, along with a handful of Bonamassa’s other vintage guitars. A collector in the best possible sense, he viewed his axes not as investments but as musical tools.

“I really pared things down for the recording sessions [for Driving Towards the Daylight]. I only used about 20 guitars, but they were the best guitars in the world – all the best examples for sure. At one point, I looked at them and thought, If I can’t get the job done with this, then I really need to stop buying guitars and just go home and practice.”

1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard (Serial: 9 0829)

“This one’s called Magellan, because it’s been around the globe with me – at least where it’s safe to travel with such an expensive instrument.

“Airline rule has it that if you want to carry onboard an expensive guitar, you must buy a seat for it. The good news is that they will serve both a ‘Burst and its owner a gin and tonic.”

1960 Gibson Les Paul Standard (Serial: 0 0137)

“I’m the third owner of this truly special ‘Burst, which was ordered in June of 1959 and delivered in August of that year. Although the stamp indicates that it was made in 1960, it’s obviously got all 1959 features.

“I sometimes call it Batman because of the weird winged bridge, a one-off. And I’m honored that Gibson Custom recreated the guitar in exacting detail as Collector’s Choice #3.” 

1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard (Serial: 9 1951)

“This guitar was originally known to the general public as the Skinner ‘Burst [after the auction house that sold it in 2006], but I have renamed it Principal Skinner.

“Killer in every way. This is the most rock Les Paul I own. Big flame equals big tone.”

1969 Grammer Johnny Cash

“This guitar has an unusual look – a grey-‘burst finish – which was apparently designed to look good with Johnny Cash’s black attire.

“It’s a rare bird with an incredible tone. Everyone who plays this guitar is surprised by the sound and wants to take it home.” 

1972 Gibson ES-355TDC

“This isn’t much of a collector’s piece, but Freddie King played one, and so I had to have one too.

“It’s all original, down to the embossed covers on the pickups, and extremely rare. Just try to find another from the same year.”

1932 Martin 0-17

“This 0-17 came from my repair guy in L.A. Someone who had inherited it from her grandmother had left it in the shop and forgotten about it, so I offered to give it a second life.

“It’s a really sweet-sounding little guitar.” 

Little nine-year-old Rick Zehringer, with wide lapels, slicked-back hair, and a bow tie, staring out of some mirror of the past facing his own future, would have been hard put to recognize the form he’s taken today as Rick Derringer – rock guitarist, songwriter, and producer for himself as well as for such luminaries as Johnny and Edgar Winter, the Osmond Brothers, Richie Havens, Steely Dan, Todd Rundgren, and even Alice Cooper. Squinting wouldn’t help young Zehringer recognize his new form. Little in his life is the same.

His audiences, for example. Rick, at nine, was strumming country-western ditties for the dozing town fathers of Fort Recovery, Ohio at their Kiwanis and Rotary Club luncheons. Today, nearly two decades later (he’s pushing 28 now), Derringer’s electrifying the whole world’s sons and daughters that storm the stages of rock and roll halls everywhere he goes.

Instruments, too, have come and gone. He’s owned everything from a three-pickup white Supro (“Now, that was a hot looking guitar!”) to a rare Explorer, which is the visual counterpart of the custom instrument he now uses on stage.

Today Derringer can hardly recall the titles from his parents’ large record collection, which he describes as “a lot of country-western records, just a lot of Fifties kind of music, not too much rock,” though the name Spike Jones sticks in his head. “Find all those old records,” he says, “and re-release them, and he’d probably be bigger than Frank Zappa. He’s funnier, more innocent.”

His influences have changed, as well. His first was an uncle in Michigan who played in bars - “a real vague kind of music, more in a real musical way than people learn how to play nowadays.” Rick’s musical drive was encouraged by his parents, who were willing to take him into bars to listen to the local guitarists. Today, though his primary interest is rock and roll, he tries to catch as many different kinds of acts as possible, including jazz, when it’s possible for him to track down such performers.

Perhaps this avidness is Rick’s most noticeably consistent quality. He’s always learned from everyone he could. “Every time I’d meet a guitar player,” he recalls, “I’d get him to show me something.” He took lessons from piano teachers, learned to read music (“not fantastically, but enough to get by”), and began buying records, more Top 40 than rhythm and blues (that came in later), since Top 40 was all that was on the radio. “And that, in the Midwest,” Derringer explains, “was a real mixture of Jerry Lee Lewis and ‘Pink Shoe Laces’ – it was all real commercial.”

When he was fifteen, he moved to Union City, Indiana, and expanded his musical skills by learning snare drums, tympani, and bass, while he was playing rhythm guitar in the high school swing band, which performed all the old, big band standards. During this time, the McCoys was formed, a trio that went through numerous changes of its own, alternately known as the McCoys, the Rick Z. Combo, Rick and the Raiders, and back again to the McCoys. One song, “Hang On Sloopy,” catapulted the group to fame (within a month after release, it was number one in almost every country in the world).

An up-and-down career kept the McCoys visible but a bit seasick, until Steve Paul made them house band for his club (the Scene), and the back-up band for Johnny Winter. To avoid further mispronunciation, misspelling, and misplacement, Zehringer changed his professional name to Derringer on the Johnny Winter And album. It’s stuck throughout his subsequent work with Edgar Winter, and is the name that appears on his own solo albums, the latest of which is Spring Fever (Blue Sky, PZ 33423).

What were your first guitars?

When I was about five years old I got a Stella acoustic guitar as a kind of a toy. I didn’t know that you could make music with it because I wasn’t really interested in it too much. My brother and I used to play with it a lot and paint our names on it, like country-western guys did. I must have been about eight when we finally culminated our whole experience with it by just crushing it and stomping on it, and breaking it into shreds. [laughs]

Right after that I realized that my uncle was a guitarist, and I got interested in playing the guitar myself. Then, for my ninth birthday, I got what I really consider my first guitar – a Harmony-ish kind of guitar. It didn’t really have a brand name on it, but it was an electric, one pickup, gold-painted guitar. [laughs]

And at the same time, I got a sleazy Gibson amp – I think it had one 12” speaker in it, an alligator kind of top, dark brown, and a tan bottom that had what’s called “aircraft covering.” Pretty good amp; I liked it. But it was great, because most parents, especially at that time before guitars were fads, for sure wouldn’t go out and get a brand-new electric guitar and electric amp.

I went through a lot of guitars. After I got that guitar, I learned everything I could about it. From then on, I was always trying to get a better guitar. I’ve always been a collector; zillions of guitars.

How is it that you got so turned-on to the guitar at age nine?

I’ve tried to figure that out a million times, but I can’t. All I know is one day I said, “Boy, what I want to do is play the guitar,” and my parents got it, and it was like total “into-it-ness.” Just instantaneous. That’s all I did.

Where did you get those first licks, off records?

Not at all. When I first started, I didn’t know you were supposed to learn specific licks. I didn’t know anything about that kind of stuff. I was just into learning how to play the guitar. It wasn’t a fad thing at all. In fact, it was very seldom heard as a solo instrument when I was nine. Electric guitars were just starting to become more of an “in” thing in rock and roll.

On the same day I got the guitar, my dad found out that a mechanic named Gene Fiely at Ford Garage in Fort Recovery, Ohio, where I lived at that time, played guitar. Gene was just exactly the way you’d picture a mechanic to be: Great, big, almost seven foot tall – great big huge guy with pock marks all over his face, but just the kindest, most gentle, jolly kind of great mechanic all the time. Dirt all over everywhere, in work clothes.

I went down to Gene Fiely's house and said, “I just got this guitar, and I know you don’t know me, but could you show me something on it?” So he showed me a big open G chord, and a D chord, showed me some ways to use them, some country song or something. I went home and played those chords, probably a thousand times at least that night, and went right back the next day to try to learn more. That’s basically how I got started, just learning chords.

Were there any musicians in your family?

I learned a lot from my uncle. But his style of playing was more of an old-fashioned chord style. He showed me whole songs, like “Liebestraum,” “Bye Bye Blues,” “Caravan,” and “Steel Guitar Rag.” But all those songs were never one-note things, like the vogue today. They were always chord songs, and so when I learned, I was always, for years and years, a kind of chord guitar player.

Once in a while a guitarist has to play a solo, but soloing was not why I got involved. It was to be a part of music. And that meant playing rhythm and chords, and I really considered myself – till now even – a rhythm guitar player.

What’s your studio and stage setup?

On stage, I use an Ampeg SVT amp with two four-twelve bottoms and Altec speakers.

Where do you set the tone and volume?

Volume about two o’clock. Tone: The treble with ultra-high on at about three-thirty, mid-range control in the middle position at twelve-thirty, and the bass control in the flat position at three o’clock. That won’t work for all guitars, because my guitar is a little brighter and a little louder than most.

What guitars are you using?

The ones I’m using on stage are made by Charlie LoBue at Guitar Lab [206 Thompson St., New York, NY].

I didn’t want to take the chance of getting my real Explorer stolen, so I asked Charlie to make one that was similar, hopefully even a little better. So an Explorer copy it’s not. An Explorer body style is what it is. It’s got 22 frets joining the body at the 19th, and Gibson Schaller machine heads. In other words, styled after Schallers, but Gibson made them.

And it uses humbucking pickups, which are like the Explorer’s, but these are old ones. In this case, they’re rewound with a little better gauge copper wire and supposedly a little better magnet. And then all twelve poles are bored out, and screws are inserted so that they can be raised as high to the strings as possible. That creates a real loud, good-sounding guitar.

It’s also got some binding where Explorers didn’t, and it’s made out of birch, which is a real hard, heavy wood, so it had to be a little smaller than the Explorer in thickness, but it’s got a little more treble.

This guitar’s also different because it has a Schaller bridge, which offers more travel for adjusting the intonation. I believe in keeping that intonation adjusted. I adjust it every time I change the strings, or at least I check it.

The controls happen real quick on this instrument, and it has more treble than any other Gibson I ever had. But at the same time you get more bass and more output from the hole right here [points at output plug]: A loud guitar, in other words.

Where do you put the guitar’s controls?

I have a certain place I start, but I only use this as a starting reference, so it doesn’t really pay to say what those numbers are. But usually I start out with full treble – the guitar I use on stage only has one tone control – and the two volume controls both on.

How do you record the guitar?

Usually an amp is the only way to go. Very rarely, I put it through the board for some special sound. I have a definite feeling about that. It doesn’t sound good to me through the board, unless it’s an acoustic instrument which sounds great through a mike only.

Do you write music out with chord symbols and music paper?

No, I have it easy. I just write down the words, and I remember everything else.

Is it difficult for you to relate to the acoustic guitar?

I don’t feel that learning how to play electric limits you from knowing how to play an acoustic guitar. To me, it’s a joke. There’s no comparison. I’ve always played guitar, the same guitar as an acoustic guitar; electric requires all the same skill, maybe more.

What method do you use to tune?

I use those electric tuners to get close, and then I tune with my ear, using various methods: Chords, harmonics, the old [plays E, A, D, G, B, E] guitar book method, just anything I can do to make sure it’s in tune. It’s all real important.

The guitar’s a strange instrument in that the height of the nut makes it play out of tune at the first fret, but if the intonation is adjusted exactly properly on the G string, for instance, it will play sharp at the A note. Almost nothing you can do about it. So, in order to make it play as in tune as possible all over the place, I found that I have to compensate a little bit make the G string just a little flatter intonation-wise than is perfect so the A won’t be too far sharp, and so that my D won’t be too flat – and that’s just the G string! [laughs]

To me it’s real important to be able to play in tune all over the instrument, and intonation plays a large part in that, the height of the strings and of the nut has something to do with it – all those things are real important. Because I like to have a guitar feel exactly the same all the way up, I have the nut maybe a touch higher than some people would. The action’s set up so that everything can sit on the body, and you’ll be in business.

That also helps these pickups do their job. It’s loud; this particular guitar [his stage guitar] is more of an “in-person” guitar just because it’s designed to get the most out of personal appearances.

What sort of strings are you using?

Ernie Ball Super Slinkies with an unwound third.

Any fret work done?

Yeah, I like big frets better than the little ones because they allow me to hold onto the strings if you bend them. On Fretless Wonder-style guitars, you can slide up and down the guitar, and play real fast, and all that fantastic stuff, but if you go to bend a string it’s a simple law: If you press on a thin string with a finger and nothing to bridge that string between, when it gets to where it pulls, it’s going to slide right out from under your finger.

So, if you give two poles – which is what the frets are – a little more height, that offers somewhere for the string to go in your finger – pushes the string into your finger and enables you to hold onto it, so that you can stretch it real far and real easy. It never slides out from under your fingers.

How often do you change your strings?

About every three shows, on the road. In the studio a string will last longer.

Do you ever use anything else on stage?

I have a real Explorer, and that’s a nice sounding guitar, and I have a Les Paul that I like a lot. It’s about a ’58 Sunburst, with all white humbuckers. Pretty one, not modified in any way. It’s got big frets on it. I’ve got these frets on everything.

I have a Gibson 355. It’s about a ’58, or ’59. Big frets come on those guitars naturally. [laughs] I have another guitar by Charlie LoBue that’s a Honduras mahogany version with no binding. It sounds a little more like a Les Paul, and it might be a little more ideally suited to the studio, even though it’s not quite as good as the other for the stage.

I have a Strat that I use in the studio, usually for a specific kind of Stratocaster-sounding thing.

Do you practice systematically?

Yeah, all kinds of stuff: Chromatic scales, a regular major scale, a whole-tone fifth scale, and just stuff to keep my fingers moving and loose, so they don’t freeze up on me.

Of course, a lot of times I learn solos note-for-note from records, and because of that I learn plenty of licks. I just try to use everything that I’ve heard, to come up with music that fits whatever I’m playing.

Do you ever work for an improvisational feel during performance?

A lot. But I feel that people would like to hear some solos like they hear them on the radio, so I just play the solos from hits exactly like they were, though I do try to play them as good as they can be played every night. Other than those few songs, when it comes to a solo, that is an improvisational section.

Where do you get your licks?

Probably it started out from chords – knowing a combination of those structures and patterns, then growing into scales, and then into a more correct knowledge of musical theory. I try all the time to go toward being totally fluent.

In other words, some people can create exactly what comes into their minds instantaneously with their voice. In my mind, the ideal point to get to on the guitar is where you don’t have to think about scales, keys, notes, harmonic structures, none of that stuff. You can just play music fluently. It’s a hard place to come to, but that’s what I’m trying to do.

Did you ever sit down and actually study theory?

Not too much. It always seemed like too much work for me. My teachers were usually piano teachers, and they really didn’t know much.

Did you listen to anyone in particular to learn?

Everyone in particular. Always, always. Every time I listen to a guitar, I’m in there listening for something that I’ll want to remember and play myself, or I’m listening for something that I’ll want to forget and stop playing.

What about your pick?

Right now I’m using these heavy, triangular-shaped ones made by Pastore [507 32nd St., Union City, NJ 07087]. On stage, for that extra rock and roll flair, I keep “zizzing” my strings with my pick [moves pick up neck from tailpiece towards nut]; and since the strings are rough, every time you ziz one real hard you grind down that pick, and the next time you start to play, it will actually catch and hold onto the string. So I just toss them out into the audience.

I have this piece of tape going clear across the top of my amp with these picks all lined up. [laughs] So it’s real slick: I can just toss one out there, reach over, and grab another one instantaneously.

How many do you use a night?

Ten or fifteen sometimes. At home or in the studio, unless I want to add one of those rock and roll zings – I don’t use as many. I can use one for a long time, as a matter of fact. At home and in the studio, I have favorite picks without the ziz marks in them, though they’ve been carefully crunched up by my teeth, [laughs] so that they have a rough edge that has been acquired over a long period of time, but that will not catch the string, and that also enables me to hold onto them a little better. They’re so carefully roughed, that sometimes if you use the wrong end, they give a real nice rough sound.

How do you hold your pick?

Thumb and first finger. The way they show you in the books. If I’m not on stage, I keep my hand on the bridge, so I can mute when I want real good control. On stage, when I want to be more of a showman than a guitarist, and I’m doing those Pete Townshend arm flails, my arm doesn’t actually rest on anything as much. But there is something to be gained by that, too. You can go faster.

Are you alternating your picking up and down?

Yeah, but not always anything. Not ever any kind of absolute. Always just whatever gets the sound that I’m particularly wanting to get at that time. And the sounds I want vary. Pick up on a string, it gives you a sound. You pick down, it gives you a sound. Play high, it’s a sound; play near the bridge, it’s another sound. There are a zillion different things. You can add all three fingers plus the pick. Really, “anything goes” is the way I play.

What about your left hand?

I use all four fingers – thumb, when it’s necessary, because lots of chords involve the thumb. I read a lot of times that you’re not supposed to use your thumb, but I feel that anything goes. Use your fingers for anything you need at all times.

I started out barely using my little finger at all, but eventually I got to the point where I had to start using my little finger more because I could play better using it.

You play slide?

Yeah, I play in standard open E tuning just like an open E chord. I use a metal bar on my little finger so I can play with my other fingers. I used to get them made at a plumbing shop because that was a heavier bar, and I could get exactly the size I wanted for my finger and have it polished down real nice. But they either always get lost or stolen, so right now I’m just using a bar like you get in a music store. Since they’re a little big for my finger, I put masking tape in the inside, so that it’s actually kind of form-fitted inside and allows my finger to bend a little.

Johnny [Winter] showed me a lot. To me, he’s one of the best exponents of the slide guitar. I played it a lot in the McCoys when we were travelling. One time, in fact, Johnny and I were with Duane Allman. I didn’t feel much a part of it. I felt, “Here I am, a young kid playing with these guys that have been into country blues all their lives,” but I was having fun playing along.

At one point Duane said, “By the way, I’ve been meaning to tell you. I came down when you were at the Image in Miami, and you were playing slide guitar on some song. I just wanted to tell you that you were the person at that time that made me think, ‘Wow, it’s amazing; that slide can make some real good rockin’ music.”

I thought this guy’d been interested in it all his life. But he said that I was one of the people who made him become more involved in slide guitar. I only used it on one lousy song, and here Duane is telling me all this, and he becomes real famous for slide guitar. It was great; I loved it.

How do you get your vibrato?

Where I was from and the music I played, people didn’t know much about bending strings. I hadn’t heard anything about Django Reinhardt records where he was bending them, so I just didn’t know anything about it, never learned about it. But eventually I learned, and realized that you could also do vibrato.

It was really hard for me to develop vibrato, because I’d never done it. Kids nowadays, that’s all they’ve heard. They pick up the guitar, and say, “I can’t play it, but I can try that vibrato,” so they know it from the beginning.

For a while, my vibrato was too fast. It’s hard to slow it down. I do it all different, never with the little finger. Always one of the first three. I bend down only if I’m playing one of the low strings, where I would run out of neck if I bent up.

What sort of pedals and devices do you use?

On stage, I use a Vox wah-wah and MXR Phaser. That’s it. In the studio, anything that I can find, and everything that I like. I go up to Manny’s [I56 W. 48th St., New York, NY I 0036] and find all the new gadgets and gimmicks for guitar. I try to discover one that sounds cool that maybe people haven’t heard much.

I like to try out all those things: Doublers, phasers, Leslie simulators, Tone Benders, and octave devices, and all those things with synthesizers. I have a Mu-Tron at home, speakers in bags. The one I have right now is the one that’s advertised as the [Heil] Joe Walsh talk box. I’ve used that on some of my records. As a matter of fact, I’ve used Joe Walsh’s. He loaned me his. It’s homemade, not one of those manufactured ones.

What other instruments are you playing?

I really enjoy playing bass. I see it as a totally separate instrument. I really like to keep it from sounding like a guitar as much as possible. To me, that’s the challenge: Playing it like a bass rather than a guitar. And it’s fun to do.

Do you ever just step on a pedal to beef up a solo?

I try not to, ever. I try not to feel like I’m playing less than inspired, though to me it’s kind of an ideology that you can never really truly play inspired, because a musician is a human being playing something that comes from somewhere.

But inspiration is the idea we like to work towards, so I’m always trying to play at my utmost and as inspired as possible. That’s the whole challenge in being a guitar player. Every time I play on stage or on records or just fooling around, I’m trying to play and learn and do it well, be happy about it, have fun doing it, and not ever feel bored or like it’s a job, or staid, or any of those kind of words.

Do you think you’ll be playing guitar thirty years from now?

My personal goal is just to make the next thirty years, or the next fifty or ninety years, and to make them as long and as happy as possible along the way. I like to play the guitar. I’d like to continue doing that as long as I can.

I admire people like Picasso especially, because he’s a man who was really doing something he liked all his life, and even though he must have had hard times like everybody, he stayed very active, stayed very free and happy and with a youthful spirit, enjoying life as much as possible till the day he died.

And that’s the kind of person I’d like to be. I’d play the guitar; I’d like to keep learning and working at it and doing as well as I can forever, with the same kind of youthful spirit about it and energy and enthusiasm that I had the day I got my first instrument.

Was there an abrupt change in your musical growth after “Hang On Sloopy,” when you started touring?

No, in fact I think touring is one of the ways you actually get better at playing the guitar – at least with me. Before “Hang On Sloopy,” there was always the temptation to play music that didn’t really develop me or my dexterity as a musician.

At home, I have a tendency to play real simple music or just music that I like that I may have played before many times, not necessarily trying to get a lot better or improve my dexterity. But on the road, it’s a different kind of thing. You’re on stage trying to impress people as well as play good music.

Every time I go out on the road, I feel that my dexterity improves a lot, and as a result my way of thinking about music is improved, because whatever comes into my head as a human being I feel other humans would like. It’s much easier for me to get that out and get to those other human beings because my dexterity has improved.

I look at playing on the road as real good practice. Even though I might only pick up the guitar a couple of times a day for ten minutes each time, that night I’m going to have to go out for an hour and a half and play real good.

My whole way of playing on stage is trying to play better than I did the night before. If you’ve done a song enough times so that you don’t have to worry about remembering it, a framework is established, and you can just use that song as a vehicle to create, because you’re playing something you know so well that you have the time to consider new things to do with it.

Do you have advice for guitarists just starting out?

If you want to play guitar, it isn’t something that comes overnight. We’ve been talking about nineteen years of a whole lot of different stuff, and I’m still trying to get better and explore new regions that I hadn’t even thought about. It’s not something where you just pick up a guitar and think, “Well, I’ll just learn six solos, and I’ll know six songs.” You can do that, but that doesn’t necessarily make you a guitarist. It makes you a guy that can play six solos. But if you want to be a guitarist, it takes a long time and a lot of work.

The following appeared in the November 2020 issue of Guitar Player.

Mick Taylor’s 1958 Les Paul Standard isn’t the most famous example of that model, but as the ’Burst that Charlie Watts is holding aloft on the cover of Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out!, it’s one of the most seen.

Taylor revealed that the guitar had an aftermarket Bigsby B7 vibrato when he purchased it, but he fitted the guitar with a factory-stock nickel-plated stop tailpiece, which is how it appeared during his tenure in the Rolling Stones, from 1969 to 1974.

The guitar had its original Kluson keystone tuners at the time, but these were later changed out for Grovers.

As it happens, that isn’t the only modification Taylor made. Apparently, he swapped out its double-black PAF pickups at some point.

The guitar, which is now one of many Stones guitars in the collection of Hard Rock International, has been thoroughly inspected by Hard Rock guitar tech Kip Elder, who confirms the pickups currently in the guitar are not original.

“We got a 10.2k-ohm reading for the bridge pickup, which typically registers about 8.5k,” he told VintageGuitar.com.

The guitar was frequently confused with the 1959 Keith ’Burst over the years, but Elder confirms that the first digit of its serial number is an eight.

Taylor played the guitar at the Stones’ Altamont Speedway concert on December 6 and can be seen performing with it in a video for “Love in Vain,” from the group’s 1972 tour. (It can easily be identified by the screw holes left from the Bigsby.)

Taylor still owned the guitar when Guitar Player interviewed him in the early 1980s, but Jeff Nolan, Hard Rock’s director of memorabilia, says the company purchased it from him around that time.

The finish has faded to a beautiful lemon ’burst since the guitar’s heyday, but as Nolan attests, “It’s an absolutely gorgeous example. I see so many ’Bursts in my job that I wanted to dislike this guitar. But it’s so, so good.

“It’s incredibly resonant, and the action is still perfect, even after all these years of not being in use.”

Keith Richards may not be renowned for the liquid blues improvisations that so many Les Paul players can boast, but he was unquestionably the first British rock star to embrace the then-discontinued Gibson solidbody.

Richards was first seen using his ’Burst in 1964 on the Rolling Stones’ second U.S. tour.

More Les Pauls were added to his arsenal during the decade, only to be replaced with Telecasters in the 1970s, once he was fully into his bluesier style.

Richards bought this 1959 ’Burst second-hand in London, in the latter part of August 1964. “It was my first touch with a really great, classic rock and roll electric guitar, so I fell in love with them for a while,” he told Guitar magazine in 1997.

The original owner, John Bowen, purchased the guitar – serial number 93182 – new in 1961 and had it fitted with an aftermarket Bigsby vibrato.

The guitar is easily identified by dark figuring near the cutaway on the top’s lower bout.

Jimmy Page was photographed with the guitar at a session for Stones manager/producer Andrew Loog Oldham, either checking it out or using it for the recording.

Likewise, Eric Clapton borrowed the ’Burst when Cream played at the 1966 Windsor Jazz & Blues Festival.

These appearances led some to speculate, erroneously, that the guitar had been owned by all three men.

Richards parted with the ’Burst in 1967, when he sold it to future Stones guitarist Mick Taylor, then performing with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers.

The guitar re-entered the Stones’ world in 1969 when Taylor joined up, and it appeared on the 1969 American tour, where it was used for slide work, tuned to open G for “Honky Tonk Women” and open D for “Street Fighting Man.”

The guitar was among the haul of instruments stolen during the making of the Rolling Stones' 1972 album, Exile on Main St. Thieves took several guitars owned by Richards, Taylor and bassist Bill Wyman after Richards failed to pay drug dealers for the heroin being consumed at Nellcôte, the French villa where Exile was recorded.

The New York Post reported in July 2025 that the guitar has shown up in a collection of vintage guitars gifted to New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art in May 2025.

In 1974, Jeff Beck found himself in a repeating cycle that rivaled the predicament of Bill Murray’s character, Phil, in the movie Groundhog Day.

After being booted from the Yardbirds in late November 1966, Beck formed three different bands – two iterations of the Jeff Beck Group, and the power trio Beck, Bogert & Appice – that enjoyed moderate popularity primarily as touring acts.

But no matter how much Beck varied his approach with the three bands, the outcome was always the same. Each managed to release two albums (in BBA’s instance a studio and a live album), but none of those records delivered any hits, and commercial success remained elusive.

All three groups lasted only a few years before Beck became frustrated or disinterested in the projects and moved on. Work on the second Beck, Bogert & Appice studio album began in January 1974, but that May, Beck pulled the plug before it was completed and disbanded the group.

The guitarist had grown tired of recycling the same old blues-rock riffs and licks he’d been playing for most of his career, and realized that he needed to make a radical shift in direction, if only to preserve his own sanity.

The music that excited him the most during this period came from the burgeoning jazz-rock fusion movement, and he soon found himself pulled in that direction. Following his fusion muse, Beck recorded Blow by Blow, his first entirely instrumental solo album, which was released in March 1975.

To Beck, his journey into jazz-rock fusion made perfect sense as he considered it a logical progression of rock music. “A handful of tapes knock me out,” he said in the November 1975 issue of Guitar Player, “things like Billy Cobham, Stanley Clarke – all the great rock and rollers. I call Billy Cobham a rock and roller because he’s so forceful. Rock’s an energy to me. It’s more complex now than it was, but it’s rock just the same.”

In addition to Cobham and Clarke, Beck was highly impressed with the work of his good friend guitarist John McLaughlin and his band, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, particularly their recently released album Apocalypse. Indeed, Beck’s decision to hire George Martin to produce Blow by Blow was influenced almost entirely by Martin’s work on that album, and not the producer’s legendary work only a few years earlier with the Beatles.

Beck entered London’s AIR Studios in October 1974 accompanied by keyboardist Max Middleton, his former bandmate in the second version of the Jeff Beck Group, and session players Phil Chen on bass and Richard Bailey on drums. Stevie Wonder, in addition to writing two songs Beck covered on the album – “Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers” and “Thelonius” – played clavinet on the latter.

“Blow by Blow marked an important change in my life,” Beck said in 1999. “I was exploring an entirely different direction, but it came together almost by accident. I always fed off of singers or guitar riffs before, but Max Middleton kept throwing these beautiful chords at me, and Stevie Wonder had come up with some beautiful melodies, so I had no choice but to follow them. It was like starting all over again, like I had never played the guitar before.”

Although Blow by Blow is hailed by many as a jazz-rock fusion classic, only a handful of songs on the album truly fit that description: “Freeway Jam,” “Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers” and the orchestral string section-accompanied songs that close each side of the album, “Scatterbrain” and “Diamond Dust.”

Jazz-funk fusion is a more accurate description, as funk plays a prominent role on most of the album, particularly Beck’s rhythm playing on “You Know What I Mean,” with its obvious nod to Jimmy Nolen’s scratchy chords on James Brown’s “Sex Machine,” Wonder’s low-down and dirty clavinet on “Thelonius,” and the relentless syncopated grooves of “Constipated Duck” and “Air Blower.”

With its reggae-inspired feel, the instrumental cover of the Beatles “She’s a Woman” is a bit of an outlier, but Beck’s expressive phrasing makes it fit in.

The funky feel of Blow by Blow was inspired by another often overlooked source, the band Upp, which Beck discovered in June 1973 while rehearsing for his appearance at David Bowie’s Hammersmith Odeon farewell concert.

When Beck heard the band jamming to some James Brown grooves in an adjacent room, he “kicked the door open” and introduced himself. Over the next year, he produced and played guitar on the band’s debut album, although his name didn’t appear in the credits.

Beck’s involvement with Upp became public knowledge when he performed with the band on the BBC’s Five Faces of the Guitar special recorded in August 1974 and broadcast the following month, only a few weeks before he started recording Blow by Blow.

The arrangement he performed of “She’s a Woman” is almost identical to that heard on the album, with the exception of the absence of Middleton’s keyboards. The gear that he used for the BBC broadcast – including his modified 1954 “Oxblood” Gibson Les Paul, an Ampeg VT-40 combo amp, Colorsound Overdriver, Cry Baby wah, ZB Custom volume pedal and Kustom “The Bag” talk box – was likely the main rig Beck played on the album.

He also used two Stratocasters – an early ’70s Olympic White model and one with a stripped-finish early ’60s body and mid-’70s rosewood neck – and his “Tele-Gib” 1959 Telecaster with two PAF humbuckers installed by Seymour Duncan, most famously employed for the Roy Buchanan-inspired performance of “Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers.”

Three singles from the album – “Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers,” “She’s a Woman” and “You Know What I Mean”– were released in Japan, the U.K. and the U.S., respectively, but all three failed to chart. However, the first two songs, along with “Freeway Jam,” received frequent airplay on FM radio, which helped the album quickly climb to a peak position of number four on the Billboard album chart and achieve RIAA Gold certification.

More than 10 years later, in 1986, Blow by Blow was certified Platinum.

By following his heart instead of prevailing trends, Beck was unexpectedly rewarded with his most commercially successful album ever. But Blow by Blow’s success was much bigger than sales figures. It earned him a new level of respect from his peers, fans and critics, and gave him more creative freedom to express himself with his guitar as the focal point instead of as an accompaniment to a vocalist.

Beck knew that Blow by Blow was going to be a hard act to follow, but it also wasn’t a fluke. Perhaps to absorb even more inspiration from John McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra, he went on a co-headlining tour in 1975, where Beck’s band – featuring Middleton, drummer Bernard Purdie and bassist Wilbur Bascomb – and McLaughlin’s latest outfit traded opening slots.

Beck gained more than musical ideas from the venture as McLaughlin gave Beck an early ’60s Olympic White Stratocaster that was an upgrade from the ’70s model Beck had been playing for several years.

A nice Strat wasn’t all that Beck got from McLaughlin. When the Mahavishnu Orchestra broke up shortly after completing the Inner Worlds album, Beck poached drummer Narada Michael Walden to play on the sessions for his follow-up to Blow by Blow, replacing Richard Bailey who had already recorded two tracks – “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat” and “Head for Backstage Pass.”

Walden’s songwriting skills were as adept as his drumming, and he contributed four songs to the album later titled Wired – “Come Dancing,” “Sophie,” “Play With Me” and “Love Is Green” – and played piano on the latter.

Former Mahavishnu keyboardist Jan Hammer, who left the band in December 1973, also joined the sessions a few months after they initially got underway. In addition to Mahavishnu, Hammer had previously played on Billy Cobham’s Spectrum and Stanley Clarke’s eponymous sophomore solo album, so landing a musician who was heavily involved with all three of the artists Beck appreciated the most during that era was a major triumph. Hammer’s guitar-like synth lines profoundly inspired Beck’s tone and phrasing.

“[Jan Hammer] gave me a new, exciting look into the future,” Beck told Guitar Player in a 1975 interview after the release of Blow by Blow, but before he joined forces with the keyboardist. “He plays the Moog a lot like a guitar, and his sounds went straight into me. So I started playing like him. I didn’t sound like him, but his phrases influenced me immensely.”

“We were very, very similar, even though we were coming from opposite ends of the musical universe,” Hammer said in a 2020 interview. “He was a rock icon, a rock and roll giant, and I was a pretty well-known modern-jazz musician, but I was trying to get more into rock and he was trying to get more into jazz. We met right in the middle. That’s why our collaboration worked so well.”

George Martin returned once again to produce Wired, but this time around he saw no need to add flourishes like orchestral strings and instead let the band’s performances and arrangements stand on their own. Most of the songs were recorded with musicians playing together live in the studio, recording multiple takes until Beck and Martin were satisfied with the performances and arrangement.

However, Beck repeatedly second-guessed his own work throughout the project. “I was never happy with the solo on ‘Goodbye Pork Pie Hat,’ the Mingus tune,” Beck told Rolling Stone. “I rang George up and said, ‘I’ve got a great idea to modulate that,’ and he said, ‘The album’s been out for two weeks!’ That’s how loose things were back then.”

Martin produced the entire Wired album with the exception of the song “Blue Wind.” That track was recorded at Hammer’s studio in upstate New York over a period of about a week when Beck traveled there to talk the keyboardist into working on the album. Beck and Hammer performed dueling solos throughout the song, and Hammer provided all of the accompaniment, including the driving bass line and drums.

Wired was decidedly heavier than Blow by Blow, with Max Middleton’s riff-driven homage to Led Zeppelin, “Led Boots,” kicking off the album, and most of the songs having faster tempos and more aggressive arrangements. This time around, the funk elements, while still present, were toned down and less prominent.

Beck’s version of the Charles Mingus composition “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat” was a bona fide jazz performance, although his bluesy, slow-tempo approach was more obviously inspired by the acoustic version John McLaughlin recorded in 1971 than the original 1959 Mingus recording. As a result, Wired was more of a true jazz-rock fusion effort than its predecessor, and it inspired the sound and dynamics of numerous jazz-rock albums that came out afterward in the late ’70s.

Although Wired did not enjoy the same level of commercial success as Blow by Blow, reaching a peak position of number 16 on the Billboard album chart, it sold well and earned Platinum certification. More importantly, Wired proved that Blow by Blow’s success was not a fluke, and the one-two punch of those stellar efforts established Beck’s status as one of the world’s greatest guitarists – a standing that endured throughout his career.

His previous work with the Yardbirds was certainly revolutionary, but his foray into jazz-rock fusion delivered performances that were more timeless and lasting, earning him both lifelong fans and well-deserved respect for his tone, touch and taste.

American guitar makers’ collaborations with major retailers have occasionally resulted in some gems with staying power beyond their original “exclusive-to” intentions. The Gibson USA Les Paul Traditional Pro V is just such a guitar.

Offered exclusively for several years by Gibson and Guitar Center, it has been updated for 2023 with two sumptuous new finishes: Transparent Ebony Burst over a flame-maple top (as reviewed here), and a satin Desert Burst on a plain maple top. Otherwise, it retains the raft of hot-rod features that make it a superbly versatile performer.

Outwardly, it appears to be a dead-standard Les Paul, and given guitarists’ famously traditional leanings, that’s clearly the idea. But scratch the surface and just about every component hides a notable modification that takes this modern ’Burst’s capabilities way beyond the ordinary.

Construction follows the traditional Les Paul template, featuring a solid mahogany body capped with a carved flame-maple top, a glued-in mahogany neck, and a bound 22-fret rosewood fingerboard, all to a 24.75-inch scale length.

But even these basic specs hide several unseen alterations.

The fingerboard sports a compound radius that flattens out gradually as you progress toward the body, and the neck back is carved to an asymmetrical update of the traditional SlimTaper neck profile, resulting in slightly more depth front-to-back at the bass side of the carve and helping it fit the curve of the hand a little better.

Finally, the body has been weight relieved with nine large, round holes drilled into the mahogany before the top is glued on. Even so, it leans a tad on the heavy side at a shade under 10 pounds, although we’d have considered this a light one back in the ’70s or ’80s, so I guess it’s all a matter of perspective.

Close examination reveals that Gibson USA’s construction is generally excellent. There’s just a tiny bit of ledge where the top binding meets the body and some barely perceptible orange peel at the back of the neck heel, where the nitro has rippled in the wood grain, but the finish is well shot otherwise and particularly stunning where the Transparent Ebony Burst reveals some beautifully figured maple in the guitar’s top.

For another entry in the tasty timber department, the rosewood fretboard on this example is an appealing dark-chocolate brown, with some lovely subtle striping in the grain.

As for general ergonomics, the guitar plays smoothly right out of the case, benefiting from a confident setup that delivers easy action and accurate intonation right up the neck. It boasts a lively, resonant ring when played unplugged, too.

Down at the body end, the hardware includes an aluminum stopbar tailpiece behind a Nashville Tune-o-matic bridge. The headstock carries locking Grover tulip-button tuners and a “Trad Pro V” engraved truss-rod cover beneath the inlaid pearl Gibson logo and stenciled “Les Paul Model” signature.

I also like the slightly larger strap buttons, compared to the tiny vintage-spec buttons, whose use always puzzled me, given that this is one of the guitars more likely to suffer a headstock break when dropped.

Alongside the modifications to vintage spec, the pickups and electronics are the Les Paul Traditional Pro V’s biggest bragging rights. The open zebra-coil humbuckers in this model are Gibson’s Tradbuckers, made to the traditional PAF formula, with offset coils that are also a little underwound in the neck position and slightly overwound in the bridge (resistance-wise, that translates to 7.49k ohms and 8.44k ohms, respectively).

Each carries an Alnico V bar magnet and has four-conductor wiring to enable a plethora of switching options. And switching options there are! Push-pull switches on every volume and tone potentiometer are further enhanced by a block of five DIP switches housed within the control cavity.

Comprising Gibson’s HP-4 High Performance Circuit, they offer – depending on DIP positions – tap or split of each pickup, out-of-phase (with the neck tone up), and outer coils or inner coils for the split (with the bridge tone up or down), respectively. DIP switches three and four determine whether each pickup’s volume control has its high-pass filter engaged (to retain treble when rolled down), while the fifth DIP switch enables a Transient Suppression circuit when on.

Developed by GP contributor Craig Anderton, this circuit (which is in the public domain) reduces the signal peaks somewhat like a compressor or limiter and is particularly useful when recording direct into digital interfaces to help avoid nasty clipping in the AD conversion.

Tested through a 1966 Fender Princeton combo and a 65amps London tube amp head and 2x12 cab, the Les Paul Traditional Pro V revealed a chameleon-like sonic personality couched in a bevy of classic Les Paul tones that easily justify the Traditional part of its name.

First and foremost, this is a solid, muscular Les Paul in the grand style: Chunky rhythm, singing lead tones and a beefy yet articulate voice are all front and center, so the Traditional Pro V can easily be aimed at anything you’d have used a more “standard” Standard for in the past. As such, it was a lot of fun just getting lost in the riffing, the way these electric guitars have always inspired me to do, particularly with a Friedman Smallbox MIAB overdrive pedal into the London rig for some Plexi-like graunch.

Start messing with the switching options and the sky’s the limit for tone-crafting. I was pretty good at math back in the day and still don’t have time to run the numbers on the sonic options available here, nor space to describe them all. Having played through most major combinations, though, it was easy to hear what a boon this could be to your recording efforts in particular, while a couple of alternatives could certainly benefit live use.

For me, however, the plethora of variables also presented a potential downside when I wanted to just keep playing and not have to wonder, But what if I popped out this knob and flicked this DIP switch? But that’s a “me” problem, as they say.

All in all, Gibson’s latest Les Paul Traditional Pro V is a solid performer in the dual-humbucker, single-cutaway set-neck tradition and a very flexible tone crafter. And undoubtedly, that’s sure to excite a lot of eager players.

SPECIFICATIONS

• NUT: GraphTech NuBone, 1 11/16” wide
• NECK: Mahogany, asymmetrical SlimTaper profile
• FRETBOARD: Rosewood, 24.75” scale, compound radius
• FRETS: 22 modern
• TUNERS: Grover locking
• BODY: Weight-relieved mahogany with carved flame-maple top
• BRIDGE: Nashville Tune-o-matic with aluminum stopbar tailpiece
• PICKUPS: Two Gibson Tradbuckers
• CONTROLS: Volume and tone for each pickup, push-pull switching on each plus five DIP switches for split/tapped, out of phase, individual high-pass filter on/off, and transient suppression
• FACTORY STRINGS: Gibson .010–.046
• WEIGHT: 9.8 lbs
• BUILT: USA

Visit Guitar Center for more information.

In 1990, the most extraordinary thing happened. In the midst of the death throes of hair metal and the birth of grunge, former Thin Lizzy guitarist Gary Moore released an album that caught everyone by surprise and took the charts by storm.

The album was Still Got the Blues, a glossy set of originals and covers and, as declared by the title, a very blues-based piece of work.

“I did Still Got the Blues when I was 37 years old, and I went back to the music that I always loved,” Moore explained to Classic Rock in 2007. “It wasn’t commercial, it wasn’t cool. And nobody in a million years could have predicted how successful it became.”

Moore was a guy from Belfast who had a couple of stints in Thin Lizzy but whose blues influences underpinned his playing rather than directly informed it.

He’d first come to attention in the 1970s with a blues-rock band called Skid Row, but it certainly wasn’t what was expected from him at the turn of the ’90s.

It’s not surprising Moore became fascinated with blues-based music. “There was a great blues scene in Belfast,” he said. “All these guitar players used to come up from Cork, like Rory Gallagher. And then we heard about British blues.”

Indeed, it wasn’t the post-war Mississippi Delta musicians who were influencing Moore’s guitar playing. “I mean, I’d heard the name Robert Johnson,” he said, “but the acoustic blues didn’t mean anything to me at all.

“It wasn’t even so much the song and lyrics at first; it was all about the emotion of the electric guitar.”

And that’s really where it all began for the young guitar hero, in particular with John Mayall’s 1966 album, Bluesbreakers With Eric Clapton. “That album was a real turning point for me,” Moore recalled. “That was the stuff I really knew about. My friend had the album, and I spent all my time around his house. I was very passionate about this new sound.

“I took the guy’s album and I ruined it by playing it over and over. I came home from school and learned all the sounds, and learned all the songs note for note. I could just relate to it somehow.”

The fact that Clapton was creating those sounds had a tremendous impact on Moore, not only with respect to his playing but also in his choice of instrument.

“The first time I heard Clapton play guitar, it changed my life,” Moore said. “I was already learning to play, but something very profound happened when I heard that record. Within two seconds of the opening track, I was blown away.”

Moore adopted a Gibson Les Paul as his weapon of choice – a decision influenced as much by Clapton as by his other blues hero, Fleetwood Mac’s Peter Green – and after a self-imposed apprenticeship with Clapton began to discover the old-school blues players for himself.

But by using Clapton and Green as a key influence, Moore took their blues essence and injected it with a high-octane fire that would go on to characterize his playing with Thin Lizzy, where melody is fused with traditional blues lines.

He was even more impressive onstage, where the passion was visible in his performance.

“That’s the thing with the blues,” he said. “Even if you’re playing the rock stuff, it instills a sense of emotion into you, and into your playing.”

Sadly, Moore died of a heart attack on February 6, 2011, at the age of just 58.

Order Still Got the Blues by Gary Moore here.