The 100 Most Iconic Guitars of All Time: Complete List Revealed (2024)

• Johnny Thunders - ca. 1959 Les Paul Junior TV Model

  The band was the New York Dolls. The attitude was punk rock. And the color was TV Yellow — which guitar manufacturer Gibson at one point marketed for budding rock stars to stand out on black-and-white broadcasts. “Me and Johnny Thunders basically put the Les Paul Junior on the map,” the Dolls’ other guitarist, Sylvain Sylvain, said in 2009. “It was the perfect guitar for the New York Dolls because it was stripped down — like the band was and like our songs were.” Guitar World called the circa-1959 Junior “minimal, direct and cut-through with the essence of rock ’n’ roll – basically the blueprint for Thunders’ own ethos.”

  Talk of the Town: “I lusted after his TV yellow Les Paul Junior,” The Cult’s Billy Duffy told Guitar World. “I finally picked up my own Les Paul Junior in 1979, though it was a wine red one. I couldn’t find a yellow one in England at that time.”

  On Display: The Punk Rock Museum in Las Vegas has shown Thunders’ guitar for several years. – STEVE KNOPPER

• Brittany Howard - 1961 Gibson Les Paul SG Custom

  Howard never used to like Les Pauls, which she found heavy and unfamiliar, until she borrowed an SG from Heath Fogg, the guitarist from her band Alabama Shakes. She eventually found her own, a 1961 Gibson Les Paul SG Custom in Inverness Green. It’s battered but beautiful — a reissue from the early ‘80s, she has suggested — with three pickups. Howard soon had a collection of SGs (at least five, at one point), which she has been known to play through Orange amps, which offer a warmer, vintage-y sound. She played the SG during the Alabama Shakes’ star-making appearance on Saturday Night Live in 2013.

  Strange But True: The SG (short for “solid guitar”) was popularized by blues legend Sister Rosetta Tharpe, who played a white one. Howard inducted Tharpe into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2018.

  Six-String Stories: “My number one thing for my guitar techs is: Do not clean the pickups,” Howard told The Guardian in 2020. “I like the sound of pickups that are worn down and kind of degraded – it’s just more interesting-sounding. That is why my SG is so unique, because of how the pickups were wound, and how long it has been since they were cleaned up.” – ALLISON STEWART

• John Mayer - PRS Silver Sky

  When PRS Guitars and John Mayer introduced their first collaborative model in 2018, it was something that looked familiar — and also alien — to the guitar community. Combining a Strat-like body (or “S-style,” as they say in the business) with PRS’ sleek, more contemporary aesthetic, the Silver Sky, like Mayer himself, immediately became a hot-button topic amongst purists and newer players alike. The fact that Mayer had spent much of his career as a staunch Strat man only added to the curiosity of why he had opted to develop the instrument with PRS. His explanation? His desire to make a guitar that was “sort of the future of the classic design.” Just a few years later, it’s one of the more popular signature models on the market.

  Shop Talk: According to Mayer, the Silver Sky’s initial finishes were inspired by Tesla car colors. “If you look at materials that were available in the 1950s and ’60s, they’re still being used all the time, only for guitars,” he said in a Guitar Center video. “Things that are sunburst, things that are mother-of-pearl. I wanted to really move it more into this modern period of Tesla, Apple, Leica.”

  Specs: Alder body, 25.5 scale length, maple neck with 635JM fretboard shape, trio of 635JM single-coil pickups, “reverse” PRS trademark headstock shape

  Sound Decision: The “635” designation in the custom-designed pickups is believed to reference the fact that tonally they sound somewhere in between Mayer’s favored 1963-1964-era Strats, hence “63.5.” – RICHARD BIENSTOCK

• Adam Jones - 1979 Gibson Les Paul Custom “Silverburst”

  The Gibson Les Paul has several famous finishes, among them the red-orange-yellow Sunburst and the elegant ebony that adorns the “Black Beauty” model. Thanks to Tool guitarist Adam Jones, the considerably rarer Silverburst has now joined the ranks of coveted LP colorways. Reportedly conceived to commemorate the Les Paul’s silver anniversary in 1979, and initially produced only from 1978 until 1982, the Silverburst seemed lost to history until Jones made a ’79 Les Paul Custom in the unique finish – a silver center giving way to darker hues around the body’s border, with the silver taking on a greenish hue over time due to nitrocellulose lacquer aging – his main guitar with Tool. Its stunning appearance, combined with Tool’s fervid fanbase, led Gibson to partner with Jones on a period-correct Custom Shop recreation, and eventually a full line of Jones-inspired Silverburst models.

  Rarity Factor: Between just 150 and 200 Silverbursts were reportedly produced during the model’s original run. Jones has stated he owns six of these, including two 1979 examples.

  Strange But True: Gibson originally employed metal-flake paint for the finish, and Jones has said he believes the “particular metallic paint does something to the tone or the resonance or the polarity” of the instrument.

  Signature Style: Gibson sister brand Epiphone unveiled the Adam Jones Art Collection in 2024, featuring seven Silverburst models emblazoned with artwork from some of the Jones’ favorite visual artists, among them fantasy legend Frank Frazetta and pop-surrealist Mark Ryden. – R. BIENSTOCK

• Jimmy Page - 1959 Telecaster “Dragon”

  Like any mythical beast, Jimmy Page’s dragon-painted 1959 Telecaster boasts an epic backstory. Used almost exclusively on Led Zeppelin’s debut album and for the solo on “Stairway to Heaven,” this guitar’s origins trace back to Jeff Beck. Beck, who used it on such Yardbirds hits like “Shapes of Things” and “Heart Full of Soul,” gifted it to Page in 1965 as a token of esteem. Originally featuring a White Blonde finish, maple neck and slab rosewood fingerboard, Page initially personalized it by adding eight circular mirrors to the body. Shortly after, he stripped the finish and repainted it himself, creating a psychedelic dragon in a vaguely Japanese style. “I painted it in one go over the course of an evening, finishing it the next day,” Page said in his autobiography, Jimmy Page: The Anthology. “Once it was created and painted, it became like the legendary Excalibur.”

  Specs: Page replaced the Telecaster’s original black pickguard with a transparent acrylic one, inserting a sheet of diffraction grating film to create a spectrum of colors when hit by light.

  Retirement Party: In 1969, Page switched from the Telecaster to a Les Paul because the Tele’s single-coil pickup caused it to squeal at the volumes needed for live performances in bigger concert halls. – BRAD TOLINSKI

• Lzzy Hale - Gibson Explorer

  

  The Gibson Explorer’s angular shape was seen as futuristic when it debuted in the late ‘50s, but by the time Halestorm lead singer and guitarist Lzzy Hale began rocking out with the model onstage, it was deliciously retro, evoking the ‘80s metal bands she grew up idolizing. From her signature Epiphone Explorer with an “Alpine White” finish to her Gibson Explorerbird that rocks a “Cardinal Red” colorway, Hale is, in turn, converting a new generation of shredders to the hard-rocking church of the Explorer.

  As Seen On: Hale flaunts her Alpine White Explorer in the music videos “Freak Like Me” and “The Steeple,” both of which are Billboard Mainstream Rock Airplays No. 1s.

  Six-String Stories: “That’s pretty much my go-to guitar,” Hale told Harmony Central of her white Explorer in 2018. “Honestly, that guitar, I don’t know what voodoo happened with that one, but it works in any situation.” — JOE LYNCH

• Rory Gallagher - 1961 Fender Stratocaster

  Rumored to be the first Fender Stratocaster to grace Ireland, its original owner, Jim Conlon, had ordered a red Stratocaster from the U.S. but received this sunburst model by mistake. When the intended red Strat finally arrived six months later, Conlon sold the sunburst model, which was promptly snapped up by Gallagher for just £100 in 1963.

  For the next three decades, this guitar was a central piece of Gallagher’s career until his untimely death in 1995 at age 47. Over the years, the guitar’s finish was nearly stripped away, which Gallagher’s brother attributes to Rory’s highly acidic sweat, which aged the paintwork prematurely.

  Strange But True: Dublin’s Temple Bar hosts Rory Gallagher Corner at Meeting House Square, marked with a full-sized bronze recreation of his legendary Stratocaster.

  As Heard On: Rory Gallagher may not be as universally known as Eric Clapton or Jimi Hendrix, but he made a significant impact, selling over 30 million records worldwide. His 1973 album, Blueprint, which features the ’61 Strat, is often considered his best work.

  Shop Talk: In a 1984 interview with Vintage Classic, Gallagher shared, “After a while, the original neck went bad on me. That was about 10 years ago, but I took it off and hung it up. After a few months it dried out and was fine again.” – B. TOLINSKI

• Lou Reed - Gretsch Country Gentleman

  Late-’60s photos show Reed’s primary guitar in his Velvet Underground days was a Gretsch, which he confirmed to Guitar World in 1998. A San Francisco “electronics guy” built in an echo, he said, “so I could seem to play faster than I really could.” He tinkered relentlessly, making it stereo, adding batteries, until “eventually it just ruined the guitar.” Another key Reed VU guitar: a Kent Copa, purchased for about $150 from a catalog, according to Premier Guitar. As 2021’s documentary The Velvet Underground shows, Reed and co-VU axeman Sterling Morrison took turns playing it.

  Specs: The Kent Copa, made by Japanese company Guyatone, had three pickups, three volume controls, a tone control and a rotary selector switch.

  Six-String Stories: “I’d been listening to [avant-garde jazz artists] Cecil Taylor and Ornette Coleman. Of course I was not trained to play like them. I couldn’t read and write music. I couldn’t even begin to think of having technique like that. But I certainly had the energy—and a good ear,” Reed told Guitar World. “So that’s what I was listening to, along with guitar players like James Burton and Steve Cropper.” – S. KNOPPER

• J Mascis - 1958 Fender Jazzmaster

  Before they were re-discovered by ‘80s alt-rock hopefuls with no money, Jazzmasters were best known for their appeal to surf-rock and jazz aficionados. Mascis bought his ‘58 Jazzmaster in a Vermont, or possibly Connecticut, trailer park. He covered its gold hardware with more gold hardware, and made it the engine of Dinosaur Jr.’s lumpy, distorted, magisterial sound. It’s also the primary inspiration for his one of Mascis’ own Signature Jazzmasters, an atypically affordable, much-desired model by Squier that has gone in and out of production.

  Strange But True: Mascis went to the trailer park with the hope of buying a Stratocaster, but it was too expensive.

  Strange But True, Part 2: Mascis learned how to play guitar on a Jazzmaster, his first guitar.

  As Heard On: Though Jazzmasters are thought of as foundational to the band’s sound, Mascis doesn’t actually record with them. “There’s hardly ever a Jazzmaster or a Big Muff on any studio recording,” he told Reverb. – A. STEWART

• Jimmie Rodgers - 1927 Martin 00-18

  Before he became “The Father of Country Music,” Rodgers was a tubercular young crooner, yodeler, former brakeman and guitar player known for his signature Martins. He used an unadorned spruce-and-mahogany Martin 00-18 to make his first recordings during the legendary Bristol Sessions in 1927. Once he had money, he used a custom Martin 00-45 (from either 1927 or ‘28) with a pearlized nameplate, and, for the audience, the word “THANKS” printed on the back.

  As Heard On: Rodgers used the 00-18 to record “The Soldier’s Sweetheart” and “Sleep Baby Sleep.” Both from the Bristol Sessions, they would be the rocket fuel that powered Rodgers’ ascent when they were released two months after the sessions.

  As Heard On, Part 2: Rodgers used another model, the 00-45, to record his signature hit, “Blue Yodel.”

  Strange But True: Rodgers actually had an endorsem*nt deal — when such things were unheard of — with the Philadelphia-based Weymann company. Its circa-1931 “Jimmie Rodgers Special Model 890” sold for $90, a fortune during the Great Depression. – A. STEWART

• Ron Wood - Zemaitis Metal Front

  Tony Zemaitis, a London-born luthier, initially made waves in the ’60s by crafting distinctive acoustic guitars for legends like Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and Donovan. However, in the ’70s, he shifted his focus to electric guitars, creating designs that drew even more attention. His exploration into the properties of aluminum on guitars began after a 1969 conversation with Clapton. Zemaitis discovered that incorporating an aluminum front enhanced the guitar by reducing feedback and improving tuning and intonation—plus, it looked incredibly cool.

  One of his most famous electric models was commissioned by Faces and eventual Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood. Of the two guitars Zemaitis made for Wood, it was the second—with its black body and striking central metal plate—that became iconic. The design sparked a craze, drawing clients like Keith Richards, Bob Dylan, Marc Bolan, David Gilmour and Pretenders’ James Honeyman-Scott.

  Specs: Many of Zemaitis’ metal plates were intricately tooled by shotgun engraver Danny O’Brien.

  Stage Debut: Zemaitis built his first electric guitar for Tony McPhee of the Groundhogs.

  Sold!: Zemaitis crafted only eight to 10 guitars annually. He retired in 2000 and died in 2002. These days, some of his original pieces can fetch upwards of $50,000. – B. TOLINSKI

• Jerry Garcia - Doug Irwin Custom 1979 “Tiger”

  Delighted with the craftsmanship of his custom Doug Irwin “Wolf” guitar, Jerry Garcia commissioned another instrument from Irwin, urging the luthier to “not hold back.” Irwin rose to the challenge, creating a guitar known as “Tiger,” distinguished by its “hippie sandwich” construction—a lamination of several layers of wood. This unique guitar also featured a tiger inlay near the tailpiece, and its solid brass binding and hardware contributed to its substantial weight of about 14 pounds.

  Irwin crafted two more guitars for Garcia, “Rosebud” and “Headless.” But following Garcia’s death, a dispute ensued between Irwin and the Grateful Dead over the ownership of Jerry’s four custom guitars. The conflict was resolved in 2001, granting Irwin possession of both “Tiger” and “Wolf.”

  Stage Debut: Garcia first played Tiger live at a concert in Oakland, Calif., on Aug. 4, 1979.

  Retirement Party: Tiger was the last guitar Garcia used in public with the Grateful Dead, during a performance on July 9, 1995.

  Sold!: Tiger was purchased by Jim Irsay, the owner of the Indianapolis Colts, for $957,500 in 2002. – B. TOLINSKI

• Zakk Wylde - 1981 Gibson Les Paul Custom “The Grail”

  When Zakk Wylde joined Ozzy Osbourne’s band in 1987, he sought a distinctive guitar to mark his new role. His choice fell on a white 1981 Les Paul Custom equipped with EMG pickups, which he eventually obtained by trading a double-neck Gibson EDS-1275 with a friend. But Wylde faced a challenge: the legendary Randy Rhoads was famously associated with a similar white Les Paul during his time with Ozzy. Seeking to carve out his own identity, Zakk opted to have his refinished in a unique oblong “vertigo” pattern. The customization resulted in a simpler, yet iconic, black and white bullseye pattern instead. Wylde embraced this unexpected design, which soon became his signature “The Grail.”

  As Heard On: Wylde composed “Miracle Man,” his first song for Ozzy, on the Grail.

  Strange But True: In 2000, the Grail temporarily vanished after accidently falling out of a truck on the way to a Texas gig. Fortunately, it survived its ordeal and was recovered.

  Retirement Party: In recent years, Zakk has favored instruments from his own Wylde Audio guitar line. – B. TOLINSKI

• H.E.R. - Signature Chrome Glow Stratocaster

  H.E.R. is the first Black woman to receive a signature Fender model, and it’s a doozy – a chrome-covered Strat that flashes iridescent in the light (reportedly in tribute to a nail-polish color she likes). There’s footage on YouTube of H.E.R. playing her first Strat when she was a kid, and her trademark guitar combines that same classic feel (its vintage vibe includes a mid-’60s C-shaped neck) with modern touches (a pearlescent glow finish).

  Stage Debut: At the 2020 Primetime Emmys, playing “Nothing Compares 2 U” during the In Memoriam segment, as a tribute to the late Sinéad O’Connor.

  Specs: The Strat has three Fender Vintage Noiseless pickups, meant to ensure a cleaner tone.

  Strange But True: H.E.R. famously played a see-through Strat at the 2019 Grammy Awards. Crafted out of acrylic and entirely clear, it was custom built by Fender in a week. – A. STEWART

• Billy Gibbons – Dean Z "Fur" Guitar

  By 1984, ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons and Dusty Hill weren’t lacking for woolliness. But they turned the hirsute quotient up to 11 with the Dean Z “fur” guitar and bass they brandished in that year’s “Legs” video. Gibbons had played a Dean ML model on the accompanying album, 1983’s Eliminator, and Dean Guitars founder Dean Zelinsky offered to build custom instruments for the band for the supporting tour. Gibbons had one request: incorporate some sheepskins he had purchased in Scotland into the design. Up for the challenge, Zelinsky delivered a white guitar and bass, the Eliminator logo emblazoned on the fretboards, and (as requested) matching sheepskin finishes. The results even upstaged the video’s star attraction – the various pairs of legs showcased throughout the clip.

  Strange But True: After covering the guitar and bass with sheepskin, Zelinsky used electric horse shears to shave a path down the center of the bodies to make room for the pickups, tailpiece and strings.

  Strange But True, Part 2: The build stretched into the 11th hour. “I remember we were still gluing the fur on the tuning keys when the FedEx driver showed up to pick up the guitars,” Zelinsky recalled. “He waited while we boxed them up; they had to make it to the video shoot the very next day.”

  Strange But True, Part 3: The instruments featured an attachment that enabled them to be spun 360 degrees from Gibbons and Hill’s waists while being played. – R. BIENSTOCK

• Kurt Cobain - 1959 Martin D-18E

  

  A bungled attempt by acoustic guitar manufacturer Martin to make inroads into the growing electric guitar market of the late ’50s, the D-18E — essentially a D-18 dreadnought guitar fitted with two DeArmond pickups, two tone controls and a volume control — was produced for only one year and would have been nothing more than a seldom-discussed oddity if Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain hadn’t purchased one from Voltage Guitars in Los Angeles in the fall of 1993. When Nirvana came to New York to record their unforgettable MTV Unplugged performance on Nov. 18 of that year, Cobain played the guitar (which, much to the show’s producer’s dismay was plugged into two effects pedals and a Fender Twin amplifier) for the entire epochal performance, giving the much-maligned D-18E a belated star turn.

  Middleman: Cobain was not happy with the sound produced by the D-18E’s DeArmond pickups and had a Bartolini 3AV pickup installed in the sound hole between them, which he used exclusively for Unplugged.

  Sold!: Cobain reportedly paid $5,000 for his Martin in 1993. In 2022, it sold at auction for more than five million dollars.

  Lucky 7: Martin production records indicate that Cobain’s guitar, serial number 166854, was the seventh D-18E produced. – TOM BEAUJOUR

• Wayne Kramer - American Flag Stratocaster

  Inspired by Pete Townshend and The Who’s British-flag pop-art iconography, the guitarist motivated his protopunk band, Detroit’s MC5, to hang American flags over their guitar amps. It was a way of reflecting the counterculture in general and protesting the Vietnam War specifically: “The idea was, it’s my flag, too. It’s not just the right-wing flag,” Kramer told guitar.com in 2022, two years before his death. “I decided to have my guitar painted with that motif.” Kramer initially painted his white Strat with red stripes, then added the blue-and-white stars pattern to the pickguard. He also added a humbucker to make his solos louder.

  Strange But True: In the ’70s, Kramer was an addict and offered the guitar to a Detroit music store to raise cash — only to be told he’d ruined it with the stars and stripes. To sell it, Kramer had to repaint it. “I suspect somewhere in Michigan there’s a Stratocaster in a case under the bed that nobody’s seen in 50 years,” he said.

  Talk of the Town: “I’m a guitar-rock guy,” Kramer once told Detroit Artists Workshop. “I love loud guitars and that’s the way I still play.” – S. KNOPPER

• Dave Grohl - 1967 Gibson Trini Lopez Standard

  In the swinging ’60s, Trini Lopez made his mark as Gibson’s premier signature artist, captivating audiences with uptempo folk-rock hits like “If I Had a Hammer” and “Lemon Tree.” Although Lopez’s popularity has faded, Dave Grohl has significantly helped in keeping his legacy alive by using his signature Gibson guitars during his performances with Foo Fighters in some of the world’s most famed venues.

  Grohl acquired his first Trini Lopez guitar in 1992 from a guitar shop in Bethesda, Maryland, using his earnings from his tenure as Nirvana’s drummer. He was searching for a guitar that was versatile enough to play acoustically at home and powerful enough to electrify audiences in large venues like Madison Square Garden. The guitar’s distinctive diamond-shaped F-holes and elegant headstock particularly drew Grohl’s attention, leading him to develop a deep appreciation for Lopez’s design and become an avid collector of other Trini guitars.

  Shop Talk: Dave Grohl once remarked, “I didn’t really know anything about Trini Lopez when I bought the guitar. I thought it was unusual.”

  Specs: Trini Lopez specifically requested that Gibson incorporate a unique Fender-style six-on-a-side headstock in his design.

  Specs: In 2024 Epiphone released the Dave Grohl DG-335, designed in conjunction with Grohl and boasting diamond-shape f-holes and other distinctive features from his beloved ’67 Trini. – B. TOLINSKI

• Nancy Wilson - Gibson SG Junior with Bigsby

  One of Wilson’s most beloved guitars, she reportedly purchased the then-burgundy woodgrain Gibson at a used guitar store and modified it with a Bigsby Vibramate and a single Kent Armstrong P-90 pickup that gives the guitar its down-and-dirty sound.

  As Heard On: The SG was Wilson’s go-to guitar for live versions of Heart’s “Barracuda.”

  Signature Specs: The back of the SG is emblazoned with a large sticker of the U.S. Marine Corps logo — a tribute to Wilson’s father, who was in the military.

  Sold!: In 2022, Wilson put a number of guitars from her collection on sale through the Reverb.com website, including the SG, which was listed for $100,000. It’s unclear who purchased it. — FRANK DIGIACOMO

• Waylon Jennings - "No. 1" Leather-Covered Fender Telecaster

  Of the five guitars that Jennings used onstage, “No. 1” and “No. 2” were mid-’50s Telecasters. (They’ve been referred to as both 1953 and 1954 models in descriptions.) The first was a gift from his band the Waylors in the early ‘60s when they were playing the Phoenix club scene: a Butterscotch Blonde Tele that they had covered in black leather decorated with a cream-colored floral pattern and spiral stitching around the perimeter of the guitar.

  Strange But True: According to Waylon’s son Shooter Jennings, the band paid around $40 for the Telecaster. Other accounts say the band shelled out another pittance to either a janitor or bartender at the club they were playing to add the hand-tooled leather sheath.

  Signature Specs: Jennings used a banjo key on the low E string with a 1:1 ratio — the number of turns required to change the pitch from, say, an E to a D (the average is 18 turns). The key made the change instant.

  Sold!: No. 1 remains with Jennings family, but Nicole Kidman dropped close to $100,000 to buy “No. 3” — a 1950 Fender Broadcaster — at auction for her husband Keith Urban. Keith Richards acquired the ’67 Telecaster that was one of the Jennings five. — F. DIGIACOMO

• Jeff Beck - "Wired" Fender Stratocaster

  Jazz fusion great John McLaughlin often praised Jeff Beck as the “best guitarist alive.” The feeling was mutual, with Beck raving that McLaughlin’s playing was “unequaled.” Their respect for each other was evident when they toured together in 1975. During this time, Beck smashed his beloved ’62 Stratocaster. As a kind gesture, McLaughlin bought Beck a replacement—a white Stratocaster from Norman’s Rare Guitars in Tarzana, California. Tragically, this guitar, which graced the cover of Beck’s 1976 album Wired, was stolen soon after it was acquired. Unfazed, McLaughlin stepped in once more, purchasing another white Strat for Beck. It is believed that this guitar, alongside the repaired ’62 Strat, were the ones Beck played on Wired, an album that showcased his mastery and innovation on the electric guitar.

  Shop Talk: Jeff Beck expressed his straightforward view on instruments to Guitar World in 2014: “When it comes to guitars, I don’t really give a damn about ‘custom this’ and ‘custom that.’ Most of what I need is in my fingers. You know, let’s hear it for the fingers!”

  Talk of the Town: While Beck’s album Wired is hailed as a seminal work in jazz fusion, Beck himself did not identify as a jazz musician. However, he felt a deep honor when jazz legend Charles Mingus commended him for his sensitive rendition of Mingus’s own “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat.”

  Chart a Course: Wired peaked at No. 16 on the Billboard 200 and was also released in a special four-channel quadraphonic edition. – B. TOLINSKI

• Prince - Auerswald Symbol Guitar

  Prince employed a futuristic-looking Jerry Auerswald guitar – the Model C – on late ’80s efforts like Sign o’ the Times and Lovesexy. In 1993, in the midst of a contract dispute with his label, Warner Bros., he changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol and recruited the German luthier to build him a guitar in the same shape. Known as the Auerswald Symbol (or Love Symbol) guitar, Prince played the gold creation during the period surrounding his 1995 album The Gold Experience. He later used models in various colors, including black and white, and capped his 2007 Super Bowl XLI Halftime Show performance by playing “Purple Rain” with a Schecter-built version – finished, of course, in purple.

  Specs: Carved maple body and neck, “arrow” headstock, gold-plated heart-shaped tuning knobs, EMG pickups (single coil and humbucker).

  As Seen On: Prince plays the original Auerswald in the official music videos for The Gold Experience’s “Endorphinmachine” and “Gold.”

  Rarity: The gold Auerswald, reportedly the only Prince-owned Symbol model still in existence, resides in the collection housed at Paisley Park, Prince’s home and studio in Chanhassen, Minn. – R. BIENSTOCK

• Elvis Presley - 1942 Martin D-18 "Sun Sessions"

  Known as the “Sun Sessions” guitar, Presley used this Martin on his early classics at Sam Phillips’ studio between 1954 and 1956. It’s unclear exactly which songs he played the guitar on, but among the songs from these sessions were “That’s All Right,” “Good Rockin’ Tonight,” “Blue Moon of Kentucky” and “Mystery Train.” Presley affixed the letters from his first name on the body, but the “S” has disappeared over time, so it still reads: “ELVI.” Presley purchased the guitar at Houck’s Piano Store in Memphis, trading in his Martin 000-18 as part of the price. “There is also extensive wear visible on the guitar due to Presley’s hard strumming,” observed Guitar World before the Martin went up for auction.

  Sold!: In 2020, the guitar sold for $1.32 million to an undisclosed buyer through auction house Gotta Have Rock and Roll.

  On Display: New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art included the Martin in its “Play It Loud: Instruments of Rock & Roll” exhibition in 2019. – S. KNOPPER

• Clarence White - Martin D-28 Herringbone

  For an instrument sometimes hailed as “the Holy Grail of bluegrass guitars,” Clarence White’s Martin D-28 had an inauspicious start. In 1959, a teenaged White bought a heavily damaged, 20-some-year-old acoustic guitar, which was soon fixed up by a Los Angeles luthier named Milt Owen, who admitted the result was far from perfect. But the guitar isn’t famous for being beautiful: It’s the instrument on which the dexterous White – as part of the folk revival outfit Kentucky Colonels — helped popularize the acoustic guitar as a lead instrument in bluegrass (acoustics were mainly seen as rhythm instruments prior to the innovations of White and Doc Watson, among others). By the time White began playing with the Byrds, the Martin D-28 was out of his life – but its influence on future generations of bluegrass players was set. In fact, Tony Rice – a disciple of White’s – owned and played the guitar for years.

  Battle Scars: For whatever reason, someone had carved away at the Martin D-28’s sound hole before White bought it. Perhaps deciding a knife wasn’t enough, White upped the ante and shot it with a BB gun before parting ways with the guitar in 1965.

  Talk of the Town: When Tony Rice bought White’s Martin D-28 in the ‘70s, he could barely believe his good fortune. “I kept waiting to wake up,” Rice told Fretboard Journal. “For days I was thinking, ‘It couldn’t possibly have been this easy.’” – J. LYNCH

• Allen Collins - 1958 Gibson Explorer

  The Lynyrd Skynyrd guitarist went through a series of instruments during his time with the band, but in 1976 switched to the Explorer, in its original form one of the rarest and most coveted guitars Gibson has ever made. According to Ultimate Guitar, the company made just a handful of them during their initial run in 1958, and Collins’ Korina wood edition — replicated by Gibson with a 100-axe run in 2003 — became iconic.

  Strange But True: According to his guitar tech, while playing in the Skynyrd successor Rossington-Collins Band in 1980, Collins tripped while running out onstage and broke the tip of the headstock off, then glued it back on with Elmer’s glue; when Gibson issued its signature, they recreated that aspect on purpose.

  As Heard On: Street Survivors, the final album with Skynyrd’s classic lineup, which was released three days before the plane crash that killed three members of the band and almost claimed the life of Collins. — DAN RYS

• Memphis Minnie - 1941 National New Yorker

  One of the first electric guitars on the market, the 1941 National New Yorker Electric Spanish was the guitar of choice for Memphis Minnie when she went electric in the early ‘40s. The Queen of Country Blues’ playing on this hollow, sound hole-free guitar helped the blues evolve into early rock n’ roll and inspired artists from Jefferson Airplane to Bonnie Raitt.

  Rarity Factor: One of the few hollow guitars with no sound holes, the National New Yorker is additionally rare because America’s entrance into World War II necessitated the reallocation of resources used to make that model. The one Minnie wielded featured a sunburst finish.

  Talk of the Town: None other than 20th century poetry giant Langston Hughes had this to say about Minnie’s guitar playing: “Louisiana bayous, muddy old swamps, Mississippi dust and sun, cotton fields, lonesome roads, train whistles in the night, mosquitoes at dawn, and the Rural Free Delivery, that never brings the right letter. All these things cry through the strings on Memphis Minnie’s electric guitar, amplified to machine proportions — a musical version of electric welders plus a rolling mill.” — J. LYNCH

• Joe Satriani - 1990 Ibanez JS Special "Chrome Boy"

  

  Joe Satriani, known for his fluid playing technique and his distinctive bald look, has always mirrored the sleek and polished style he embodies. His breakout album, 1987’s Surfing with the Alien, notably features Marvel’s Silver Surfer on the cover, embodying the same smooth aesthetic. It’s no surprise that Satriani’s most iconic guitar, the 1990 Ibanez JS-2 Chrome Boy, boasts a brilliantly reflective silver finish that complements this theme perfectly. Although the original “Chrome Boy” offered exceptional sound, its finish was prone to peeling due to Ibanez’s then-unperfected chroming technique. Ironically, Satriani observed that each time the guitar was refinished, its sound improved, eventually making it one of his favorite instruments.

  Specs: Since its inception in 1990, Ibanez has created five different versions of the Chrome Boy.

  Strange But True: Satriani notes that it wasn’t until the fourth iteration, the JS1CR30, that Ibanez finally perfected the chroming process, joking, “They figured it out…it only took 30 years!”

  As Heard On: Chrome Boy’s distinctive sound can be fully appreciated on the 2001 album Live in San Francisco. – B. TOLINSKI

• Ace Frehley - 1974 Gibson Les Paul Custom “Budokan”

  The Spaceman has said he purchased the Cherry-burst guitar in 1976 at Manny’s Music on West 48th Street — once part of Manhattan’s much-mourned Music Row. He later modified it with three DiMarzio humbuckers, including a Super Distortion at the bridge — the Les Paul originally had just two pickups — which helped give KISS its distinctive roar.

  As Heard On: Alive II

  Retirement Party: According to acefrehleylespaul.com, although the Custom is most associated with Frehley and KISS, it was his primary guitar for the shortest period — 17 months between 1976 and 1978.

  Sold!: Frehley’s axe was purchased by rare guitar collector Matt Swanson who licensed it to Gibson to create faithful replicas. — F. DIGIACOMO

• Buck Owens - Mosrite Red, White and Blue Acoustic

  Bakersfield, Calif., was not only the home of “Act Naturally” writer and country superstar Buck Owens but of Semie Moseley, the luthier behind Mosrite Guitars, favored by the Ventures’ Nokie Edwards and the Ramones’ Johnny Ramone. In 1966, Owens was against the Vietnam War, but also against protesters burning the American flag, and he wanted a (relatively) subtle way to show his reaction. Together, he and Moseley designed a red, white and blue acoustic — and Owens convinced his fiddle and bass players to paint their instruments the same colors. When Owens starred on Hee Haw a few years later, he said in his autobiography, Buck ‘Em!, “It seems like everybody wanted to know where they could get one.”

  Mass Distribution: Owens licensed the red, white and blue model to Chicago Musical Instruments, which sold each model for $82.95, often through the Sears catalog. Owens’ first check was for $15,000.

  Six-String Stories: Rev. Ray Boatwright helped fund Moseley’s forays into the guitar-building business, co-signing on a band saw, tabletop drill press, air compressor and other tools, which Moseley used to build Mosrite #1 in the reverend’s one-car garage in 1954, according to Bakersfield Guitars: An Early History. Among the first to use his models: Lorrie and Larry Collins of the Collins Kids, a ’50s rockabilly duo. – S. KNOPPER

• Mark Knopfler - 1937 National Style "O" 14 Fret

  Mark Knopfler stuck primarily to Strats and Les Pauls in Dire Straits, but the most indelible guitar image connected to the band is that of his 1937 National Style “O” resonator, famously depicted floating in the blue sky, storm clouds gathering in the background, on the cover of their Billboard 200-topping 1985 album Brothers In Arms. Knopfler purchased the National from guitarist and friend Steve Phillips in the ‘70s and used it extensively in the studio and onstage with Dire Straits and in his solo career. He has described its tone as “somewhere between the guitar and a piano,” which is pretty much exactly how it sounds on his most famous performance with it – the beautifully fingerpicked melody that leads the 1980 classic “Romeo and Juliet.”

  As Seen On: The guitar also appears on the back cover of Brothers In Arms, this time as a painting by German artist Thomas Steyer.

  Specs: National manufactured the first resonator guitars in 1927, designed with a metal body and interior speaker-like cones to produce more volume than acoustics in the pre-amplification days. Three years later, the brand introduced the Style O, boasting a nickel-plated brass body, with a “chickenfoot” coverplate on the front and an etched Hawaiian island scene on the back.

  Strange But True: In 1973 Knopfler briefly played with an English pub rock band named Brewers Droop (slang for alcohol-induced erectile dysfunction). Sixteen years later some of these recordings were released on the album The Booze Brothers, the cover of which parodied the Brothers In Arms art — this time with the neck of Knopfler’s National experiencing the dreaded “droop.” – R. BIENSTOCK

• Brian Jones - Vox Mark III "Teardrop"

  Although Rolling Stones co-founder Brian Jones played many guitars during his tenure with the band, he is most closely associated with the teardrop-shaped white Vox Mark III presented to him by Tom Jennings (of Vox’s parent company, Jennings Musical Industries) in 1964. The guitar, which was a one-of-a-kind prototype built for Jones by Mick Bennett, featured two single coil pickups, a chrome pickguard, and ebony fretboard with a zero fret and a round vinyl cover that buttoned to the back of the guitar. Jones would first appear in public with the guitar on July 11 in Bridlington, Yorkshire, and he then used it for subsequent television appearances promoting the Stones’ then-new single “It’s All Over Now.”

  Numbers Game: Once in production, the “teardrop” Mark III was rechristened the Vox Mark VI.

  Fender Blender: When assembling Jones’ Mark III, Mick Bennett repurposed a Fender Stratocaster bridge that had been sawed off on one side to remove the hole for the tremolo arm.

  Twin Tone: Vox built a companion 12-string Teardrop that was used during the Stones’ July 1964 appearances on the television show Ready Steady Go! – T. BEAUJOUR

• Susan Tedeschi & Derek Trucks - 1993 American Standard Telecaster & Gibson Custom Dickey Betts SG

  Both husband and wife are known for their playing prowess, though they come at it from very different directions. Trucks has long played his red SG — in fact, he’s rarely seen without it — in open E tuning with a classic thick glass slide, a nod to his guitar hero and Allman Brothers predecessor Duane Allman. Tedeschi, meanwhile, is less dogmatic and uses a rotation of guitars, but has become most known for her Telecaster, which Fender enshrined with a signature version modeled on her 1993 Caribbean Mist original.

  As Heard On: Tedeschi’s 1998 album Just Won’t Burn features her original on the cover; Trucks has played his SG on more than a dozen albums across his solo band, three Allman Brothers records (and countless live albums) and a slew of Tedeschi Trucks Band releases.

  Strange But True: Trucks’ custom SG was modeled on Gibson’s Dickey Betts SG, which itself is a replica of a 1961 SG that Dickey gave to Duane Allman, which Allman’s daughter then gave to Trucks. Got all that? — D. RYS

• Rick Nielsen - 1981 Hamer Five-Neck

  

  Cheap Trick’s Rick Nielsen is a guitarist given to eccentricities both sartorial and musical. One of his favorite absurdist acts of the late ’70s was to don up to five guitars at once, among them a Fender Stratocaster and a Gibson Les Paul Junior, for his unaccompanied guitar solo, playing each and then discarding it to reveal the next guitar underneath. Wishing to one-up himself, Nielsen originally approached his friends at Hamer guitars with the idea of a six-necked instrument that would twirl like a roulette wheel. He abandoned that idea in favor of a five-necked behemoth that included a 12-string at the top, three standard guitar necks in the middle and a fretless neck at the bottom.

  Three’s Company: Nielsen commissioned two additional five-necks from Hamer after the original 1981 example: one a Korina wood hollow body, and one in his trademark checkerboard finish that he still brings on the road.

  Chop Shop: The five-neck was constructed by modifying the bodies of five double-cutaway Hamer Sunbursts and attaching them together.

  Early Adopter: Nielsen worked with Hamer from its inception and owns a Hamer guitar with the serial number #0000 – T. BEAUJOUR

• Prince - Hohner HG-490 “Mad Cat”

  His Purple Majesty played some one-of-a-kind axes, such as his custom-made “Cloud” and “Love Symbol” guitars, but his flamed maple top Hohner Mad Cat Telecaster knockoff was his primary guitar in the studio and onstage. Hohner, known for its harmonicas, began producing the Japanese-made Mad Cats in the 1970s until it was sued by Fender because its headstock was allegedly indistinguishable from Fender’s Tele.

  Rarity Factor: Prince hired world-class luthier Roger Sadowsky to build six Mad Cat replicas for him.

  As Heard On: Prince acquired the original in the late ‘70s — it is said that he liked the leopard-print pick guard because it jibed with his fashion sense — and used it for the recording of Purple Rain, among many other classic albums. He also played a Mad Cat during his mind-blowing solo on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” at the 2004 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony.

  Strange But True: Two of the Mad Cat replicas Sadowsky built were equipped with tubing to spray Ivory Liquid during the guitar masturbation scene in the Purple Rain movie. Sadowsky told Ultimate Guitar.com that he dubbed them the “Ejacucasters.” – F. DIGIACOMO

• Dimebag Darrell - Dean ML “Dean From Hell”

  One of the most iconic guitars in heavy metal has a pretty heartwarming origin story. A 14-year-old Darrell Abbott (chaperoned by his mom) won a Dean ML after smoking the competition at a guitar contest in Dallas. The future Dimebag Darrell sold the guitar to a friend, but it soon fell into the hands of his pal Buddy Blaze, a talented luthier who began toying around with it. Among other changes, Blaze tweaked the neck to emphasize the V shape, added a Floyd Rose bridge, moved the stock pickup to the neck, repainted the maroon axe a dark shade of aqua and applied a bitchin’ lightning bolt design. Not long after Phil Anselmo joined Pantera as its singer, Blaze put the guitar back in Dimebag’s hands, who fell in love with the guitar without realizing it was the same one he won as a kid. When Blaze revealed the fateful full-circle moment to him, the guitarist was ecstatic – and metal would never be the same.

  As Seen On: An energized Dime sports the Dean From Hell (words that were scrawled on the guitar in marker) on the cover of Pantera’s iconic 1990 breakthrough, Cowboys From Hell.

  Retirement Party: The well-loved guitar got knocked around onstage so much that Dime retired it in the mid ‘90s, bringing it out only on occasion. Fittingly, his beloved Dean From Hell was on display at his funeral after his murder in 2004. – J. LYNCH

• Hank Williams - 1941 Martin D-28

  The Shakespeare of country music made “nearly all his popular recordings with his Martin,” a 1940s acoustic that had an ebony fretboard, diamond-shaped inlays and the serial number 87422, according to Dick Boak’s Martin Guitar Masterpieces. Not much is known about the guitar’s origins, other than Hank Sr. purchased it from Tut Taylor, the dobro player who owned a Nashville guitar store, and recorded most of his classic recordings — from “Lost Highway” to “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” — with it. Hank Jr. is said to have inherited the guitar, which he reportedly sold for some shotguns.

  Where It Is Now: Neil Young eventually wound up with the 1941 model and has played it regularly for years, telling crowds: “This is Hank’s old guitar,” sometimes introducing his song about it, “This Old Guitar.” Another model, circa 1944, was on display for years at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville. Boak called it “one of the most valuable guitars ever made.”

  Talk of the Town: Nils Lofgren, who plays with Young and Bruce Springsteen, told guitar.com in 2022: “I think it was on ‘Walking on the Road.’ [Neil] was on an electric piano and he said, ‘Why don’t you try an acoustic guitar?’ and he just happened to have his Hank Williams guitar, ‘Hank.’ So now I’m playing acoustic rhythm on a guitar Hank Williams played. That was a beautiful thing.” – S. KNOPPER

• Vernon Reid - ESP Custom

  Reid had just formed Living Colour when he connected with the guys behind ESP, the Japanese guitar brand that had just launched in the U.S., and commissioned a custom model inspired by one he saw in the ESP offices that reminded him of Marvel’s Silver Surfer. The final version was, in a way, a bit of a collage of other inspirations: the swirl design he saw in the office; a guitar he had been using up to that point that was painted by graffiti-inspired artist Keith Haring; and a V-neck inspired by a ’63 Fender he had played in the past, with EMG active pickups, which were new at the time.

  Six-String Stories: “The ESP coming into my life at that point was a shift,” Reid told the ESP site. “It was specifically for the band Living Colour. It was a colorful band name; I thought I should have a colorful guitar, right?”

  As Heard On: Reid most famously used the guitar in writing “Cult of Personality,” the Grammy-winning first song off Living Colour’s 1988 debut Vivid. — D. RYS

• Jack White - 1964 Valco Airline Res-O-Glas

  Jack White has never been one to follow the beaten path, and his taste in guitars illustrates that. Those idiosyncrasies were especially evident during his years with The White Stripes, a period where White was often seen wielding a striking red-and-white 1964 Valco Airline Res-O-Glas. The angular guitar, crafted from fiberglass, was originally marketed through Montgomery Ward department store catalogs. The guitar was challenging to play, but it produced a uniquely jagged tone that resonated with White’s contrarian aesthetics. “If you want it easy, buy a new Les Paul or a new Stratocaster,” White once quipped, emphasizing his preference for instruments with character over ease of play.

  Specs: The Valco Airline guitars lack truss rods; instead, their necks are reinforced with steel to maintain sturdiness.

  Sold!: The price for a Valco Airline in 1964 was $99. These days they can fetch up to $3,000.

  Under the Influence: During his time with the White Stripes, White also played a 1950s-era Kay Hollowbody, favored by bluesman Howlin’ Wolf, and a Gibson L-1 acoustic, known for its association with blues legend Robert Johnson. – B. TOLINSKI

• Carlos Santana - Custom 1980 Paul Reed Smith

  Before Paul Reed Smith established PRS Guitars, now one of the premier electric guitar and amplifier manufacturers globally, he was a modest luthier in Maryland. Smith had already crafted guitars for musicians like Peter Frampton and Ted Nugent when he targeted Carlos Santana, celebrated for his exceptional sound and selective choice in instruments. In 1980, Smith managed to secure a meeting with Santana, who was immediately impressed with a custom guitar Smith presented. The endorsem*nt from Santana not only put Paul Reed Smith on the map but also kickstarted a lasting collaborative friendship.

  Shop Talk: Carlos Santana initially remarked that the first guitar Paul Reed Smith crafted for him was so exceptional it must have been an “act of God,” and challenged Smith to replicate the feat. “After the fifth instrument, which was a doubleneck, he called me up and said, ‘Okay, you’re a guitar maker,'” Smith recalled to Premier Guitar in 2023.

  Strange But True: In the early 2000s, Santana challenged PRS to design a high-quality yet affordable guitar, leading to the creation of the Santana SE (Student Edition) in 2001.

  Specs: At Santana’s behest, Paul Reed Smith designed a revolutionary new tremolo system that incorporated miniature rollers on each string to reduce friction. – B. TOLINSKI

• Courtney Love - 1994 Fender Venus

  Love’s trademark guitar, built for her in the Fender Custom Shop, takes its cues from a Rickenbacker and a vintage green Mercury she used to play. The Venus (in Surf Green, with a matching headstock and a single pickup) was later replicated and sold as the Squier Venus.

  Rarity Factor: It was custom built for Love by master luthier Larry Brooks, who had previously collaborated with Kurt Cobain. According to Brooks, Love’s “ballsy-toned” Venus was built without a volume knob at her manager’s request, so it couldn’t be damaged or grabbed when crowdsurfing.

  Sold!: The Venus sold on online instrument marketplace Reverb for $68,289.95 in 2022. – A. STEWART

• Bruce Springsteen – ca. 1953 Fender Esquire-Telecaster Composite

  Springsteen was 22 when he bought this Frankensteined Fender from New Jersey luthier Phil Petillo for $185, which he later called “the best deal of my life.” An early-’50s composite of an Esquire (the neck) and a Telecaster (the body) housed in honeyed blonde wood, it had been heavily refashioned with four pickups and a wooden chunk behind the black pickguard removed. It was a “mutt,” Springsteen said, but he learned how to make it talk, and the guitar has accompanied him on his storied ascent from Jersey clubs to stadiums, even making an appearance on the Born to Run album cover.

  Six-String Stories: “This feels like my arm,” Springsteen told Stephen Colbert in 2021. “If I have this guitar, I don’t have anything on. This became an extension of my actual body.”

  Strange But True: To ensure the guitar made it through a typical sweat-a-thon Springsteen concert, Petillo had it waterproofed.

  Retirement Party: Springsteen hasn’t brought the now-fragile guitar on the road in years, preferring to use dupes instead, though he still records with it, and played it during his 2009 Super Bowl halftime show. It has also been on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. – A. STEWART

• Pete Townshend - 1976 Gibson Les Paul Deluxe “#5”

  Some of the most classic-Who-ish photos of Townshend performing live in the late ’70s — windmilling, leaping, sneering — involved this wine-red guitar stamped with a large white “5.” Although Townshend was known in the ’60s for his Gibson SGs, he shifted to Les Pauls in the ’70s for a heavier sound, and played a variety of them, sticking numbered decals on the bodies so he could quickly select one with distinctive capo settings during live shows. He had one problem with the model: its neck. “Under the rough treatment I give them, they don’t seem to last very long,” he told Sound International in 1980.

  As Seen On: The Who’s performances in The Kids Are Alright documentary, including “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” from Shepperton Studios, U.K., in 1978.

  Talk of the Town: Townshend switched from the SG to the Les Paul Deluxe after Gibson took the SG of the market, which caused logistical problems for the destructive guitarist. “I don’t break them deliberately anymore, but when I spin them around, when I’ve had a few drinks, I bang them and they crack and they break.” Eventually, he contacted Gibson for custom models, and the company responded with four, at $3,000 a pop. He was displeased with them and picked up the Deluxe instead. – S. KNOPPER

• Eric Clapton - Gibson Les Paul Standard “Beano”

  Clapton was a 21-year-old British guitar phenom when he recorded Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. The 1966 album (nicknamed “Beano” because Clapton is reading a Beano comic book on its cover) kickstarted a worldwide blues-rock revolution. Throughout, Clapton played a ‘59 or ‘60 (probably a ‘60, due to the shape of its neck) Les Paul Standard with a sunburst finish, also nicknamed Beano, plugged into a topped-out Marshall amp, a sound that would change history. The Burst disappeared from a church basem*nt in London during rehearsals for the first gig by Clapton’s next group, Cream, further cementing its journey into myth. Beano’s whereabouts remain unknown.

  Strange But True: According to Clapton, whoever stole Beano came back to steal its case a few weeks later.

  Six-String Stories: Few clear pictures of Beano exist, which will make authentication difficult if it ever turns up. Clapton has described it as red-gold in color, with one cutaway and cigarette marks pocking the front. “Just magnificent,” he told Guitar Player in 1985. “I never really found one as good as that. I do miss that one.” – A. STEWART

• Lead Belly - ca. 1930 Stella 12-String

  The guitar that changed the world was a workmanlike 12-string Stella, canonized by Louisiana blues and folk artist Huddie Ledbetter, known as Lead Belly. Writer Ross Altman once called Ledbetter, whose music would prove foundational to the development of rock n’ roll, a “one-man heavy metal band.” Everything about the Stella was heavy (the weight of its strings and body) and rumbly (Ledbetter probably used a lower version of standard tuning, but no one really knows for sure). The Stella was large and long-scaled, its strings widely spaced, in order to accompany Lead Belly’s large hands.

  Sold!: On Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged performance, Kurt Cobain describes being approached by the Lead Belly estate to buy the Stella for $500,000, which even Cobain couldn’t afford. (Would David Geffen buy it for him? Cobain wondered. He would not.) According to representatives from the bluesman’s estate, Lead Belly’s niece wanted to sell the guitar to Cobain, but asked to meet him first, so he could reassure her he wasn’t going to smash it. The meeting never took place.

  As Heard On: Lead Belly used the Stella on some of the best-known versions of now-standards including “Goodnight Irene,” “The Midnight Special” and “Where Did You Sleep Last Night” (though many versions of each song exist). – A. STEWART

• Buddy Holly - 1954 Fender Stratocaster

  

  Holly was struggling in geometry, and responded to this problem by trading his acoustic Les Paul (and a borrowed $1,000) for a new Fender model called the Stratocaster, changing the trajectory of rock n’ roll forever. (OK, fellow Strat aficionado Carl Perkins, and others, had something to do with it, too.) Holly used the axe he purchased at Adair Music, in his hometown of Lubbock, Texas, to play those famous downstrokes on mid-’50s classics “That’ll Be the Day,” “Peggy Sue” and the rest. Holly lost this model after a tour-bus theft in Michigan — so the guitar did not die with him in the fatal plane crash of 1959 that claimed the lives of Richie Valens and the Big Bopper, too.

  Where Is It Now?: Nobody knows, but a 2019 documentary, The ’54, suggests an Australian producer and collector purchased it by random chance in Lubbock in 1979.

  Talk of the Town: Fender called him “the first high-profile rock n’ roller to adopt the Fender Stratocaster as his guitar of choice.” Holly-inspired Strat forebears include George Harrison, Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck. – S. KNOPPER

• Bob Marley - 1958 Les Paul Special

  In May 1973, Bob Marley poked his head into Top Gear, a funky music shop in London known for its second-hand guitars. Among the odds and ends, he noticed an unusual Les Paul Special heavily modified by its previous owner, Dan Armstrong, the inventor of the famous Ampeg Dan Armstrong Lucite acrylic guitar. Armstrong put fingerboard markers where dots had been and a white plastic binding around the headstock. Captivated, Marley bought the guitar and used it as his primary stage and studio instrument for the rest of his career.

  Yet, the modifications didn’t end there. Marley admired Jimi Hendrix and reached out to his tech, Roger Mayer, to see if he could create something that would make the Les Paul distinctly his own. Mayer told Reverb in 2021 that he suggested an elliptical aluminum plate under his pickup switch that would “be like a third eye looking out from the guitar,” and adding a matching brushed aluminum pickguard. Marley used it until his death in 1981.

  Strange But True: Before Marley acquired it, the guitar was briefly owned by Marc Bolan of T. Rex, who exchanged it back to Top Gear for a Les Paul equipped with humbucking pickups.

  Icon Status: Following Marley’s death, his Les Paul Special was declared a national treasure by the Jamaican government.

  Retirement Party: The Bob Marley Les Paul Special is currently on display at the Bob Marley Museum in Kingston, Jamaica. – B. TOLINSKI

• Jerry Cantrell - 1984 G&L Rampage "Blue Dress"

  Jerry Cantrell’s 1984 G&L Rampage, affectionately nicknamed “Blue Dress,” is a seminal piece from the grunge era. With Alice in Chains, Cantrell has wielded this guitar since he purchased it in Dallas in 1985, and it has featured on nearly all his recordings, including iconic tracks like “Man In the Box” and “Would.” The guitar’s design, inspired by Eddie Van Halen’s iconic Frankenstein, includes a distinctive circle and square pattern. Notably, it features a pinup girl in a blue dress—a sticker designed by the renowned French painter Alain Aslan, sourced from the adult magazine, which gives the guitar its nickname.

  Strange But True: G&L was the creation of former Fender masterminds Leo Fender and George Fullerton (“G” for George and “L” for Leo).

  Rarity Factor: The Rampage was introduced in 1984 and was one of G&L’s earliest models.

  Shop Talk: “It’s nothing fancy,” Cantrell told Total Guitar in 2014. “There’s plenty of fancier, cooler guitars, but it’s always felt comfortable for me to play from the get-go.”

  Missing In Action: Cantrell’s Rampage was thought to be stolen in 2024, but it was simply misplaced while in transit between a photo shoot and his recording studio. – B. TOLINSKI

• Buddy Guy – Fender Stratocaster “Polka Dot”

  

  For someone whose career dates back to the 1950s, it’s notable that the guitar most commonly associated with the Chicago blues legend wasn’t created until four decades later. Guy had been playing Strats since the ‘60s — he claims that Clapton and Jeff Beck picked them up because of him — but the polka dot design was crafted by his request in the early 1990s, as a tribute to his late mother; it first appeared on the album cover of 1994’s Slippin’ In, and he’s played it in concert ever since.

  Six-String Stories: “I promised [my mother] that I was going to buy her a polka dot Cadillac to make her feel better, because she had had a stroke and she never saw me play … I was going to get famous and drive back to Louisiana in a polka dot Cadillac to show her I’d made it,” he told Guitar World in a 2015 interview. “So I finally got the guitar company, Fender, to make me a guitar with the polka dots, and they’ve made quite a few of them now.”

  As Heard On: Guy played Strats for years, but the polka dot motif shows up on Slippin’ In, Heavy Love, Rhythm & Blues and The Blues Is Alive and Well. — D. RYS

• Peter Frampton - 1954 Les Paul Custom “Phenix”

  Gifted to him in 1970 at a Humble Pie gig in San Francisco, “Phenix,” a heavily modified 1954 Gibson Les Paul, would become Peter Frampton’s go-to guitar for a decade. Appearing on albums like Humble Pie’s Rock On and Performance Rockin’ the Fillmore, the black Les Paul would become lodged in the popular culture firmament in 1976, when it was pictured with the guitarist on the cover of his eight-times platinum Frampton Comes Alive! double album. The guitar was presumed destroyed in 1980, when a plane carrying Frampton’s equipment crashed during takeoff on the island of Curaçao, but it had in fact been recovered from the wreckage by a customs agent. Spotted by a local luthier, the guitar was returned to Frampton in 2012. As it had truly risen from the ashes, it was dubbed “Phenix” by its rightful owner.

  Triple Threat: When it left the Gibson factory in 1954, Phenix was originally equipped with one P-90 and one “staple” pickup, but it had been carved out to fit three humbucking pickups before Frampton acquired it.

  Less Is More: In their literature of the period, Gibson referred to Les Paul Customs as “Fretless Wonders.”

  Hiding In Plain Sight: During the almost quarter century that Phenix was MIA, it was seen being played by a local guitarist in Curaçao. – T. BEAUJOUR

• Eric Clapton - 1964 Gibson SG “The Fool”

  Eric Clapton’s 1964 Gibson SG, dubbed “The Fool,” is a vibrant testament to the psychedelic era. Painted by Marijke Koger and Simon Posthuma of the Dutch design collective The Fool, this guitar became synonymous with Clapton during his time with Cream. The artwork on the SG was commissioned by Robert Stigwood, the band’s manager, as part of a broader project (that also included custom designs for Ginger Baker’s drum kit and Jack Bruce’s Fender Bass VI) in preparation for Cream’s debut U.S. tour.

  The Fool was more than just a showpiece; it played a crucial role in the production of Cream’s second album, Disraeli Gears, contributing to iconic tracks such as “Sunshine of Your Love” and “Strange Brew.” The guitar’s journey didn’t end with Clapton. After Cream disbanded, he passed the SG to George Harrison, who subsequently handed it down to Apple Records artist Jackie Lomax. Later, it found its way to Todd Rundgren.

  Specs: The Fool was painted with oil-based enamel paint, in the gaudy DayGlo of the day.

  Lookin’ Good: The centerpiece on the face of the guitar is a cherub whose curly hair was inspired by Clapton’s hairstyle at the time.

  Strange But True: The original design extended onto the fretboard, which Clapton later had cleaned to avoid interference with his playability. – B. TOLINSKI

• Robbie Robertson - 1954 Stratocaster 'The Last Waltz'

  The Band guitarist Robbie Robertson purchased his 1954 Fender Stratocaster, then sporting a red finish, from Norman’s Rare Guitars in Tarzana, Calif., in 1973. Accustomed to playing Telecasters equipped with only two pickups, Robertson found that the Strat’s middle pickup often impeded his picking, and had it removed, opting instead to add a third pickup next to the bridge unit. As The Band was preparing to film the farewell concert that would be immortalized in Martin Scorsese’s 1978 documentary The Last Waltz, Robertson decided to mark the occasion by having the guitar’s body dipped in bronze, which is how it appears in the film and is etched into guitar history.

  Dating Game: Robertson thought that his guitar dated to 1958, until he sent it to Fender’s Custom Shop to be duplicated for a limited edition run of exact recreations and it was completely disassembled and properly identified.

  What About Bob?: Robertson used his Stratocaster extensively when he and the Band backed Bob Dylan on his 1974 Planet Waves album.

  Heavy Metal: The process of bronzing the guitar’s body more than doubled the instrument’s weight. – T. BEAUJOUR

• Joe Strummer - 1966 Fender Telecaster

  Then frontman for the pub-rock band the 101ers, Joe Strummer purchased his 1966 Telecaster in 1975 with £100 that he had received for marrying a South African woman in need of a green card. At the time, the guitar still sported its original sunburst finish, but when Strummer joined The Clash in 1976, the Tele, deemed insufficiently punk, was sprayed over with black car paint. The word “noise,” long since worn off, was stenciled onto the guitar’s upper bout, and a now legendary “Ignore Alien Orders” sticker was affixed closer to the bridge. Strummer would use the increasingly worn guitar for his entire career, turning it into one of punk rock’s most powerful talismans.

  Specs: Strummer would replace his Telecaster’s three-saddle bridge with a six-saddle version in the late ’70s, and the original Kluson tuners were at some point swapped out for sturdier Schaller M6 Mini Tuners.

  Far Out: Although it’s difficult to place the exact source of “ignore alien orders,” the phrase was used by hippies in the 1960s and can be found on the inside of promotional Grateful Dead matchbooks from the early ’70s.

  Sticker Shock: A limited edition, meticulous recreation of Strummer’s Telecaster was created by Fender’s Custom Shop in 2024. – T. BEAUJOUR

• St. Vincent – Ernie Ball Music Man St. Vincent

  

  Annie Clark, aka St. Vincent, has always had a flair for the unconventional. So it’s hardly surprising that she opted to go her own way with her signature guitar. “I could have revamped one of [Ernie Ball’s] existing models,” she told Guitar World. “I ended up just starting from scratch.” That meant something that took inspiration from everything from German synthpop artist Klaus Nomi to the ’80s Italian postmodern design movement Memphis Group. And to make it “sympathetic to the female form,” she kept the body light, and tapered in the center. The St. Vincent also sounds like a beast. For proof beyond Clark’s own body of work, just ask Jack White, who played one on Saturday Night Live in 2018, or Olivia Rodrigo, who rocked a purple St. Vincent “Goldie” on her Guts World Tour.

  Specs: Lightweight Okoume body, roasted figured maple neck, rosewood fingerboard with custom St. Vincent inlays, three custom mini humbuckers.

  Stage Debut: Aug. 25, 2015, during Taylor Swift’s 1989 World Tour at L.A.’s Staples Center. Clark and Beck joined Swift for a cover of Beck’s “Dreams.”

  Strange But True: Clark’s guitar had not been publicly revealed when she debuted it on stage. When Swift later posted a photo of their performance on her socials, Ernie Ball’s website “nearly crashed,” CEO Sterling Ball recalled. “It was crazy.” – R. BIENSTOCK

• Jimi Hendrix - Fender Stratocaster “Woodstock”

  Although he didn’t iconically light it on fire, Hendrix’ white 1968 Olympic Strat, which he dubbed Izabella, was his guitar of choice for his historic Woodstock rewrite of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” which biographer Philip Norman described as “punctuated by drawn-out vibrato, flights into double time and long dying falls erupting into a feedback cacophony that somehow mimicked the war’s sounds.” Other songs Hendrix and his Band of Gypsys played in their two-hour August 18, 1969, set: “Foxey Lady,” “Fire,” “Spanish Castle Magic,” a 14-minute “Voodoo Child” and, of course, “Izabella.” Hendrix bought it at Manny’s Music in New York; it’s the final guitar he played in concert before his death at age 27 in 1970.

  Specs: The Strat had an alder body, a two-piece maple neck and a Strat headstock that appeared upside down in Hendrix’s left-handed style.

  On Display: Izabella hangs at MoPOP, the rock n’ roll history museum in Seattle. – S. KNOPPER

• Randy Rhoads – Karl Sandoval Custom 1979 V

  The Hollywood Sunset Strip was a breeding ground for guitar heroes in the 1970s, and having a custom guitar was a rite of passage. After spotting George Lynch, who would come to fame with Dokken, wielding a unique tiger-striped V at a local club, Randy Rhoads was determined to commission his own distinct version. Rhoads’ quest led him to Karl Sandoval’s workshop in Rosemead, just outside Los Angeles.

  Randy desired a V-shaped guitar akin to Lynch’s but with specifications that mirrored his personal style—combining Gibson’s body with a Fender-style tremolo. In an interview with DiMarzio, Sandoval recalled, “Randy wanted it to feature 3/4-inch white dots on its black finish and bowtie-inlaid fret markers that matched his signature stage outfit.” After meticulous crafting, the guitar was completed at a cost of $740. “He wasn’t rich and famous yet, so it was a lot of money to him, but he was totally stoked.”

  Strange But True: Sandoval never witnessed Rhoads perform live.

  As Seen On: Randy Rhoads was famously filmed performing “Mr. Crowley” with this guitar during an appearance on the television show After Hours with Ozzy Osbourne’s band.

  Rarity Factor: Besides Randy Rhoads and George Lynch, guitar legends like Eddie Van Halen also turned to Sandoval for their custom needs, underscoring the luthier’s impact on the rock scene. – B. TOLINSKI

• Jerry Garcia - Doug Irwin Custom 1973 “Wolf”

  Jerry Garcia cherished his collection of custom guitars, each christened with a singular nickname like “Alligator,” “Tiger,” “Rosebud” and “Lighting Bolt.” Among these, “Wolf” stands out as a masterpiece crafted by luthier Doug Irwin. Dubbed by Garcia as “twelve guitars in one,” Wolf’s advanced electronics provided an unparalleled range of tonal possibilities, making it central to recordings like the Grateful Dead’s Wake of the Flood (1973) and Terrapin Station (1977), and a fixture in countless live performances throughout the ’70s. The guitar’s name comes from its distinctive inlay—a whimsical cartoon wolf positioned below the bridge, which adds a touch of fun to this profound instrument.

  Stage Debut: “Wolf” made its debut at a New York City performance for the Hells Angels in 1973 shortly after being delivered to Garcia.

  As Seen On: It is prominently featured in 1977’s The Grateful Dead Movie, directed by Garcia, showcasing live stage footage.

  Strange But True: Garcia played Wolf during the Grateful Dead’s historic 1978 concert in front of Egypt’s Great Pyramids.

  Sold!: In 2017, Wolf fetched $1.9 million at a charity auction, underscoring its significant cultural and historical value. – B. TOLINSKI

• Maybelle Carter - 1928 Gibson L-5

  Mother Maybelle was a teenager in 1928 when she bought the guitar that would forever change country music. It had F-holes that resembled a violin’s and was an arch top in a world of flattops. Maybelle, a member of the nascent country trio the Carter Family, bought it because it was the fanciest one in the store. Until this moment, the flattop had primacy, but Carter’s L-5 was loud, elbowing its way to the forefront of the group’s sound. It made Maybelle country music’s earliest guitar hero and enabled her “Carter Scratch,” which gave the impression she was playing both rhythm and melody. It also made the Carter Family superstars, transformed the guitar into the central instrument in country music, helped the genre’s growth and influenced later greats like Chet Atkins and Johnny Cash, who would marry Maybelle’s daughter, June.

  As Heard On: The Gibson was Carter’s lifelong companion, appearing on iconic Carter Family recordings “Wildwood Flower” and “Keep on the Sunny Side,” as well as her performance on the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s 1972 release, Will the Circle Be Unbroken.

  Sold!: Carter bought her L-5 for $275, a fortune during the Depression. She never sold it, even later on when she was strapped for cash. In 2004, the L-5 sold for $575,000, then landed at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville. – A. STEWART

• Joan Jett - 1977 Gibson Melody Maker

  

  Melody Makers are known for being journeyman guitars, reliable if inelegant beaters that are light but solid, inexpensive and near impossible to destroy. Jett acquired her model near the end of her time in the Runaways. Made of mahogany and rosewood, it’s painted white, covered with stickers (“Girls Kick Ass”) and beat to hell. According to Jett, she added a killswitch and one Red Rhodes Velvet Hammer humbucker. She played it on her early solo hits “Bad Reputation,” “Crimson and Clover,” and “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll.”

  Strange But True: Jett bought the guitar from Eric Carmen, of Raspberries fame, who had used it for years.

  Six-String Stories: “I don’t even need to use it to record anymore, because I have a guitar that sounds pretty much like it,” Jett told Guitar World in 2017. “I’m actually kind of afraid to bring out the original. It’s got a great heritage. It’s a guitar full of hits.” – A. STEWART

• Charlie Christian - Gibson ES-150

  Christian manned a Gibson ES-150 when he joined Benny Goodman’s big band in 1939. Until then, “amplified” acoustic guitars were standard in big bands, playing mostly rhythm, but Christian “established the electric guitar as an instrument with its own voice and personality,” writes Walter Carter in The Gibson Electric Guitar Book. Soon Christian was performing at a Gibson guitar clinic in New York along with Les Paul — but unlike Goodman’s progressive bands, the clinics were segregated, and Paul appeared with white musicians while Christian could play only with his Black colleagues. Before his 1942 death of tuberculosis at just 25 years old, Christian switched to an ES-250.

  Specs: A certain kind of Gibson single-blade pickup, with a hexagonal bobbin top, was known as the “Charlie Christian pickup,” or “CC pickup,” according to The Gibson Electric Guitar Book.

  Talk of the Town: Jazz guitarist Mary Osborne referred to Christian’s sound as a “distorted saxophone.”

  As Heard On: It’s not documented which guitar Christian played on which sessions during his brief career, but his most famous solos include those on Benny Goodman & His Orchestra’s “Air Mail Special” and “Solo Flight.” – S. KNOPPER

• Tony Iommi - 1964 Gibson SG Special “Monkey”

  Tony Iommi’s 1964 Gibson SG Special got its nickname from a whimsical sticker on its body showing a cartoon primate playing a fiddle. But make no mistake – “Monkey” is a seriously heavy instrument. It is the sound of Iommi, which makes it the sound of Black Sabbath, which makes it the sound of heavy metal itself. That Iommi began playing the guitar at all was a happy accident: In the earliest days of Sabbath, he favored a white Fender Stratocaster. But when the Strat’s pickup failed during recording sessions for the band’s 1970 debut, Iommi grabbed his backup – a cherry red, left-handed SG Special – and rock n’ roll hasn’t sounded the same since.

  As Heard On: The Monkey was Iommi’s main guitar through much of the 1970s; it’s the axe powering everything from “Paranoid,” “Iron Man” and “War Pigs” to “Sweet Leaf,” “Supernaut” and “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath.”

  Specs: It boasts a custom John Birch designed neck pickup, as well as a neck coated in poly lacquer to make it easier for Iommi to navigate the frets with his middle and ring fingers – both of which he covered with thimbles after losing the tips in an accident at a sheet metal factory.

  Signature Style: In 2020 the Gibson Custom Shop released the limited-edition Tony Iommi “Monkey” 1964 SG Special Replica, with each one hand-signed and numbered by Iommi himself. – R. BIENSTOCK

• Prince - Dave Rusan Custom “Cloud”

  

  Prince was known to be uncompromising in his music and career. But when it came to his iconic “Cloud” guitar, he left much of the design up to its builder, Dave Rusan. “His instructions were sketchy at best,” Rusan, then a luthier at Knut Koupee music shop in south Minneapolis, recalled to Guitar Player in 2022. Prince was a frequent customer, and when he needed a custom-built guitar for a movie he was working on called Purple Rain, Rusan took on the project. Armed with a few directives from Prince – long horn on the body similar to a Sardonyx bass he owned; white finish; gold hardware; EMG pickups – Rusan let his imagination do the rest. “I felt that the best plan was to make a guitar I would enjoy playing and hope that we both had the same taste.” The result, like almost everything Prince touched in the ’80s, was instantly iconic.

  Stage Debut: Prince plays the Cloud in the climactic final scene of 1984’s Purple Rain, performing the titular track at Minneapolis nightclub First Avenue.

  Rarity Factor: Rusan constructed two additional white Cloud guitars for Prince to use on the Purple Rain Tour, as well as one for a Warner Bros. Records giveaway. Cloud replicas from other luthiers and the Schecter guitar company came later. Rusan currently takes custom orders for the model via his own company, Rusan Original.

  Strange But True: The original Cloud had a body of hard rock maple, a heavy wood. According to Rusan, this wasn’t a problem: “Prince was small, but he was very fit,” he told Premier Guitar. “A couple of times I wanted to speak to him, and [his people would] say, ‘Well, he’s working out in the back room.’ So he could handle it.” – R. BIENSTOCK

• Joni Mitchell - 1956 Martin D-28

  

  The guitar Joni Mitchell calls “my beloved” was a ‘56 Martin D-28 acoustic, given to her in 1966 by a U.S. Marine captain who had rescued it from an enemy attack in Vietnam. As if in some folk-rock version of Final Destination, the Martin would also barely survive being damaged in an airplane cargo hold. “When they cleared the wreckage, all that survived was this guitar,” she told writer Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers. “I don’t know whether the explosion did something to the modules in the wood, but that guitar was a trouper, man… I’ve never found an acoustic that could compare with it.” Eventually it was stolen from a luggage carousel, never to be seen again.

  As Heard On: Much of Mitchell’s classic early work, ending with 1972’s For the Roses.

  Strange But True: Childhood polio permanently weakened Mitchell’s left hand. Alternate tunings — which the Martin helped to enable — were less difficult for her to play. – A. STEWART

• Steve Vai - Ibanez Jem

  By 1987, Steve Vai was a bona fide guitar superstar. He had played with Frank Zappa, stepped into the unimaginably big shoes of Eddie Van Halen in David Lee Roth’s solo band and portrayed the devil’s own guitarist in the 1986 Ralph Macchio vehicle Crossroads. But he had yet to create his own signature instrument. After calling on a several manufacturers to submit prototypes, Vai settled on Japanese company Ibanez. His new guitar, the Jem, incorporated wild neon and floral finishes, fanciful fretboard inlays and several design innovations like a “monkey grip” handle in the upper bout, and a “bear claw” cavity behind the tremolo that allowed for wild ascending squeals.

  That’s What Friends Are For: The Jem is named after Vai’s high school buddy Joe “Jem” Despagni, who built many of the guitarist’s early instruments.

  Curtain Call: The floral-pattern material used on the late ’80s Jem 77-FP was chosen because Vai had it on curtains in his home.

  One Louder: Vai’s second Ibanez signature guitar, a seven-string Jem (sans monkey grip) dubbed the Universe, was introduced in 1990. Used by him both solo and with Whitesnake, its extra-low B string allowed for new depths of heavy chugging and would later be embraced by nü-metal bands like Korn and Limp Bizkit. – T. BEAUJOUR

• Slash - Kris Derrig Les Paul Replica

  

  Few, if any, guitarists are more closely associated with the Gibson Les Paul than Slash. But the one he first came to prominence with is not a Les Paul at all – in fact, it’s not even a Gibson. Rather, it’s an LP copy made by Kris Derrig, a luthier who was connected to L.A.-based repair shop Music Works. When Guns N’ Roses were recording their soon-to-be-massive debut, 1987’s Appetite for Destruction, Slash — armed with a Jackson and a B.C. Rich, among other guitars — was struggling to get a decent tone in the studio. The band’s manager, Alan Niven, stopped into Music Works to find something that could help, and the owner showed him Derrig’s creation. Call it a gift or a last-ditch act of desperation, but Niven delivered the sunburst ’59 replica to the guitarist. “It just sounded f–kin’ perfect, man… like a gift from on high,” Slash told Guitar World in 2023.

  Strange But True: Niven knew Slash was having guitar troubles when he showed up at the Appetite sessions and “there was a f–king [Gibson] SG though the windscreen, neck-first,” he told L.A. Weekly in a 2016 interview. “That’s a message that even I can understand.”

  Shop Talk: Slash only played the Derrig live for a short period in 1987-1988, but it’s been with him in the studio his entire career. “For the Conspirators, Snakepit, Guns N’ Roses, and Velvet Revolver, it’s always been my main recording guitar,” he recalled in the 2022 book The Collection: Slash. “If I was on a desert island it would probably still be the one – it’s become sort of a part of me.”

  Signature Style: In 2020 Gibson released the Slash Collection of guitars, which included a signature Les Paul with an “Appetite Burst” finish, a nod to the Derrig. – R. BIENSTOCK

• Johnny Winter - 1964 Gibson Firebird V

  During the psychedelic ’60s, when musicians competed to look more bizarre than the next, few could hold a candle to Johnny Winter, the wild blues-rocker from Beaumont, Texas. Signed to Columbia Records for a whopping $600,000 in 1968, Winter — with his long white hair and high-energy stage show — was outrageous, and he played an unusual guitar to match: an angular Polaris White 1964 Gibson Firebird V.

  Appearing on the cover of Winter’s 1976 album, Captured Live!, the guitar was not only as distinctive looking as its owner, but also sounded different. As Winter explained, “The Firebird is the best of all worlds. It feels like a Gibson, but it sounds closer to a Fender. I have six of them, but the 1963 is the first one I ever bought, and it sounds the best. There’s nothing it can’t do!”

  Legacy: In 2008, the Gibson Custom Shop honored Winter by releasing a signature Johnny Winter Firebird V, presented by Slash in a Nashville ceremony.

  Rarity Factor: With fewer than 500 Firebird V models shipped in 1964, this guitar remains a prized possession among collectors.

  Strange But True: The Firebird was designed by automobile designer Ray Dietrich, inspired by the sleek tailfins of mid-’50s cars. – B. TOLINSKI

• Bob Dylan - 1964 Fender Stratocaster

  When Dylan played the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, he had already released the Bringing It All Back Home album and a subsequent single, “Like a Rolling Stone,” both of which signaled a turn away from political folk and toward an electrified rock approach. But it was his performance there on July 25 that truly riled folk purists, when he appeared onstage with (gasp!) an electric guitar for the first time in his career. Dylan played just three songs with the instrument, a 1964 sunburst Fender Stratocaster, but the moment was as electric as the guitar slung around his shoulder, eliciting boos from the outraged Newport Folk audience (although some observers claim this was more in response to poor sound quality and his truncated set). Either way, the act was a milestone moment in Dylan’s career and music in general, kicking off the folk-rock movement in earnest.

  Stage Debut: Newport, but it almost didn’t happen. Reportedly, Dylan only decided to “go electric” the night before his performance, after being annoyed by the treatment electric blues group the Paul Butterfield Blues Band received at the hands of festival organizers.

  Strange But True: Not long after Newport, the guitar was left aboard a private plane. Pilot Victor Quinto attempted to return it but received no response, and it remained in his family’s attic for decades.

  Sold!: In 2011 Quinto’s daughter, Dawn Peterson, had it positively ID’d as the Newport Strat via the PBS show History Detectives. Two years later, it was auctioned at Christie’s for $965,000, replacing Clapton’s “Blackie” as the most expensive guitar to date. – R. BIENSTOCK

• Bonnie Raitt - 1965 Fender Stratocaster “Brownie”

  Raitt bought her beloved ‘65 Strat for $120 in 1969 on the street at 3 a.m. It was unpainted, with the body of a ‘65 Strat and a neck from who-knows-when. She brought it home, named it “Brownie,” and hasn’t been separated from it since. (Except for raising the action, she has hardly modified it, either.) “For portability, sexiness, and the way it feels on your body, nothing beats a Strat,” Raitt told The Los Angeles Times in 2014. “When you strap on a Stratocaster, you feel just like your heroes. I don’t think you can separate how it makes you feel from the memory of other people playing it.”

  Stage Debut: According to Raitt, she has played “Brownie” at every single show since they met.

  Good Cause: Raitt was one of the first women to have a signature Fender named after her, circa 1995-96. She donated proceeds from the line to the Bonnie Raitt Guitar Project, an organization that helps underprivileged children. – A. STEWART

• Malcolm Young - 1963 Gretsch 6131 Jet Firebird

  Yes, we all know Angus’ Gibson SG. But just as indispensable to AC/DC’s six-string legacy – and maybe even more foundational to their trademark crunchy rhythms and riffs – is his brother Malcolm’s mainstay 1963 Gretsch Jet Firebird. Nicknamed, quite fittingly, “The Beast,” Malcolm began using the instrument with AC/DC in the early 1970s — and didn’t stop until he retired from the band in 2014. By that point, Malcolm, a primary architect of AC/DC’s sound and style, had helped write and record some of rock’s most well-known and beloved anthems – “Highway to Hell,” “Back in Black,” “You Shook Me All Night Long,” “Thunderstruck,” and about a million others, give or take. Malcolm passed away in 2017 after a years-long battle with dementia, but his legacy in AC/DC is carried on by his nephew Stevie Young, who assumed his place in the band and, like his uncle, proudly plays a Gretsch Jet Firebird onstage.

  Origin Story: “The Beast” came to Malcolm via his older brother, George Young, and Harry Vanda, both of whom were members of Australian rock band the Easybeats and later became AC/DC’s producers.

  Specs: Originally red, the guitar’s paint was stripped away in the late ‘70s to expose the wood beneath. Malcolm also replaced the bridge and removed two of the three pickups entirely, leaving two empty cavities in the body where they were once housed.

  Signature Style: In 2014, Gretsch honored Malcolm with the G6131MY-CS Custom Shop Malcolm Young “Salute” Jet, a note-perfect recreation of “The Beast,” “accurate down to every last nick, scratch and dent.” – R. BIENSTOCK

• Billy Gibbons - 1959 Gibson Les Paul “Pearly Gates"

  

  Billy Gibbons became infatuated with the sunburst Gibson Les Paul after seeing Eric Clapton holding one on the back cover of the Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton album. How he came upon his own ’burst is a story of epic proportions, even for a master yarn spinner like Gibbons: In a nutshell, Gibbons lent his car, a 1939 Packard, to an aspiring actress who drove it from Houston to Hollywood for an audition. After nailing the part, she sold the car and gave $250 in proceeds to the guitarist, who used it to procure a mint condition ’59 burst that had been gathering dust under a Texas rancher’s bed. Gibbons then took that guitar nationwide: Pearly Gates has played a central role on each and every ZZ Top album, from 1971’s ZZ Top’s First Album to 2012’s La Futura. Now it’s one of the most famous ’bursts in music history.

  Name Game: Gibbons named his Les Paul after the 1939 Packard, telling Guitar Player in 2020, “We didn’t think the car would make it past El Paso. But it brought [the actress] all the way to Hollywood, and she got the part. We figured the car must have divine connections, so we named it Pearly Gates.”

  Strange But True: Gibbons found an extra set of strings inside Pearly Gate’s case, and also a love note from a girlfriend of the original owner. It read: “I like what you do. Meet me later. You might like what I can do.”

  Rarity Factor: The ’59 burst is considered the Holy Grail of electric guitars due to its top-notch construction, premium woods and stunning finish. With less than 650 shipped, it’s also incredibly rare, making the model among the most coveted in guitardom. – R. BIENSTOCK

• Wes Montgomery - 1963 Gibson L-5-CES

  A self-taught jazz guitar virtuoso with a smooth sound, Wes Montgomery was renowned for his distinct technique of plucking strings with the side of his thumb. He often played on a variety of Gibson models, but he was most closely associated with this 1963 Gibson L-5 CES (Cutaway Electric Spanish). Gibson later crafted three custom L-5s for Montgomery, tailored with single inverted pickups at the neck to enhance the sweetness of his sound. His prolific career ended with his untimely death from a heart attack in 1968 at just 45.

  As Heard On: Stevie Wonder wrote two tributes to Montgomery: “Bye Bye World,” which appeared on his 1968 album Eivets Rednow, and “We All Remember Wes,” which George Benson recorded for his 1978 live album Weekend in L.A.

  Strange But True: Montgomery’s thumb was double-jointed; he could bend it all the way back to his wrist.

  Tricks of the Trade: Montgomery tried using a pick for several weeks. Although it enabled him to play faster compared to his thumb, it didn’t produce a sound he liked. – B. TOLINSKI

• Woody Guthrie - Gibson L-00

  The machine that kills fascists was designated by its maker, Gibson, as “parlor size,” meaning it’s smaller and (usually) shorter in scale — but still comfortable to play, worn-in and homey-sounding. Guthrie’s Gibson L-00 wasn’t much to look at, necessarily; its original color was probably black (it had been painted and repainted) with a fire stripe pickguard and 14 frets. Guthrie wasn’t sentimental about guitars – his or anybody else’s. They were merely utilitarian objects, tools of the song. He was quick to bang up his own, slow to return those he had borrowed, tended to leave them places and often didn’t use a case.

  Strange But True: Guthrie’s “This Machine Kills Fascists” slogan, stickered or painted on this and numerous guitars, was actually co-opted from the U.S. War Department.

  Sold!: It’s estimated that Guthrie owned, gave away, lost or forgot about hundreds of guitars. The whereabouts of most of them, including the Gibson L-00, are unknown. Billionaire Paul Allen (who co-founded Microsoft Corporation) had one. Another was allegedly found in a Seattle secondhand shop in the 1960s and sold for $2. – A. STEWART

• Duane Allman - 1961 Gibson SG

  In the early days of the Allman Brothers Band, Duane Allman relied on a single guitar, frequently retuning it to play slide—his specialty. Dickey Betts, his fellow guitarist and bandmate, admired Allman’s skill but found the constant tuning adjustments during performances annoying. To streamline their live shows, Betts handed over his cherry red 1961 Gibson SG to Allman, saying, “Here, take this guitar, tune it to your open E slide tuning, and leave it tuned!”

  The gesture proved pivotal. Duane Allman’s use of the SG became legendary, particularly on tracks like “Statesboro Blues” and “Whipping Post” from the band’s classic 1971 live album, At Fillmore East. “He loved that guitar,” recalled Betts with a chuckle, recognizing that he had made the right decision.

  As Heard On: Initially a practitioner of bottleneck slide guitar in standard tuning, Allman eventually gravitated to playing in the open E tuning heard on “Statesboro Blues” and “Trouble No More.”

  Tricks of the Trade: Allman used a glass Coricidin cold medication bottle on his ring finger to create his fluid sound.

  Under the Influence: Duane drew significant inspiration for his slide technique from blues harmonica greats like Little Walter and Sonny Boy Williamson, adapting their expressive bends and vibrato to his guitar work. – B. TOLINSKI

• Kurt Cobain - 1969 Fender Mustang “Smells Like Teen Spirit”

  A budget Fender made between 1964 and 1982, the Mustang was “cheap and plentiful” throughout Nirvana’s career, according to Kurt Cobain and Nirvana — a key attraction for Cobain, who played a left-handed model with a racing stripe down the middle in the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” video and another for “In Bloom.” “They sound like crap and are very small,” he told Guitar World in 1991, as Nevermind was breaking. “They also don’t stay in tune, and when you want to raise the string action on the fretboard, you have to loosen all the strings and completely remove the bridge.” Later, master guitar-maker Danny Ferrington helped him transform the Mustang into a more sophisticated Jaguar-and-Mustang hybrid.

  Six-String Stories: Complaining about the Mustang, Cobain told Guitar World: “Whoever invented that guitar was a dork.” The interviewer responded, “It was Leo Fender.” To which Cobain said: “I guess I’m calling Leo Fender, the dead guy, a dork. Now I’ll never get an endorsem*nt.”

  Sold!: In 2022, Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay purchased Cobain’s instrument for $4.5 million in an auction by Julien’s, which had predicted it would go for $800,000. – S. KNOPPER

• James Burton - 1969 Fender Telecaster, Paisley Red

  Famed sideman and master of the playing style known as “chicken pickin,'” Burton has worked with everyone from Ricky Nelson to Phil Spector to Gram Parsons, though he’s best known as a member of Elvis Presley’s rhythm section, the TCB band. He used his bright paisley Tele, acquired in 1969, during his years with the King, and in thousands of studio sessions since. According to Burton, it has been frequently modified, with the bridge, hardware, neck and pickups all undergoing renovation. The paisley pattern was made using stick-on wallpaper known as cling-foil. Fender bought out the pattern’s stock, and later resorted to silk-screening.

  Talk of the Town: Burton had been playing a ‘52 Tele when Fender offered to replace it with a bright pink and paisley ‘69 Tele that looked like something a hippie would play. When Burton first saw it, he was alarmed. “It shocked me,” he told the Musicians Hall of Fame & Museum. “I said ‘No, no, that’s not for me’… took it and played it, and it played really nice.”

  Stage Debut: It took two weeks for Burton to work up the nerve to break out the guitar on stage in front of Elvis, because the Tele was flashy, and Presley could get upset about such things. But the King loved it. – A. STEWART

• Les Paul - “The Log”

  Disappointed with the Gibson electrics on the market throughout the ’30s, Les Paul, 26, spent his Sundays in 1940 sculpting pine planks at an Epiphone stringed-instrument factory in Manhattan. He came up with what Ian S. Port, in The Birth of Loud: Leo Fender, Les Paul and the Guitar-Pioneering Rivalry That Shaped Rock ‘n’ Roll, called, “a lumberyard mutant, a stick bound with steel cables, a wood shop project.” It took Gibson years — and intense competition from Fender, whose Telecaster was gaining popularity — to introduce the Les Paul model. It took off, becoming one of the most recognizable electric guitars in music history, the instrument of choice for Pete Townshend, Bob Marley, Slash and Eric Clapton.

  Specs: The Log was a two-foot-long, four-by-four-inch piece of pine, to which Paul affixed a Spanish neck, a vibrato tailpiece, a bridge, electrical pickups and a fretboard.

  Six-String Stories: “I took it to the bar out in Sunnyside [New York], and when I sat in with just the four-by-four, they laughed at me. When I put the wings on [the body], they thought it was a guitar and everything was fine,” Paul told The Guitar Magazine.

  On Display: The Log is at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville. “It had this great sustain and this great tone that you couldn’t get with acoustic guitars,” museum editor Michael McCall told The Tennessean. – S. KNOPPER

• Chet Atkins - Gretsch Country Gentleman

  When Gretsch approached prolific session guitarist Chet Atkins to propose a branding deal in the ’50s, “I was on the Opry, I was playing on network radio shows, and I think I was already on national television,” Atkins said in Tony Bacon’s 50 Years of Gretsch Electrics. Atkins, who would become a superstar producer and help create the Nashville sound, soon received a prototype for the Chet Atkins Hollow Body 6120. He went back and forth with Gretsch, landing in 1957 on the Country Gentleman, named for his recent solo instrumental hit. “I started to use the Country Gentleman on my records continually,” Atkins said.

  Notable Fan: George Harrison, who owned two models and played them with the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964, instantly boosting Gretsch’s sales and production — and, says Guitar Center senior VP of merchandising Michael Doyle, “changing the course of popular music.”

  Evolution of an Instrument: In 1981, Atkins had Gibson build him another Country Gentleman: “Rather than having to convince them about certain details of the guitar’s design, like I always had to do with Gretsch,” he later wrote in his autobiography Me and My Guitars, “the Gibson crew went all out to make sure I was happy.” – S. KNOPPER

• Eric Clapton - Stratocaster "Blackie"

  

  During his legend-making days with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers and Cream, Eric Clapton was an avowed Gibson man. But after seeing his future Blind Faith bandmate Steve Winwood play a Stratocaster, an intrigued Clapton walked into Nashville’s Sho-Bud guitar shop in 1970 and bought one – six, actually – Strats of his own, giving three away and keeping the others for himself. A few years later, he had Nashville luthier Ted Newman-Jones combine the best aspects from each – the black lacquer-finished alder body from a 1956 example; the one-piece maple neck from a ‘57; single-coil pickups from the third model – and “Blackie,” one of the most iconic “mongrel” electric guitars in rock history, was born.

  Stage Debut: January 1973, London’s Rainbow Theatre. The concert was organized by Pete Townshend, who received one of the six Sho-Bud-purchased Strats.

  Retirement Party: Clapton retired it after his tour for 1985’s Behind the Sun due to wear and tear on the neck. Shortly after, he worked with Fender to design a custom Stratocaster based on it.

  Talk of the Town: Seth Walker tells Billboard that “Blackie” was one of the “first heavies that influenced my playing and truly inspired me to lean into this beautiful and mad affair. My first electric guitar was a black Fender ‘Squire’ Strat, trying to emulate Clapton with all of my young and clumsy might.”

  Sold!: Guitar Center paid $959,500 for it in 2004, setting a new record for world’s most expensive guitar. Proceeds went to Clapton’s rehab facility, the Crossroads Centre. – R. BIENSTOCK

• Johnny Ramone - 1965 Mosrite Ventures II

  The Mosrite Ventures guitar was originally designed for (who else?) instrumental surf-rock band the Ventures, but it came to greater fame when Johnny Ramone picked up a Ventures II model a decade later. In Ramone’s hands, the streamlined, entry-level axe – lightweight basswood “slab” body, thin, easy-playing neck, high-output pickups – became a weapon. He employed a blue Ventures II in the earliest days of the Ramones, but after that guitar was stolen, he picked up the 1965 white example that became as fundamental to his being as his black leather jacket and ripped blue jeans. How do we know? When the Ventures II was later auctioned, it was with the inscription “Johnny Ramone, My Main Guitar, 1977-1996” scrawled in pen on the back on the body.

  Talk of the Town: “The first concert I ever bought myself a ticket to was the Ramones at City Gardens in Trenton, NJ,” Scott Metzger tells Billboard. “I still remember Johnny Ramone marching across the stage, forcefully picking up his Mosrite Ventures model guitar, strapping it on, and launching into ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’ like it was last week. There was so much power and attitude in the way that guitar looked on him, the way he attacked it, and the way it sounded playing those songs… any other guitar wouldn’t work. It HAD to be that Mosrite for Johnny… hanging down practically at his knees of course!”

  Retirement Party: Ramone reportedly played the white Ventures II at every Ramones show from November 1977 through August 1996, when the band gave their final performance.

  As Heard On: The guitar appeared on all Ramones studio albums from this period, and Ramone can also be seen playing it in the 1979 cult classic film, Rock ‘n’ Roll High School.

  Sold!: In 2022, musician and producer Daniel Rey, then the owner of the Ventures II, sold the guitar through RR Auction, where an anonymous bidder purchased it for $937,500. – R. BIENSTOCK

• Bo Diddley - Gretsch Jupiter Thunderbird

  When early rock n’ roll pioneer Bo Diddley performed with Norma-Jean Wofford, known as The duch*ess, during the ’60s, they wore matching 1959-era Gretsch Jupiter Thunderbirds. Diddley favored Gretsches, from the Duo Jet and Jet Firebird he used for his ’50s hits to the rectangular guitar he commissioned for himself and The duch*ess to this Thunderbird with the Filter’Tron humbucking pickups. Diddley gave the model to ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons, who lost track of it until a recording session when “the engineering crew and I snaked through the guitar vault searching for that ‘certain-something’ guitar and there it was,” according to Robert Shaw’s Hand Made, Hand Played: The Art & Craft of Contemporary Guitars.

  Updated: Gretsch sells the Jupiter Thunderbird today as the Billy-Bo, a tribute to both Gibbons and Diddley.

  Talk of the Town: Jack White built his own tribute model, the Gretsch G6199 Bill-Bo Jupiter Thunderbird, and told Guitar Player: “This guitar was inspired by seeing Billy Gibbons play one of Bo Diddley’s original Gretsch Jupiter Thunderbird guitars, which Bo had given to Billy. When I was working on the theme song for the James Bond movie [Quantum of Solace] with Alicia Keys, my idea was that we’d play live at some point, and I’d outfit Alicia and myself and the entire band with these guitars, sort of like how Bo and his guitarist The duch*ess did back in the day.” – S. KNOPPER

• Keith Richards - 1954 Fender Telecaster “Micawber”

  According to legend, Eric Clapton gave Keith Richards this ‘54 butterscotch blackguard Tele, which would become his most prized guitar, as a gift for his 27th birthday. This could be true. Clapton liked to give people guitars, and there are pictures of Richards in his villa on the French Riviera a few months later, circa the Exile on Main St. sessions, holding the guitar and looking impossibly louche. Another fact lost to myth: whether the Tele is a ‘53 (as Richards once told Guitar World) or a ‘54 (as described elsewhere). “If I had to have just one, I would take the Telecaster,” Richards told an interviewer, “Because we’re kind of married.”

  Strange But True: Richards, a Charles Dickens fan, named the guitar Micawber, after a David Copperfield character who is optimistic without reason.

  Rarity Factor: Micawber has been heavily modified. During the Stones’ 1972 Exile tour, Micawber’s neck pickup was replaced with a ‘50s era Gibson PAF humbucker, placed backwards. It’s a five-string (Richards removes the low E string and uses it in open G tuning) and a pedal-steel pickup was added to the guitar’s bridge. – A. STEWART

• John Lennon - 1965 Epiphone Casino

  At one point, all the guitarists in the Beatles had Casinos: Paul McCartney acquired his first, and John Lennon and George Harrison got theirs during the Revolver recording sessions in 1966. The Casino is a versatile but not particularly fancy guitar, a thinline, true hollow body that is a solid songwriter’s guitar; its semi-acoustic nature means it’s loud enough to play without plugging in an amp. Lennon would play the Casino throughout the rest of the Beatles’ run, and into his solo career. It remains part of his estate.

  Stage Debut: It’s believed Lennon’s Casino made its first public appearance at Wembley’s Empire Pool on May 1, 1966, during an NME Annual Poll Winners All-Star concert. It was not televised.

  As Seen On: Lennon played it during the Beatles’ last public performance on Jan. 30, 1969, on a London rooftop, as shown in the 1970 documentary Let It Be and the 2021 documentary Get Back.

  Rarity Factor: The Casino used to have a sunburst painted on its body, but Lennon sanded off the finish at the suggestion of folk singer Donovan. It was believed that stripping down to the natural wood would increase the Casino’s resonance. According to Harrison, it worked. – A. STEWART

• George Harrison - 1963 Rickenbacker 360-12

  When it was announced that the Beatles were coming to America in February 1964, Rickenbacker president and owner Francis Hall was already aware that the Fab Four were playing his company’s guitars. Hall wrote to Beatles manager Brian Epstein and secured a meeting with the group in New York at the Savoy Hilton hotel after their arrival in the States. One of the guitars that Hall brought to the encounter was a Fireglo-finished example of the company’s brand new 360-12 12-string. George Harrison was too ill to attend the event, but John Lennon, after playing the guitar, convinced Hall to bring it to the guitarist’s hotel room across town. Harrison was immediately smitten with the instrument, and the jingle-jangly sound of the 12-string Rickenbacker would become not just synonymous with the Beatles, but ’60s rock in general.

  Birthday: Harrison’s 360-12 carries the serial number of CM107, dating its manufacture to December 1963.

  Go Low: Unlike other 12-strings, Rickenbacker put the lower octave string above the high ones for the E, A, D and G string pairs.

  Two for One: The 360 features a traditional mono output jack, but also boasts a stereo and a (rarely used) “Ric-O-Sound” output on the same mounting plate. – T. BEAUJOUR

• Django Reinhardt - Selmer Maccaferri 503

  Mario Maccaferri was an Italian-born luthier who worked in the Paris factory of Selmer, then a European saxophone company, and his early, flat-topped models had unusual quirks like D-shaped sound holes. It wasn’t until Maccaferri left Selmer that Django Reinhardt, the French jazz-guitar pioneer, picked up his instrument with the serial number 503. That was in 1940, and Reinhardt played the Selmer until his death in 1953, ensuring the instrument would forever be associated with the style of improvisational music known as gypsy jazz. “Mon frere, all the Americans will wish they could play on this guitar!” Reinhardt once said, according to Dave Hunter’s Star Guitars: 101 Guitars That Rocked the World. “Don’t talk to me anymore about their tinpot guitars. Listen to this, it speaks like a cathedral.”

  Talk of the Town: “Django can play one note and make it sound like a whole orchestra,” Jeff Beck said, according to Stanley Ayeroff’s Music of Django Reinhardt. And Willie Nelson’s famous “Trigger,” a Martin acoustic that famously survived a fire at his Nashville home, was directly inspired by Reinhardt’s Selmer. “I knew that was the sound I was trying to get, that Django sound,” Nelson told Texas Monthly.

  Specs: By 1936, Reinhardt’s revised Selmer contained a “small oval soundhole and a longer neck with 14 frets to the body, offering him an even greater array of notes,” according to Michael Dregni’s Django: The Life and Music of a Gypsy Legend. Reinhardt had a deal with Selmer that he received an endless supply of guitars as a quid pro quo for an endorsem*nt, and he once was said to have visited a company shop, trying out every instrument, taking the best ones for himself. – S. KNOPPER

• Jimmy Page - ca.1959-1960 Les Paul Standard “Number One”

  Page once described his “Number One” Les Paul Standard as “my mistress and my wife – and I don’t have to worry about paying any alimony.” Makes sense, as the two have never separated. Page purchased the guitar from Joe Walsh during a 1969 Led Zeppelin U.S. tour; a few months later, the band went into the studio to make Led Zeppelin II. In a 2023 Instagram post, Page recalled, “I played the Les Paul on ‘Whole Lotta Love’ and ‘What Is and What Should Never Be’ and that decided it for me: it was definitely going to be the Les Paul from then on.” Indeed it was. It became his go-to throughout his entire career with Zeppelin and beyond, and he still owns and plays it today.

  Talk of the Town: “I’m six years old, watching The Song Remains The Same with my dad,” Duane Betts tells Billboard. “What could be cooler? Jimmy Page and his Les Paul. MSG. 1973.”

  Specs: Page relied heavily on a Fender Telecaster with single-coil pickups for Zeppelin’s first album and tours, but as the band’s shows got bigger and louder, he regarded the Les Paul’s humbuckers as better suited to handle the increase in volume.

  Strange But True: Despite being one of the most famous Les Pauls in history, the year of production remains unknown. Before Page obtained the guitar, the neck had been shaved down and the serial number rendered unreadable; experts have dated it to 1959 or 1960. – R. BIENSTOCK

• Neil Young - 1953 Gibson Les Paul “Old Black”

  Beginning life as a gold top 1953 Gibson Les Paul, “Old Black” came to Neil Young by way of a trade (Young gave up a ’58 Gretsch 6120) with Jim Messina, his bandmate in Buffalo Springfield. By then, the gold finish had already been painted over. Young, an endless tinkerer and sonic obsessive, along with his guitar tech Larry Cragg, enacted additional mods over the ensuing years: adding a metal pickguard, installing a “very microphonic” Firebird bridge pickup and a toggle switch that sends its signal directly to an amp. On record, “Old Black” is the source of the gritty, gnarled tones that fuel many Crazy Horse classics; onstage more than 50 years later, it’s the instrument that Young still turns to when unleashing ear-blistering riffs and solos, not to mention waves of trance-like, nausea-inducing feedback.

  As Heard On: “Cinnamon Girl,” “Down by the River,” “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)” and many others.

  Strange But True: Recalling one of the many modifications, Young told Guitar World in 2009 that the bridge pickup “had a really bad buzz, and I sent the guitar to a shop to be fixed. When I went to get it, it was gone. And by that I mean the store was gone. The whole place just wasn’t there anymore.” – R. BIENSTOCK

• Jimmy Page - 1969 Gibson EDS-1275 Doubleneck

  By now, it’s legend: Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page recorded “Stairway to Heaven” on both acoustic and electric guitars. To play “Stairway” live without having to change guitars, he adopted this Gibson, with 12 strings and six strings on its respective necks. For years, Page played it pretty much the way it came out of the box, though he eventually switched out the six-string humbuckers for Seymour Duncans without covers. “It’s an impressive instrument,” Page told Telerama in 2014. “It looks great. It’s a sexy woman with two necks.”

  Strange But True: Gibson’s doublenecks had been around in one form or another since the ‘50s. While they’ve always been more impressive looking than actually popular, sales improved once they became easier to play and more comfortable in the early ‘60s. Naturally, “Stairway” elevated sales, too.

  Sold!: Gibson has produced a Jimmy Page 1969 EDS-1275 Doubleneck Collector’s Edition, in collaboration with Page, and signed by the artist. Page’s used pick is included. – A. STEWART

• Brian May - The Red Special

  

  The Red Special is the rare guitar to have been constructed – literally, from raw materials – by the player who made it famous. Unable to afford an electric, the then-16-year-old May and his father, an electronics engineer, decided to build one themselves using materials in and around the family home in Middlesex, England. The mahogany neck came from an old fireplace, the body was fashioned from blockboard and topped with a mahogany veneer. Electronics, plastics and metals were hand-tooled or purchased as needed. The homemade result, dubbed the Red Special due to its reddish-brown color, is the instrument heard on every Queen album beginning with their 1973 self-titled debut, and has been May’s constant companion onstage ever since. Not bad for an instrument with a tremolo arm made from a bicycle saddlebag holder.

  Strange But True: May’s dad helped him build the Red Special, but a rift developed between father and son after May opted to pursue music with Queen over completing a PhD in astrophysics; they didn’t speak for two years.

  As Heard On: In 2002, May used the Red Special to perform on the roof of Buckingham Palace during Britain’s Golden Jubilee celebration for Elizabeth II. The song he played? “God Save the Queen.”

  Signature Style: May co-founded Brian May Guitars in 2004 and issued the BMG Special, a tribute model based on his original Red Special. Today, the brand offers a full line of guitars, amps, pedals, accessories and other products. – R. BIENSTOCK

• Albert King - “Lucy” Erlewine V

  One of the blues’ true giants, Albert King was associated with V-shaped instruments since the beginning of his career in the 1950s, likely gravitating towards the design because its symmetrical body shape lent itself to being easily played upside down and backwards by the left-handed guitarist. In 1971, after seeing him perform in Ann Arbor, Mich., luthier Dan Erlewine approached King about building him a bespoke, truly left-handed model. King accepted, and when he visited Erlewine’s workshop the next day, requested that his name be inlaid in the fretboard. The guitar’s name, Lucy, was put on the headstock of the now-legendary instrument.

  Good Wood: “Lucy” was crafted out of a 150-year-old piece of walnut.

  Second Coming: The Erlewine-constructed Lucy was actually King’s second guitar given that name. The first, a 1959 Gibson Flying V that was the inspiration for King’s 1966 hit “I Love Lucy,” was stolen, although eventually recovered.

  Super Soaker: In the ’80s, Lucy was submerged for 24 hours in the aftermath of a tornado, but successfully resuscitated. – T. BEAUJOUR

• Jeff Beck - 1954 Les Paul aka “Oxblood”

  Few rock n’ roll paintings are as iconic as the portrait of Jeff Beck on the cover of his 1975 solo album, Blow by Blow. The illustration not only immortalized Beck, but also the 1954 Les Paul in his hands. Acquired in November 1972 while Jeff was passing through Memphis on tour with Beck, Bogert & Appice, this guitar started as a 1954 Les Paul Gold Top. Its owner, Robert “Butch” Johnson, had it refinished in a deep oxblood burgundy and equipped it with two humbucking pickups. Dissatisfied with the color, Johnson traded it in at Strings & Things in Memphis, where it caught the eye of Beck’s acquaintance, Buddy Davis. When Davis shared his find with Beck, it was love at first sight.

  Strange But True: The “Oxblood” guitar was Beck’s third Les Paul. The first was a 1958 model ruined by a repairman, and the second was a 1960 model bought from Cheap Trick’s Rick Nielsen.

  Rarity Factor: Approximately 1,500 Les Pauls were produced in 1954. Now, they are worth anywhere from $35,000 to $45,000.

  As Heard On: Beck can be seen demonstrating this guitar in the 1974 BBC special Five Faces of the Guitar. – B. TOLINSKI

• Peter Green / Gary Moore / Kirk Hammett - 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard “Greeny”

  The 1959 Gibson Les Paul, affectionately known as Greeny, has connections to not one, not two, but three legendary guitarists. It was originally owned by British musician Peter Green, who purchased it from a London shop in the mid ‘60s and used it extensively during his time with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers and the band he formed subsequently, Fleetwood Mac. Early in the following decade, Green sold the guitar to Gary Moore, who played the Les Paul throughout his solo career and in his time with Thin Lizzy before unloading it in 2006 due to financial troubles. After making its way through the hands of several dealers and collectors (it is a ’59 ‘burst, after all) Greeny was ultimately purchased by Metallica’s Kirk Hammett, who has played it onstage and in the studio with Metallica. In a full circle moment, Hammett played “Greeny” at 2020’s Peter Green tribute concert in London.

  As Heard On: The list is long and deep: Fleetwood Mac’s “Black Magic Woman,” “Oh Well” and “Albatross”; Thin Lizzy’s Black Rose: A Rock Legend; Gary Moore’s “Parisienne Walkways”; and Metallica’s Hardwired… To Self-Destruct, among many others.

  Specs: During Green’s ownership the guitar’s neck pickup was removed and then reinstalled backward. This results in a distinct “nasal” tone when both pickups are in use together.

  Specs, Part 2: In 2022, Gibson and Hammett unveiled a limited-edition Custom Shop “Greeny” Les Paul replica and have since introduced several additional Greeny models. – R. BIENSTOCK

• Stevie Ray Vaughan - ca. 1963 Fender Stratocaster aka “Number One”

  Stevie Ray Vaughan acquired his legendary road-worn “Number One” Fender Stratocaster in 1974 at Ray Henning’s Heart of Texas Music in Austin. Sometimes referred to as “First Wife,” or just “The Wife,” this guitar features a 1963 body fitted with pickups from a ’59 Strat, and an unusually thick D-profile 1962 neck. The original white pickguard was replaced with a black one, and a left-handed vibrato system, inspired by Jimi Hendrix and Otis Rush, was installed. But perhaps the guitar’s most distinctive features are its least expensive: Vaughan picked up some stickers at a truck stop and placed a holographic “custom” sticker across the bottom of the bridge to cover a hole, and applied his initials, SRV, to the scratch plate.

  Strange But True: Stevie’s ’63 Strat was originally owned by Texas singer-songwriter Christopher Cross, composer of mellow hits such as “Sailing” and “Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do).”

  Specs: Because of frequent re-fretting, the original neck became unplayable in the late 1980s and was swapped with the neck of another guitar in Vaughan’s collection.

  Retirement Party: A month before Vaughan’s death in 1990 at age 35, a piece of stage rigging fell on “Number One” and snapped the neck at the headstock. – B. TOLINSKI

• Sister Rosetta Tharpe - ca. 1961 White Les Paul

  

  The pioneering gospel singer and underrated guitar hero used this white Les Paul model that Gibson redesigned in 1961, rebranding it as an “SG,” for solid guitar, with a thin body, flat top and other features. Although the Arkansas-born singer played a National Triolian, then a Gibson L-5, in her early recordings and club dates in the ’30s and ’40s, she settled on this custom electric in the early ’60s. Tharpe played the SG — which biographer Gayle F. Wald said “set [Tharpe] back $750” in her book Shout, Sister, Shout! — when she hosted TV Gospel Time in the early ’60s, pulling off a pre-duckwalk move on “Down by the Riverside” that is said to have inspired Chuck Berry.

  Talk of the Town: “I don’t think Chuck Berry or Elvis or even Hendrix would play like they did without her influence,” Oliver Wood tells Billboard. “She’s been called the Godmother of Rock n’ Roll – title she got long after her death (when she was still barely known). Anyone who’s seen YouTube footage of her playing ‘Up Above My Head’ can hear and see that she was a rock n’ roll virtuoso before any of the rockers on this list.”

  Specs: Tharpe’s Gibson model had “three humbuckers and all the trimmings: a five-piece split diamond headstock inlay, pearl block markers on an ebony fingerboard and gold-plated hardware including a Tune-O-Matic bridge,” according to Rick Batey’s The American Blues Guitar: An Illustrated History (2003). She wore a custom Gucci strap displaying “SISTER” in red studs.

  On Display: The guitar has been part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s “Play It Loud: Instruments of Rock & Roll” exhibit since 2019. – S. KNOPPER

• Robert Johnson - Gibson L-1

  Like everything about the ghostly bluesman who created “Sweet Home Chicago,” “Cross Road Blues” and dozens of other classics and was said to have sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads in the Mississippi Delta, Robert Johnson’s guitar is shrouded in mystery. The only documentation that Johnson played a Gibson L-1, a no-frills flat-top acoustic introduced in 1926 to compete with C.F. Martin, comes from the two verified photos of him. In one, taken at a Hooks Brothers Photography studio in Memphis around 1935, Johnson wears a fedora and pin-striped suit and sits on a stool, cradling the L-1.

  As Heard On: Nobody knows whether Johnson actually played the L-1 on his only recordings, the 29 songs and 12 alternate takes that make up the 1990 box set Robert Johnson: The Complete Recordings. The sessions were in 1936 and 1937 in San Antonio and Dallas, but little else is known about them.

  Strange But True: It’s unknown how Johnson learned to play, but his stepsister, Annye C. Anderson, wrote in her book Brother Robert: Growing Up With Robert Johnson: “Sister Carrie ordered his first guitar from Sears & Roebuck and paid for it. … He didn’t have any money, so he had to get it from somebody. In front of our house, he would sit there and play his guitar.” – S. KNOPPER

• David Gilmour - 1969 Fender Stratocaster “The Black Strat”

  During a U.S. tour with Pink Floyd in early 1970, David Gilmour’s black Fender Stratocaster was stolen in New Orleans. A few months later, he stopped by Manny’s Music in New York City and purchased another one. In Gilmour’s hands, this instrument – a sunburst-finished model that had been sprayed black – became the iconic Black Strat (even more so after Gilmour replaced the white pickguard with a custom all-black one). Heavily modified over the years (multiple necks, for one), it was a mainstay in Pink Floyd’s sound, and central to the recording of their stunning run of ‘70s albums – The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals and The Wall. The screaming licks in “Money”? The Black Strat. The lone four-note arpeggio that introduces “Shine On You Crazy Diamond”? The Black Strat. The soaring solos in “Comfortably Numb?” The Black Strat, again. It was, Gilmour told Christie’s in 2019, “The one I used pretty much on everything.”

  Stage Debut: June 28, 1970, the Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music, Somerset, England, on a bill with Led Zeppelin and others.

  Retirement Party: London’s Royal Albert Hall, September 2016, for the final five shows of Gilmour’s Rattle That Lock tour.

  Sold!: In 2019 it sold at a charity auction through Christie’s. The Black Strat was purchased by Indianapolis Colts owner and guitar collector Jim Irsay for $3,975,000, a record at the time. – R. BIENSTOCK

• Angus Young - Gibson SG

  

  It’s appropriate that the guy wearing devil horns on AC/DC’s 1979 classic Highway to Hell favors a guitar with barbed cutouts that complement the look. In interviews, Young has said that he likes the SG because it’s light — all the better to duckwalk onstage like his hero Chuck Berry — and has a thin neck. He has also said, “I tried Fenders, but they were too heavy, and they just didn’t have the balls.”

  He fell in love with the SG — his first was a ca. 1967 SG Standard — in the earliest days of AC/DC, and you can hear the guitar on every album and every show since the Aussie rockers’ debut, High Voltage (although not always the original early ‘70s model he purchased). He stopped using it for concerts around 1978 and limited it mostly to studio use. He has said that he has “hundreds” of SGs in his collection.

  Six-String Stories: One reason Young is reluctant to use the original SG onstage: “In the early days that guitar would get broken in two, or I’d bang the headstock off,” he explained to Guitar World in 2003. “Nowadays, I do my best to look after it.”

  Strange But True: Young’s first instrument was a banjo that he converted into a guitar by adding a sixth string. — F. DIGIACOMO

• Chuck Berry - 1955 Gibson ES-350T

  Berry’s blonde, voluptuously pear-shaped, thinline Gibson — that’s what the “T” stands for — has defined what rock n’ roll looks and sounds from the start. He played the model (designed for big-band jazz guitarists) on his first hit “Maybelline,” and kept on playing it on “Johnny B. Goode,” “Roll Over Beethoven” and everything else until he switched to the ES-330 and the ES-355 by the early ’60s. When Berry suggested to his friend, Joe Edwards, that he might donate a guitar for display in his Blueberry Hill restaurant, Edwards recalled to the Los Angeles Times in 1987, “I assumed it would just be some old guitar — the kind every guitar player has laying around. But when he brought out the case, I knew right away that it was the guitar. … A lot of rock n’ roll began in that guitar.”

  On Display: The original ES-350T has been shown at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art — as part of its “Play It Loud: Instruments of Rock & Roll” exhibit in 2019 — and outside hamburger joint Blueberry Hill in Berry’s hometown of St. Louis, where he performed regularly in the Duck Room for years.

  Talk of the Town: “The big band era is my era,” Berry told the Los Angeles Times in 1987. “People say, where did you get your style from. I did the big band era on guitar. That’s the best way I could explain it. – S. KNOPPER

• B.B. King - "Lucille"

  

  The story of B.B. King’s legendary guitar begins in Twist, Ark., in 1949. It seems the Mississippi bluesman was playing a winter dance when two fans knocked over a kerosene stove during a fight and set the hall on fire. King made it to safety, but when he figured out he’d left his $30 guitar inside, he returned to rescue it. Later, he learned the fight had been over a woman named Lucille — which became the name of this guitar, and every one of the trademark Gibsons he played thereafter. “When I sing, I play in my mind; the minute I stop singing orally, I start to sing by playing Lucille,” King said of his wailing yet somehow perfectly crisp and precise style, the response to his vocal call.

  Talk of the Town: In an unpublished 2005 interview with the late Bobby “Blue” Bland, he explained: “Him and Lucille have a different way of doing things. The flavor he has when he plays Lucille — they’re together, period, and he knows what he wants to hear.”

  Specs: King loved Gibsons, particularly semi-hollow “ES,” or “electric Spanish,” models — such as the ES-335 he used on his 1965 classic Live at the Regal. By 2005, King was on his 16th version of Lucille — and rode in a tour bus with Lucille’s picture painted on the side. The name of the bus? Lucille, of course. – S. KNOPPER

• Eddie Van Halen - Homemade “Frankenstein”

  

  Few, if any, guitars in rock n’ roll have inspired more adulation and imitation than Eddie Van Halen’s red, white and black “Frankenstein.” With it, Eddie revolutionized not only how people played the guitar but also the very guitars they played. Soon after Van Halen’s emergence, Frankenstein-inspired “Super Strats,” featuring similarly brash color schemes, hot-rodded electronics and high-impact locking tremolo systems, became de rigueur for guitarists in hard rock circles and beyond. Van Halen, who built Frankenstein himself, modified the guitar many times before it assumed its current guise. It appears with a white body in photos from before the band’s signing to Warner Bros.; with black stripes on the cover of their 1978 self-titled debut; and then eventually in its most recognizable, red, white and black guise on Van Halen’s 1979 tour supporting their sophom*ore album, Van Halen II.

  Pickup Line: “Frankenstein” featured many different pickups in its bridge position, but Van Halen eventually settled on a “Patent Number” humbucker removed from his 1964 Gibson ES-335.

  Double Whammy: Although it began its life with a traditional Fender Stratocaster bridge, Frankenstein would eventually be fitted with a double-locking Floyd Rose tremolo that allowed Van Halen to perform his signature “dive bombs” without going out of tune.

  Coin Operated: At some point, Van Halen screwed a 1971 quarter onto the face of the guitar. – T. BEAUJOUR

• Willie Nelson - 1969 Martin N-20 “Trigger”

  

  The most noticeable feature on Trigger, Willie Nelson’s Martin N-20 nylon-string acoustic, is the thing that’s not there: the gaping hole above the bridge where some of the guitar’s top used to reside. Given that Nelson has been playing Trigger consistently since 1969, on countless recordings and at thousands of shows, it’s no surprise that it has endured some wear. The hole is a result of Nelson’s forceful picking style, with his plectrum constantly scuffing the guitar’s body (nylon-string, or classical, guitars are traditionally played fingerstyle, and as such the N-20 didn’t come with a pickguard). Elsewhere, Trigger has been scratched, scraped, broken apart, glued back together, braced, lacquered, repaired, modified, even autographed by dozens of other artists. And then there’s the tone: In addition to playing with a pick, Nelson, also against convention, amplifies the nylon-string instrument. Combined with his distinctive playing style, the result is a sound that — like Nelson’s voice — has been instantly recognizable to music fans worldwide for more than a half century.

  Specs: Trigger boasts a Sitka spruce top (what’s left of it), Brazilian rosewood back and sides, a mahogany neck and ebony fretboard and bridge.

  Origin Story: At a 1969 gig Nelson’s main guitar, a Baldwin, was damaged after being stepped on by a drunk patron. The repairman, Shot Jackson, deemed it unsalvageable and suggested he replace it with a new Martin D-20 he had on hand. Nelson had Jackson transfer the Baldwin’s pickup to his new guitar, paying $750 for the instrument.

  Name Game: Nelson didn’t actually christen the guitar until after he had been playing it for decades. When he did, he took inspiration from one of his childhood idols. “Roy Rogers had a horse named Trigger,” he told Texas Monthly in 2012. “I figured, this is my horse!” – R. BIENSTOCK

• Jimi Hendrix - ca. 1965 Fender Stratocaster “Monterey”

  

  “This is for everybody,” Jimi Hendrix said at the end of his cover of the Troggs’ “Wild Thing” before falling to his knees on stage at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, writhing on his Strat, dousing it with lighter fluid, setting it on fire and spectacularly smashing it, one-upping The Who’s Pete Townshend in destructive, sensual fashion. The moment is frozen in rock history, surviving for generations in film, dorm-room posters and a limited-edition Fender replica. Before the gig, Hendrix partially repainted the fiesta-red model white and added flower images.

  Rarity Factor: Jimi Hendrix had yet to become a GOAT legend when he played Monterey Pop, so little is known about this (destroyed) Strat, other than he favored Strats made after 1965. Some have theorized that this was because their weaker single-coil pickups, when fed into Marshall stacks, made for a heavier sound.

  Talk of the Town: After Townshend witnessed Hendrix’ performance, Mama Cass turned to him in the audience and asked: “Pete, aren’t you supposed to be the guy that smashes the guitars?” Townshend responded, “Everything that I do, everything that I’ve done, everything that I am, everything that I could ever come up with, is his now.”

  Talk of the Town, Part 2: “Everybody was talking about how Jimi Hendrix burned his Strat and broke it onstage and How could he?” Carlos Santana wrote in his 2014 autobiography, The Universal Tone. – S. KNOPPER

Get in the know on