Star Guitars: 101 Guitars That Rocked the World

INTRODUCTION

GREAT VINTAGE GUITARS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY are of interest to any guitar fan, but the specific instruments that also made great music in the hands of notable artists hold a particular fascination. Star Guitars: 101 Guitars That Rocked the World investigates the tools that many of the most significant rock, blues, jazz, country, and alternative players have used to make some of the most groundbreaking and influential music of the past ninety years or so.

In other words, this book doesn’t attempt to be a list of the best guitarists. Certainly the debate on that subject will rage for eternity. (Though perhaps some of the profiles featured will encourage you to explore the work of artists you’ve been meaning to track down or have never heard of.) Rather, it examines the instruments that helped influential artists do what they did or continue to do, focusing on the guitars themselves (and, occasionally, some of the related gear), which are all extraordinary in one way or another. Whether noteworthy because they are rare collectibles and/or outstanding examples of their species, because they have been modified in interesting or unusual ways and/or used to make influential music, or all of the above, these are the guitars that have helped shape popular music, and they have been prime movers in the evolution of guitar-playing in the process.

With all this in mind, Star Guitars can be enjoyed as a compilation of profiles, and as a survey of American music in general (with a little help from the British Invasion) and of guitar technology in particular. I’ve attempted to delve into the nooks and crannies of these iconic instruments and to provide the kinds of details that help bring the world’s most lauded guitars to life. (By way of disclaimer, most instruments featured are identified by either a specific model year or a range of likely years. However, in cases where the year has never been documented, where I could not track down documentation, or where the subject has been or could be a topic of doubt or debate, I deliberately have not cited a specific year.)

Finally, as with any book based on a list of any sort, some subjectivity naturally came into play in assembling the guitars profiled here, but the editor, publisher, and I have striven to represent a diversity of brands, models, genres, eras, and styles. If there seems to be a preponderance of Les Pauls, Telecasters, and Stratocasters featured, well, it’s because those guitars are writ large in American music. Hopefully, when taken as a whole, Star Guitars presents the best possible overview of notable artists’ guitars and their role in and influence on popular music, to the extent that any book limited in pages (as all ultimately are) can manage.

GRETSCH 6120

CHET ATKINS

ARTIST SIGNATURE MODELS are pretty routine today, but an added dose of respect and awe is owed to the few artists who originated legendary electric guitars, not only by putting their names on them, but by collaborating in the design efforts too. In this respect, Chet Atkins is right up there toward the top, arguably exceeded only by Les Paul and the Gibson that bears his name.

Gretsch got an early foothold in the rock ’n’ roll business—even before the term, or the music it defined, was in wide circulation—with its solid-body (actually semi-solid) Duo Jet of 1953 and its flash-colored siblings of 1954: the Silver Jet and Jet Firebird, and the Cadillac Green Country Club model of the same year. But the New York–based guitar maker wanted a hip young guitar star to rival Gibson’s star endorsee, so it wooed Atkins, then a Nashville ace.

Chet Atkins’ 1955 Gretsch Model 6120. This is one of several guitars sent to Mr. Guitar by Gretsch and kept throughout his life. An early example of the 6120, it featured a different control setup and six-saddle bridge. Courtesy Nigel Osborne/Jawbone Press

Gretsch originally sought Atkins’ name to capitalize on his popularity in the country and western market, and the original 6120 Chet Atkins Hollow Body of 1954 carried the cowboy-junk G brand, steer’s head inlay, and Southwestern-themed fingerboard inlay engravings that the company hoped would help it achieve this. None of these were to the star’s liking, although the Bigsby tailpiece and general dimensions were all arrived at with his consultation. Atkins, nevertheless, promoted the guitar as offered, although the Western-kitsch decorative touches disappeared from the 6120 over the next couple of years. Which is just as well: Although born wearing the name of a major country star, the 6120 Chet Atkins Hollow Body was becoming a prime mover in the rock ’n’ roll boom. While the bright yet meaty DeArmond pickups suited Atkins’ fluid, virtuosic picking well enough, they suited biting, snarly rock ’n’ roll even better, particularly when the amp was cranked up a little further.

Atkins’ personal taste in guitars evolved, but the single-cutaway 6120 of the mid- to late ’50s remained fixed in stone as a rock ’n’ roll icon. Rather like Les Paul over at rival Gibson, Atkins couldn’t resist tinkering with the foundations of the original design. Also like Paul, Atkins’ tastes didn’t always converge with those of the guitar-buying public. His desire for a smoother, quieter pickup with less magnetic pull on the strings spawned the Filter’Tron humbucker from the bench of tech/inventor Ray Butts and proved to be a significant development. And while his suggestions of thinning the guitar’s body, giving it twin cutaways, and eliminating the f-holes to help reduce feedback proved popular with many players, later contraptions such as the Super Chet of 1972 and the Chet Atkins Super Axe of 1977 (with onboard effects circuitry) were considered abominations by many guitarists and certainly as odd as Les Paul’s beloved low-impedance Artist, Personal, and Recording models over at Gibson.

Regardless of what it and its namesake spawned down the years though, the original 6120 Chet Atkins Hollow Body lives on as a classic of rock ’n’ roll and country.

A 1957 Gretsch ad featuring Mr. Guitar playing the Chet Atkins solid-body version of the Model 6120, soon to become the Model 6122 Round Up.

1954 FENDER ESQUIRE

JEFF BECK

ONE OF THE MOST RESPECTED guitar virtuosi working in rock today, or indeed for the past five decades, Jeff Beck has notably played a dark-oxblood-refinished Les Paul and, in later years, several Stratocasters, but he found his way into the limelight playing one of the music world’s more humble creations. When Beck joined the Yardbirds in 1965 to replace a departing Eric Clapton, he first played the red Telecaster with rosewood fingerboard that his predecessor had used in the band. But the young gunslinger wanted a Fender of his own, and he had his heart set on a model with a maple fingerboard. While the Yardbirds were out on tour with the Walker Brothers, Beck talked John Walker (real name John Maus) into selling him his own ’54 Esquire, and over the course of the following year he applied this simple tool to some of the most groundbreaking playing the rock and pop worlds had yet witnessed, in the process making it one of the most recognizable electric guitars in history.

Jeff Beck at home with the ’54 Esquire, May 1967. © Tony Gale/Pictorial Press

The guitar forever after referred to as Jeff Beck’s Esquire—although it was in his possession for a relatively short time—is known for its deep forearm and ribcage contours, heavily scarred finish, and black pickguard. Maus himself sanded these contours in the guitar’s body to give it more of the playing comfort of a Stratocaster, which was built with such contours at the factory, although the Yardbirds’ heavy touring and recording schedule across the U.S. and the U.K. from 1965 to early 1966 certainly contributed further wear to the body. This Esquire was actually an early white-guard model, as seen in photos and film footage of Beck playing with the Yardbirds shortly after acquiring it, but the artist replaced the white plastic pickguard with a black guard to give it the look of an earlier model.

While Yardbirds bandmates were seen with new Vox designs in this 1965 TV appearance, Beck was filmed with his 1954 Esquire. He had already swapped the white pickguard for a black guard. Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

As simple an instrument as this one-pickup Fender is, Jeff Beck bent it to a dizzying range of innovative performances. His creative use of the Esquire’s volume and tone controls helped to craft ear-catching guitar parts on songs such as Train Kept A Rollin’. He ran it through a Sola Sound Tone Bender fuzz pedal on Heart Full of Soul and just thranged it for all it was worth on I’m a Man. Like so many great players, however, Beck only ever regarded the Esquire, or any of his other significant guitars, as a tool for making music, and he clearly held little sentimental regard for this legendary instrument. In 1966 he acquired a Gibson Les Paul and largely retired the Esquire for the short time he had left with the Yardbirds. In the mid-’70s, likely returning the favor of a Telecaster that Seymour Duncan modified with humbucking pickups to give to him, Beck gave the famously contoured ’54 Esquire to the budding pickup designer as a gift, and it has remained in Duncan’s possession ever since.

Petra Niemeier - K & K/Redferns/Getty Images

GIBSON ES-350TS

CHUCK BERRY

COUNTLESS GREAT RIFFS have fired up electrified music over the years, but if we were to choose just one to play to a landing party of benign, guitar-loving aliens in an effort to define the sound of rock ’n’ roll, it would have to be the driving double stops that rev up the intro to Chuck Berry’s Johnny B. Goode. Hell, though … I guess you’d go on ahead and play them the entire song, then you’d play Roll Over Beethoven, Rock and Roll Music, and Reelin’ and Rockin’, explaining how this great originator morphed twelve-bar blues progressions into something the kids could groove to. Finally you’d throw in Maybellene to give a nod to country music’s influence on Berry, and when they asked what was making that unearthly sound, you’d say, "Well, that is a Gibson ES-350T."

Berry gives one of his ES-350Ts the A-OK backstage at the Star Club, Hamburg, Germany. K & K Ulf Kruger OHG/Redferns/Getty Images

Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

A 1965 poster and a 1969 handbill use an early promotional image of Berry. By the time of these gigs, Berry had switched to Gibson’s semi-hollow double cutaways, usually the ES-355. GAB Archive/Redferns/Getty Images

Berry has long had a reputation for being a hardnosed entrepreneur, and who can blame a musician who came up in an era when too many promoters and label execs would fleece an artist for all they were worth, given half a chance? This down-to-business ethos extended to his guitars, and Berry has gone from one to the other with little sentimentality. As he told Tom Wheeler in Guitar Player magazine (1988), when one wore out, he would Get a new one! Uh, deductible, you know—tools! From the early ’60s Berry took up with Gibson’s newer double-cutaway semi-hollow models, usually the up-market ES-355, but the instruments that powered those great mid- and late-’50s sides were Gibson ES-350Ts, first the early models with P-90 pickups, then the versions loaded with PAF humbuckers that arrived in mid-1957.

Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Introduced in 1955 alongside the Byrdland and the ES-225T, the ES-350T was the mid-range model in this trio of Gibson’s first thinline hollow-body electrics, a style introduced to make the full-depth archtop electric a little less cumbersome for players who still wanted the look and amplified tone of that breed. Still deeper than the thinline semi-hollows that would follow, the ES-350Ts reduced air space did help quell feedback to some extent and sharpened the sound through an amp (something the guitar’s laminated maple top also aided). The decreased body depth also came with a shorter, 23.5-inch scale length and slimmer neck dimensions, features that might be considered unsuitable to a lanky, long-fingered guitarist, but which apparently didn’t slow Berry down any.

Whether loaded with P-90s or humbuckers (both Gibson units had similar output levels in the mid- to late ’50s), these ES-350Ts could induce some sting and grind in most combo amps of the day, and the guitar tone in the fills and solos of early tunes such as Thirty Days, Maybellene, and Oh Baby Doll certainly exhibit some bite. Add together the tone, the rhythmic momentum, the licks, and the street-poet lyrics, and rock ’n’ roll couldn’t have asked for a more expressive founding father.

Eric Clapton and Keith Richards with their ES-350T’s at Berry’s Los Angeles home during the filming of the 1987 documentary Hail! Hail! Rock ’n’ Roll. Terry O’Neill/Getty Images

Berry poses with an ES-350T equipped with the PAF humbuckers that replaced the model’s single-coils in 1957. Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Jimmy Page plays an ES-350T said to have once belonged to Chuck Berry. The occasion is Led Zeppelin’s rehearsal for their appearance at the Ahmet Ertegun tribute concert at London’s O2 Arena, December 9, 2007. Ross Halfin/Getty Images

FENDER STRATOCASTERS

RITCHIE BLACKMORE

OFTEN TOUTED BY DEVOTEES of the form as the original god of the über-metal solo, Ritchie Blackmore kept the Fender Stratocaster in the fold when most stadium rockers where turning to the fatter tones of Gibson Les Pauls, SGs, and Flying Vs to pound their Marshall stacks into submission. First with Deep Purple in the early ’70s, and then with Rainbow after 1975, Blackmore established himself as the dark master of the Stratocaster while also firming the foundations of a lead-heavy, medieval-influenced vein of hard rock and metal that has perpetuated to this day.

Blackmore with Deep Purple, circa 1973. Ian Dickson/Redferns/Getty Images

Like so many topflight artists, Blackmore modified his instruments considerably. He favored large-headstock, post-CBS Strats, mainly the early ’70s models with the bullet truss-rod adjustment points behind the nut, and is most noted for giving these a scalloped fingerboard. Created by filing away the wood between frets to create a concave fingerboard surface, the scalloped neck is said to aid speed and finger vibrato. Blackmore preferred a graduated scallop, which was fairly shallow up to the seventh fret and somewhat deeper thereafter. He also disconnected the middle pickup, which he never used; glued the necks in place, rather than relying on his Fenders’ bolt-on attachments; and modified the vibrato tailpieces to achieve some up-bend in addition to the standard down-bend by removing some of the wood in front of the trem’s inertia block in the back of the body. After they became available, Blackmore also added Seymour Duncan Quarter Pound Strat-style replacement pickups to the bridge and neck positions of his guitars, and these are retained in Fender’s artist model, the Ritchie Blackmore Stratocaster. During Rainbow’s heyday, Blackmore also took to smashing plenty of Strats, usually as the grand finale to an explosive set, which would often culminate in a dummy amp stack bursting into flames after being assaulted with the unfortunate instrument. Rather than destroying one of his painstakingly modified guitars though, he would usually inflict such punishment on a Strat copy that would be pieced back together for further abuse night after night.

Translating Blackmore’s six-string hellfire and fury to a 20,000-strong arena crowd obviously required some gargantuan amplification, and all needs were ably met with a pair of 200-watt Marshall Major heads, each of which ran through two 4x12-inch speaker cabs. To induce these extremely robust tube amps into early distortion, and to warm up the tone of the otherwise bright Strats, Blackmore played through an Awai reel-to-reel tape recorder, which he set to pause and used purely as a preamp.

In his more recent adventures with the Baroque-influenced outfit Blackmore’s Night, Blackmore plays a range of acoustic instruments, although for his electric excursions he has lately taken to endorsing a model by German-made Engl amps, the E650 Ritchie Blackmore 100W.

Fin Costello/Redferns/Getty Images

1959 GIBSON LES PAUL

MICHAEL BLOOMFIELD

AFTER FAILING TO SET THE MUSIC WORLD alight upon its release in 1958—and suffering a premature deletion from the Gibson catalog in 1960 as a result—the sunburst Les Paul Standard’s glories spread like a contagion in the mid-’60s, when its tonal splendor first became widely appreciated. Eric Clapton’s use of a late-’50s ’burst on the Blues Breakers’ so-called Beano album (aka John Mayall Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton ) spread the bug like an uncovered sneeze in a crowded kindergarten classroom. The epidemic swept most virulently through British blues-rockers, but notably caught up with plenty of American players too. Billy F Gibbons, for one, declared that he lusted after a Les Paul (and a few years later obtained an extremely fine one) after seeing Clapton play with the Blues Breakers, but ground zero for most U.S.-based sufferers has to be Michael Bloomfield, who followed Clapton’s lead into humbucker-fueled tone after wielding a slew of other guitars.