Guitars, page 2

ESP

M-II

1990

Kirk Hammett’s famous ESP grew out of this one. Josh Middleton just wanted the plain version.

ESP

Eclipse

1993

ESP’s single-cut has no famous record to lean on. It has to win you over the honest way, in your hands.

ESP

KH-2

1995

Kirk Hammett walked into ESP in 1987 knowing exactly what he wanted. He’s been playing it ever since.

EVH

Wolfgang

2009

Eddie named it for his son. It took three companies before it lived under the family name.

F Bass

BN5

1997

Half an inch longer than a Jazz Bass, so the low B sounds like a note instead of a rumble.

Fender

Esquire

1950

Fender’s first electric Spanish guitar settled on one pickup, and it’s been mistaken for its little brother ever since.

Fender

Telecaster

1950 · 4 versions

Leo built it like a tool. The famous ones look like they just clocked off a double shift.

Fender

Precision Bass

1951

Leo’s bass let the player at the back be heard. You know their lines by heart. You mostly don’t know their names.

Fender

Stratocaster

1954

The guitar most people mean when they say “electric guitar.” Designed by a man who didn’t play one.

Fender

Jazzmaster

1958

Fender built it for jazz players. Jazz players said no thanks. Surfers, punks, and noise bands said yes.

Fender

Jazz Bass

1960

Built for jazz players who mostly passed on it. Then bass players started using it to take the solo.

Fender

Bass VI

1961

Six strings, an octave down. It’s what a guitar player picks up when somebody hands them the bass part.

Fender

Jaguar

1962

It was the top of Fender’s catalog in 1962. By the late ’70s it was a pawn-shop guitar, and somebody’s only one.

Fender

Mustang

1964

Fender’s 1964 student guitar. It was built to be outgrown, and a lot of people never bothered.

Fender

Coronado

1966

Fender built it to stand next to a 335. It became the guitar nobody else at the gig has.

Fender

Mustang Bass

1966

Leo Fender’s last bass for Fender was a short, cheap student model. That was the whole idea.

Fender

Telecaster Bass

1968

Fender’s first reissue was a bass it had already thrown away. George Porter Jr. found one covered in cobwebs.

Fender

Starcaster

1976

Fender built it for 335 players. They walked right past it. Twenty years later, Radiohead didn’t.

Fender

Lead II

1979

Fender built it to fill a gap in the price list. It kept turning up as somebody’s first.

Fender

Bronco Bass

2003

The Bronco started as Fender’s beginner guitar. The name survived on a beginner’s bass.

Fernandes

ZO-3

1990

A guitar shaped like an elephant, with the amp in its ear. Dave Navarro put one on a Chili Peppers record.

Fodera

Monarch

1983

In 1983 a new Brooklyn shop brought a bass to a teenager’s session. It’s still Victor Wooten’s number one.

Framus

Tennessee

2000

A German hollowbody built to take a hot rock pickup. One player said that’s when everything made sense.

G&L

L-2000

1980

Leo Fender had already built the Precision and the StingRay. In 1980 he built one more, with more switches.

G&L

ASAT

1985

Thirty-five years after his first Broadcaster, Leo Fender built another one. Gretsch objected again.

G&L

Comanche

1988

Thirty-four years after the Stratocaster, Leo Fender was still trying to get the hum out.

Gibson

L-00

1931

Gibson’s plainest flat-top of the Depression. Famous names keep getting pinned on it. It never needed them.

Gibson

Super 400

1934

Gibson priced it at $400 in the middle of the Depression and put the price right in the name.

Gibson

J-35

1936

Named after its $35 price. The J-45 that replaced it looked just like it, give or take a pickguard.

Gibson

J-200

1937

Gibson built the first one for a singing cowboy. It has been making people look like stars ever since.

Gibson

J-45

1942

Born in 1942 out of whatever wood a wartime factory could find. Gibson calls it its best-selling acoustic ever.

Gibson

J-50

1942

The J-45 with nothing to hide: a bare natural top, five dollars more, and Bob Dylan’s first album cover.

Gibson

ES-175

1949

A laminated jazz box that kept changing hands: bought used, given as a gift, borrowed for a hit.

Gibson

L-5 CES

1951

In the ’50s Gibson shipped a few dozen a year. Wes Montgomery and Scotty Moore made them count.

Gibson

ES-295

1952

Scotty Moore traded a Fender for the gold guitar in the window. Four Elvis singles later, he traded it away.

Gibson

Les Paul

1952 · 4 versions

Gibson made about 1,500 sunburst Les Pauls, decided nobody wanted them, and stopped. Then the British blues boom happened.

Gibson

EDS-1275

1958

Jimmy Page had no way to play “Stairway to Heaven” live. So he ordered a guitar Gibson had stopped selling.

Gibson

ES-335

1958

Larry Carlton played three 335s off a shop wall, unplugged, paid $850 for one, and became Mr. 335.

Gibson

ES-355

1958

B.B. King ran into a burning dance hall to save a guitar. Every Gibson after it was Lucille too.

Gibson

Explorer (1958–59 korina)

1958–59

Gibson shipped twenty-two of them. Everybody knows the shape. Hardly anybody has held the real thing.

Gibson

Flying V (1958–59 korina)

1958–59

Gibson drew the future in 1958, and almost nobody bought it. Ninety-eight guitars later, it was finished. Then the future caught up.

Gibson

ES-330

1959

From across the room it looks like a 335. Inside, it’s all air, and the people who play one like it that way.

Gibson

ES-345

1959

Marty McFly plays one in 1955, four years before Gibson made it. Nobody in the theater minded.

Gibson

Melody Maker

1959

Gibson built it to be outgrown. Billy Gibbons pinstriped his on day one. Joan Jett never traded up.

Gibson

Hummingbird

1960

Gibson gave it a hummingbird on the pickguard. Keith Richards gave it a cassette recorder.

Gibson

EB-3

1961

Jack Bruce wanted to bend bass notes like a guitarist. At thirty and a half inches, the EB-3 let him.

Gibson

SG

1961 · 3 versions

Gibson has never stopped making SGs. Angus Young has lost count of his. He still only means one.

Gibson

Dove

1962

It has the Hummingbird’s square shoulders and a bird on the guard. Different wood, longer neck, new voice.