As Made Famous By

OK, his is a 1937, with flat headstock and 14-fret neck. Three years earlier, and these came with open headstock and 12-fret neck. But for that look, that sound, and the experience of playing an absolute icon, this one's hard to beat. A nickel on brass classic!

Not only a fabled Pre-CBS Fender, but the first Fender that a stage-named Jimmy James, aka Jimi Hendrix, is pictured with. A shorter scale guitar marketed for the "student", not a bad place to start if you're on the way to rock legend status.

Hardly in the minority, there were more Harmonys produced in the 60s than Gibsons and Fenders. Now a favourite of indie explorers seeking retro mojo - and Billie Joe Armstrong's choice for Green Day crowd-pleaser Minority: "Without a doubt, singled out, the only way I know."

A rare piece of space-age technical genius, the Vox V251 Guitar Organ, a prototype handed to John Lennon, and famous more for its 2014 $305K auction price than him ever playing it. Makes the $87.5K that David Gilmour's sold for in 2019 seem like a snip at the price...

Loves this guitar so much, he even named his studio after it. And he's not the only one - Chuck Berry, B B King, Johnny Marr, Noel Gallagher, to name only a few, put this right up there among their own gods.

Billie Joe's 1956 Les Paul Junior is the normal scale version, this one the student model.  But in every other respect, the perfect match for the guitar behind so many of Green Day's classics - and that P-90 just screams!

Gibson's J-160E, famous in the hands of both John Lennon and George Harrison - and the ambidextrous Paul McCartney. The acoustic behind so many of those early Beatles hits. An absolute original, and a beauty to behold and play.

If, that is, Stuart Sutcliffe had lived to see the meteoric rise of The Beatles. A beautifully aged semi-acoustic bass, with all original features bar a nut replacement & pick-up rewire to restore full range of tone.

Glorious 60s signature for one of the guitar greats, behind a staggering catalogue of personal, session and credited recordings with so many of the jazz and mainstream giants. And nowadays, a vintage favourite of guitarists as varied as Tony Iommi, Nile Rodgers, Josh Homme and Pat Smear. Nice!

The first ever electric bass, and still #1 today. If we were trying to be specific, we'd say "as made famous by Roger Waters". But what's the point? This one is really "as made famous by pretty much any bassist". Solid-gold classic!

One of the holy trinity of Gibson-made solid-body Epiphones - beautiful symmetry from open-book headstock to fully rounded body, one P-90, and lashings of mojo.  No surprises to find one of these among Johnny Marr's favourite guitars.  It really is something.

1964 Gibson ES-345 TDC, gloriously aged cherry finish, made famous in the hands of blues legend Freddie King and many others . . . not to mention a eureka moment for Chuck Berry in the 1985 film Back To The Future ;-). "I guess you guys aren't ready for that yet. But your kids are gonna love it."

OK, Kurt's is a lefty, with an untypical combination of white pick-ups and switches on a tortoiseshell scratchplate, but this 66 Mustang kicks as hard as any of Kurt's. Brilliant player. All you need to do is come as you are.

Famous in the hands of Jack Bruce during the height (and Goodbye) of the Cream years, and favoured by any of the big name bass players of the sixties, a hugely versatile and iconic classic. Bask in the Sunshine Of Your Love.

From the original run of Epiphone Supernovas, this guitar screams "Britpop". Noel Gallagher's original is now a museum piece, so it's models like these that keep the glory days alive.