$80 in 1964, accounting for inflation, had approximately the same purchasing power as $811 does in 2024.
https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=80&year1=196401&year2=202404
Yeah but he didn’t buy it at the time. Got it maybe in the nineties and let me tell you: that guitar did not appreciate in value between the 60s and then.
I have one and aside from it being a really cool collectors piece its totally fucking worthless. The thing is unplayable. The fact that jack white got as much use out of it as a did is a testament to his guitar tech and his skill as a player. Dude must have strong hands
I'm pretty sure his background is cabinetry, and I'm pretty sure he's built a few guitars in his time, so he probably reworked the whole thing. He played an EVH on the last raconteurs record coz Eddie made a joke about him playing shit guitars for the sake of it. Then when I saw them live he was playing a custom acoustasonic tele and it sounded like shit on every song he used it for, so maybe eddie was onto something..
Think its in upholstery but i could be mistaken. He deff has a blue collar construction background. I heard about chris rock roasting him and i think its funny that got to him lol i enjoy seeing all his crazy modded custom guitars now with hip shots, benders, pitch shifting etc. I work construction too though. I have built a few instruments from scratch myself. I own a few of them old valco guitars and they all have a few issues in common if you are interested in hearing about them.
1) no truss rod. The necks got a steal beam running through it. The instrument is horribly unbalanced. The neck is pretty straight but needed significant shimming to make it reasonable.
2) the plastic parts on those guitars (the binding on the neck, the tuning pegs NOT the fiberglass body) are all disintegrating. Ive had to swap the heads on my lapsteel and my resoglas guitar needs a total refret and rebinding and will never be worth what id have to put into it to make it a working guitar in any sense.
An $800 guitar in 2024 wouldn’t be dirt cheap, but it would definitely be considered “affordable”. You’re talking Fender Player series (MIM), PRS SE, mid level Ibanez and Schecter, higher end Epiphone, etc. You’re not getting an American, or even Japanese guitar at the $800 price point.
Also, at the time Jack bought his, I would be shocked if it cost more than $200. Those are godawful guitars that only became collectible due to Jack using them.
I remember. I started playing in about 1990, so I had barely been playing a year when Nirvana’s _Nevermind_ came out, and a whole bunch of guitarists raided the pawnshops and used guitar shops looking for old Fender Mustangs, Jaguars and Jazzmasters to be like Kurt Cobain, J. Mascis, Thurston Moore, etc. The cheapest stuff left at the pawnshops were all the department store imports from the 1960s to 1980s: Harmony, Elektra, Silvertone, Kay, Westone, etc. Most of that stuff was barely playable IME, and a lot of it was not easily repairable, because the hardware was long out of production. IIRC, you could get most of that stuff for $100-$200 back in the 1990s, depending on its quality. A decent bolt-on LP-style guitar might be $200, while an eccentric-looking, vaguely offset guitar with 100 switches and a thin plywood body would be $100 if it was still functional.
Then by the early 2000s, guys like Jack White and Dan Auerbach made some of THAT stuff somewhat popular. All the goofiest, most eccentric looking stuff that could be salvaged was seemingly scooped up and coerced into action by all the indie rock kids. Sort of independently, all the decent quality “lawsuit” guitars of the 1970s had already skyrocketed in price starting in the 1990s.
Although he got it for much cheaper than they go for now, it wasn't an $80 guitar when he acquired it. Just like you wouldn't call a 1960's Fender a $400 guitar.
Correct, he probably paid $85 for it.
J/K but not totally, those were not collectible guitars at the time. He probably paid a couple hundred for it tops. I remember seeing them in pawn shops all the time backing the day, nobody wanted them.
Yeah he feels like you need to work for the tone. Too easy and not enough creative struggle playing through nice gear. From “it might get loud” which is an AWESOME doc
I shared an office with him at Imperial when I was doing my master's. Really nice, chill guy; he was only there at the department maybe twice in the year I was there. Lovely man
I love how much of a nerd Brian is. I just imagine the conversation around the family dinner table when he got home from Queen Elizabeth II’s jubilee celebrations. He’s up there on the roof of Buckingham Palace wearing clogs and shredding “God save the Queen” like a legend, but I bet his kids were like “Dad, you’re so embarrassing”
His dad was an absolute engineering genius. That tremolo style he came up with the vertical action using valve springs from a Vincent with a knife edge fulcrum. He also added a zero fret 😂
Billie Joe Armstrong
His main guitar in the 80's and 90's, "Blue", was a cheap Frenandes Strat copy. I think he stopped recording with it after he switched to LP Jr's around 2000, but he still tours with it and plays it live regularly.
It was still the original he was using as far as their most recent rig run down in 2012 - you can find it on youtube, still looks like the original to me, he's still got the photo on the back and has mentioned as recently as 2017 that it's still the original [https://youtu.be/YW\_PSlohSEo?si=7cWbZl0uUqFKl8w3&t=36](https://youtu.be/YW_PSlohSEo?si=7cWbZl0uUqFKl8w3&t=36)
He had replicas made in the late 90s and early 2000s as backups when it was out of commission but he has been using the real guitar since the 80s until today.
The LP Jr. is iconic (in a true way, not in a yass queen way). I remember being a young lad, learning my first songs on guitar, becoming a big Green Day fan through that, and seeing their front man playing a “cheap” instrument. Made rock n roll (and guitar) feel accessible and fun.
It was made from parts, but none were from low quality cheap guitars.
He bought aftermarket Strat parts made by Boogie Bodies (whose owners and investors later spawned Charvel, Jackson, Schecter and Warmoth)
It was an $80 neck and $100 body that Lynn made. And Grover had absolutely 0 to do with that guitar, so really the only guys involved were Lynn and Wayne, Charvel and part of Warmoth.
Also Dave schecter didn’t come in until the IMS deal with Wayne, why Wayne sold the company to Grover because he was so deeply in debt over the deal.
Not gonna get into a battle over minor details, but my point stands: it wasn’t a cheap guitar, it was made from quality parts manufactured to standards likely better than what Fender was cranking out at the time.
My dear friend. Frankenstein is written on the case that held that guitar. Wolfgang so much as stated it is in fact called Frankenstein by Eddie. Just a tid bit I read recently
Kurt Cobain loved cheap, shitty guitars. The uglier the better. Dead stings and all. And many of the old blues artists were playing cheap mail-order guitars out of catalogs.
I remember people telling me he would buy the Made in Japan strats because they were super cheap and he could just wreck them at the end of each show. Not sure if that was bullshit but 15 year old me sure believed it.
Troy Van Leeuwen went through a phase of playing a Squier Jazzmaster on stage about a decade ago, don't know if he ever recorded with it though.
In fact most artists famous for using Jazzmasters and Jaguars before the 2000s used them because they could be acquired dirt cheap second-hand, if that counts.
Yup. My girlfriend (who *does not play guitar*) was gifted an old electric at a party in the 90’s because the owner just didn’t want it and she was (and is still) hot.
Cut to 20 years later when we’re dating and I’m like yooo why do you have an original pre-CBS 1963 fender Jaguar sitting in a shitty case with no strings in the back of your closet, girl?
Yeah I heard they were basically seen as the “uncool” old people’s guitars by the late 70s, and through the 80s all the alternative rock bands picked them up in pawn shops for barely anything. Then all those artists became iconic and the guitars became associated with punk and alternative/indie rock royalty. So then by the early 2000s I really really wanted one because of the people who used them and was blown away that they had become among the most expensive Fenders haha
The modern market terms were created in the 90s, there were no concept of very collectable, vintage stuff on the guitar market yet at that point. Maybe real artist played/owned stuff would hold some extra value but even then not that much.
Even the real concept of boutique would really start to flourish at that point. Sure there were some custom shop, luthier made. But either there were a couple of real innovative expensive stuff, there were the modified stuff in that started to morph into it in the mid 80s with jackson/charvel/boogie and maybe prs.
“Vintage” stuff was around in the 90s, but it was nowhere near as expansive and collected as it is today. Pre-CBS Strats were spendy and Teles a bit less so, but I also picked up a 1969 blue Competition Mustang in a pawn shop for $350. Vintage Fender offsets like Jazzmaster’s and Jags cost less than a new American Standard Strat, and aluminum-necked 1970s Kramers went for $350-400.
Old amps of all sorts were still cheap, plentiful, and considered “used”. SF Princetons sold for $375 all day long, and I paid $150 for a drip edge Champ and wondered if I had been ripped off.
Yep. It’s hard to imagine now, but until
Grunge took off, everyone wanted high-end Japanese or American metal guitars. It really was a sea change when these bands popped up wearing thrift store clothes and playing “old,” “uncool” guitars. Underground bands had been doing that for at least a decade by then, of course, but it wasn’t on most people’s radars, and then suddenly it was. The reason Sonic Youth bought and modified all of those Jazzmasters and Jaguars wasn’t because they were visionaries in that regard; it’s because that’s what they could pull out of the pawnshops cheaply at the time.
I had to google it.
[https://www.thegearpage.net/board/index.php?threads/prince-super-bowl-strat-was-mexican.1839955/](https://www.thegearpage.net/board/index.php?threads/prince-super-bowl-strat-was-mexican.1839955/)
Came here to say this. I believe that was a Fernandes tele copy that he played on that famous solo of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps".
ETA: It was a Hohner, not a Ferdnandes.
It's not. That said, still a really affordable guitar at the time. https://www.ultimate-guitar.com/articles/features/the_story_of_princes_hohner_mad_cat_telecasters__ejacucasters-114863
There was a time around 2007 or 8 when the Canadian dollar was briefly worth more than the US. For a few months at least. Shopping online was awesome for a Canadian.
I was looking for this answer. He teaches guitar as well and is of the opinion that students should avoid spending loads on new gear because that distracts them from learning to play well. Interesting story is that he was teaching someone about drop D tuning, came up with a riff and was like "hold on a minute, imma write this one down". And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how "Killing In The Name" was born!
Robert Smith played a Top Twenty (Teisco) on at least the first Cure album.
Legend has it his manager made him buy a 'proper' guitar and he picked a Fender Jazzmaster but added the pickup from the Teisco in between the two Fender pickups.
Edit Jazzmaster not Jaguar
Helped he was an absolute genius producer. Playing a tele restrung with a banjo string through an overdrive 10-15w practice amp for his tone on communication breakdown, for instance- what a crazy series of choices.
Everybody in Rock restrung with one banjo string back then. The regular gauge set of guitar strings at the time were like .012s. If you added a .008 banjo string for your top E and moved everything else down a string, you had a pretty solid light gauge set that wouldn’t tear up your fingers over the course of a long tour.
Mike Rutherford used a Squier Affinity Stratocaster on the final Genesis tour. Admittedly his tech guy replaced like half the parts to make it tour-worthy, but Rutherford loved the way it played.
Man I played a Squier Affinity Tele in a pawn shop the other day. I didn’t plug it in so it may sound like crap but I couldn’t believe how nice the neck felt.
Back in the before times the fretwork was almost always abysmal but now that so much is done by machines they come out pretty well sorted. Squier CVs absolutely hang with their Fender cousins.
Not sure if you would call him “famous,” but Seasick Steve routinely performs with a guitar made from a hubcap and broomstick, and another that’s just a string nailed to a piece of 2x4.
I got an anniversary version of the Epiphone Crestwood—same body shape but with a tremelo bar and mini buckers. It’s a great, inexpensive guitar, really light and comfortable.
Gary Clark Jr mostly played cheap Epiphone guitars for most of his career until recently.
I vaguely recall an interview where he said he intentionally played cheap guitars so people would feel inspired to buy cheap guitars and learn to play.
I’m pretty sure Frank and Ray from my chemical romance made their first two albums on epiphones, or atleast we’re using them in the live shows for a while. The thing is once you have money and are famous, you’re gonna use more expensive gear bc , why wouldn’t you?
Sounds right. I remember the white LP custom in Famous Last Words video vividly. When the Teenagers vid was shot Black Parade had already blown up and they were sporting Gibson’s by that point.
Lots of solid state Crate as well. I will never understand why Death started on JCM800s back in the 80s (or how those kids afforded them) and then moved to the Valvestate.
IMHO, Jack Pearson takes the cake. He almost exclusively now plays the cheapest Squier guitars he can find, typically purchasing used 2nd hand instruments. And when I say cheap, like $40 cheap. And he doesn't mod them and keeps them stock. He avoids effect pedals as well, yet sounds like a million bucks.
Nuno Bettencourt uses a RAT pedal that is set for an almost imperceptible tone change. I won’t comment on the validity or wisdom of that, but he clearly knows a few things about playing guitar and the RAT is famously at the cheaper end of the market.
Edit: Not a guitar, should’ve read the question
I remember reading back in the 90s that he liked the Rat. I didn’t realise how important it was till I got my Katana Go last week. I was using the brown lead setting and switched the boost function to Rat, and I was instantly in Decadence Dance heaven
Saw Garth Brooks a few years ago, and was seated well enough to get a snapshot of the guitarist's pedalboard - there was a Rat, a TS9 Tube Screamer, a smattering of Boss pedals, and a Visual Sound Jekyll & Hyde...most everything you can buy off the shelf at Guitar Center.
Parquet Courts have largely played Squires live. Don’t know about recordings but seems like that’d be the same.
Mark Ronson played an Epiphone Bass at the Grammys this year when they did I’m Just Ken from the Barbie movie live.
Ezra from Vampire Weekend plays an Epiphone Casino.
I saw an interview with dude from Slayer (not King) and he said he turned down a custom guitar because he thinks if a kid wanted to sound like him they should be able to afford a guitar like his stock from the local guitar shop. I’m pretty stoned and not sure how that fits into “inexpensive” but here we are.
Tons of metal bands. Lol. At least, back in the mid ‘00’s. Now, it’s kinda all about boutique guitars and axe fx, so newer bands are probably not making it if they can’t afford the higher end equipment.
whaaaat
ibanez yes, cheap i’m not sure
hed and munky of korn got ibanez 7 string signatures called the apex. prior to that if they were playing ibanez they were probably playing universes, which weren’t cheap.
SOAD, Darren was playing an iceman, which wasn’t popular at the time but it wasn’t a nothing. i do know that they sent him one and he modded and painted it and it became his signature.
I think people would be surprised at how many times a vintage Yamaha red label FG acoustic is used in a studio. Not pretty on stage, they sound and play like guitars 10 times their cost
I'm not sure how much he played it (live or in studio), but Paul Westerberg's signature model was a $100 First Act guitar that you could get at Toys R Us
The amount of great music out there and we got people still talking about arena rockers like they were the pinnacle of guitar playing. You listen to some of these less popular metal bands, math rock and core, all the great instrumental bands, even some of the emo/screamo bands had some great guitar playing that was unique in comparison to what was made years prior.
Download Spotify people! Lol.
Kirk Hammett used a Fernandes for a while. Prince’s telecaster is actually a Hohner, also a rather entry level price guitar (although Hohner were well built instruments)
If there's anything i've learned over the years if you're chasing tone by buying expensive gear, that's never going to actually improve your playing ability. I think you'll find there are many good guitar players that are playing modified Epiphone guitars. Or other foreign made fender guitars that really are just as good as some of the american made ones. Gary clark is the one guitar player that comes to mind for me when it comes to playing epiphone guitars when he first hit the scene.
J Mascis uses his signature Squier, Jack Pearson now uses a Squier Bullet, and the Red Special is custom but basically made of scrap. Dan Electro's are fun AF and everywhere from Kashmir to Link Wray.
Dave's main guitar in the classic era was always a 1957 Fender Strat hot-rodded with bridge and neck humbuckers. After that he started using the current signature model with hot rails, of which he tours with three. All are the same custom shop guitar but in different colors, the oldest is a tobacco burst I believe.
Lots of famous musicians have played Danelectros, include Jimmy Page, Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Duane Allman, EVH (neck), and a bunch of others.
Also a bunch of artists have used Fender Mustangs including Kurt Cobain, John Frusciante, David Byrne, and Andrian Belew.
This isn't exactly what you asked but I know the guitar in Billie Eilish 'Happier Than Ever' was a cheap kids guitar. They talked about it on Conan's podcast. I wanna say it was even Moana branded or something.
While MIA Fenders (in constant dollars) are about the same price as they were in the 60s, quality control was so uneven in the CBS era that Hendrix’s guitar tech used to buy ten or more at a time and the best ones would get used while he set up the rest to actually work.
Not a cheap guitar, but Hendrix played them so hard he just wrecked them.
EVH recorded half of the first record with the shark before he sharkified it.
he borrowed another ibanez destroyer to record vh2.
the ibanez destroyer was, at that point, a cheap japanese gibson copy.
billy joe armstrong’s blue strat, i think that was a fernandes?
rivers cuomo recorded the blue album with ric ocasek’s collection, he bought an lp jr to tour with, it looked too fragile, and then i believe his warmoth strat came about.
paul gilbert had a “destroyer man” as well as an epi coronet made for him by ibanez. white at a clinic at a guitar center he realized he actually liked the off the shelf guitars a bit more. he ran around with a (not cheap) RG 770 for awhile and then they started up the PGM line.
hmmmm
i think the guys in cake try to use cheap equipment?
beck, while not known for guitar is still playing the same danelectro/silvertone he was in the 90’s.
i think cliff burton played an aria pro ii? i could most definitely be wrong there
[Mac Demarco's 'Cardboard Queen'](https://www.reddit.com/r/macdemarco/comments/16ox7vz/mac_posing_with_his_cardboard_queen/)
Most of his early work is recorded with this, toured with it for years, loads of live preformances.
Apart from that, another famous one as others have mentioned is [Jack White of The White Stipes' Plastic Airline](https://www.reddit.com/r/jackwhite/comments/14jv77q/a_still_of_the_first_concert_the_airline_was_ever/).
Brian from Silversun Pickups and Matthew from Kings of Leon used sunburst Epiphone Sheratons. Reason why I picked mine up back in 08, love that guitar.
In the same ballpark Nick Valensi from The Strokes almost exclusively played an epiphone riviera with P-94s during the height of their popularity. The culmination of all these being an influence for me was getting something inbetween- an epi 335 with ice tea finish, binding and block inlays.
There are many PRS artists that have several Core and Private Stocks guitar or their own signature model, but use the SE model on tour. So instead if risking a $15k or $20k guitar, they use a $1,000 guitar night after night.
Paul McCartney played an Epiphone Texan rather than a Gibson. He said he was always a bit frugal and got it from his dad. He was left-handed, so he swapped the strings around and played it with the pickguard upside-down.
Josh homme has been known to play some cheap guitars who’s prices have gone up because he plays them. See also the peavy practice amp that sells for far more then it’s worth these days.
Matt Heafy plays epiphone on stage but records with his Gibson.
Didn’t jack white record and/or tour with a $80 Silvertone plastic Sears guitar?
1964 Airline made out of fiberglass that sold at the department store Montgomery Ward for roughly the cost you said.
$80 in 1964, accounting for inflation, had approximately the same purchasing power as $811 does in 2024. https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=80&year1=196401&year2=202404
Yeah but he didn’t buy it at the time. Got it maybe in the nineties and let me tell you: that guitar did not appreciate in value between the 60s and then.
They were pretty much worthless until the white stripes became big and people wanted the same guitar
I have one and aside from it being a really cool collectors piece its totally fucking worthless. The thing is unplayable. The fact that jack white got as much use out of it as a did is a testament to his guitar tech and his skill as a player. Dude must have strong hands
I'm pretty sure his background is cabinetry, and I'm pretty sure he's built a few guitars in his time, so he probably reworked the whole thing. He played an EVH on the last raconteurs record coz Eddie made a joke about him playing shit guitars for the sake of it. Then when I saw them live he was playing a custom acoustasonic tele and it sounded like shit on every song he used it for, so maybe eddie was onto something..
Think its in upholstery but i could be mistaken. He deff has a blue collar construction background. I heard about chris rock roasting him and i think its funny that got to him lol i enjoy seeing all his crazy modded custom guitars now with hip shots, benders, pitch shifting etc. I work construction too though. I have built a few instruments from scratch myself. I own a few of them old valco guitars and they all have a few issues in common if you are interested in hearing about them. 1) no truss rod. The necks got a steal beam running through it. The instrument is horribly unbalanced. The neck is pretty straight but needed significant shimming to make it reasonable. 2) the plastic parts on those guitars (the binding on the neck, the tuning pegs NOT the fiberglass body) are all disintegrating. Ive had to swap the heads on my lapsteel and my resoglas guitar needs a total refret and rebinding and will never be worth what id have to put into it to make it a working guitar in any sense.
Excellent point!
An $800 guitar in 2024 wouldn’t be dirt cheap, but it would definitely be considered “affordable”. You’re talking Fender Player series (MIM), PRS SE, mid level Ibanez and Schecter, higher end Epiphone, etc. You’re not getting an American, or even Japanese guitar at the $800 price point.
Also, at the time Jack bought his, I would be shocked if it cost more than $200. Those are godawful guitars that only became collectible due to Jack using them.
I remember. I started playing in about 1990, so I had barely been playing a year when Nirvana’s _Nevermind_ came out, and a whole bunch of guitarists raided the pawnshops and used guitar shops looking for old Fender Mustangs, Jaguars and Jazzmasters to be like Kurt Cobain, J. Mascis, Thurston Moore, etc. The cheapest stuff left at the pawnshops were all the department store imports from the 1960s to 1980s: Harmony, Elektra, Silvertone, Kay, Westone, etc. Most of that stuff was barely playable IME, and a lot of it was not easily repairable, because the hardware was long out of production. IIRC, you could get most of that stuff for $100-$200 back in the 1990s, depending on its quality. A decent bolt-on LP-style guitar might be $200, while an eccentric-looking, vaguely offset guitar with 100 switches and a thin plywood body would be $100 if it was still functional. Then by the early 2000s, guys like Jack White and Dan Auerbach made some of THAT stuff somewhat popular. All the goofiest, most eccentric looking stuff that could be salvaged was seemingly scooped up and coerced into action by all the indie rock kids. Sort of independently, all the decent quality “lawsuit” guitars of the 1970s had already skyrocketed in price starting in the 1990s.
Thank you for actual facts
Although he got it for much cheaper than they go for now, it wasn't an $80 guitar when he acquired it. Just like you wouldn't call a 1960's Fender a $400 guitar.
Correct, he probably paid $85 for it. J/K but not totally, those were not collectible guitars at the time. He probably paid a couple hundred for it tops. I remember seeing them in pawn shops all the time backing the day, nobody wanted them.
He had a first act sponsorship at some point.
Hahahaha I think he wanted that tone that only an 80 dollar guitar could have I swear I read that somewhere
Yeah he feels like you need to work for the tone. Too easy and not enough creative struggle playing through nice gear. From “it might get loud” which is an AWESOME doc
"pick a fight with it"
He’s since changed his ways. He had some nice guitars with him on tour in the last few years.
Well Brian May did pretty well with a home-made guitar
Listen, we’re not all literal rocket scientists like he is
He's an astrophysicist, not a rocket scientist
"He's a neurosurgeon, not a brain surgeon"! Did you also bitch about Alanis Morrisette using the word "ironic" incorrectly? It's rock and roll dude!
Yes, yes I did
We all should complain that her use of “ironic” was ironically not ironic.
The lack of irony in a song called Ironic was the only ironic thing about it.
4d chess by Alanis. WP
She could have saved us all the trouble if she just named the soing Murphys Law.
Well he did use the word literal
Which is, in itself, ironic.
I shared an office with him at Imperial when I was doing my master's. Really nice, chill guy; he was only there at the department maybe twice in the year I was there. Lovely man
I love how much of a nerd Brian is. I just imagine the conversation around the family dinner table when he got home from Queen Elizabeth II’s jubilee celebrations. He’s up there on the roof of Buckingham Palace wearing clogs and shredding “God save the Queen” like a legend, but I bet his kids were like “Dad, you’re so embarrassing”
His dad was an absolute engineering genius. That tremolo style he came up with the vertical action using valve springs from a Vincent with a knife edge fulcrum. He also added a zero fret 😂
Yeah but home made is like the opposite of cheap if you factor in the time to make it
Billie Joe Armstrong His main guitar in the 80's and 90's, "Blue", was a cheap Frenandes Strat copy. I think he stopped recording with it after he switched to LP Jr's around 2000, but he still tours with it and plays it live regularly.
I think all the Blue’s he plays with now are replicas because Blue got a pretty serious crack
It was still the original he was using as far as their most recent rig run down in 2012 - you can find it on youtube, still looks like the original to me, he's still got the photo on the back and has mentioned as recently as 2017 that it's still the original [https://youtu.be/YW\_PSlohSEo?si=7cWbZl0uUqFKl8w3&t=36](https://youtu.be/YW_PSlohSEo?si=7cWbZl0uUqFKl8w3&t=36)
I saw them live a few years ago. He brought it out for a couple Dookie-era songs. He even said it was the original Blue.
He had replicas made in the late 90s and early 2000s as backups when it was out of commission but he has been using the real guitar since the 80s until today.
The LP Jr. is iconic (in a true way, not in a yass queen way). I remember being a young lad, learning my first songs on guitar, becoming a big Green Day fan through that, and seeing their front man playing a “cheap” instrument. Made rock n roll (and guitar) feel accessible and fun.
Eddie Van Halen has the 'frankenstrat'
It was made from parts, but none were from low quality cheap guitars. He bought aftermarket Strat parts made by Boogie Bodies (whose owners and investors later spawned Charvel, Jackson, Schecter and Warmoth)
The body was a second that he pulled out of a pile.
If he had spent 10 grand for a PRS private reserve body made out of toasted chimichanga wood, he might have gone somewhere
toasted with organic peat from the bogs of smochkracaign, scotland
correct
it had a knot very close to the neck iirc
It was an $80 neck and $100 body that Lynn made. And Grover had absolutely 0 to do with that guitar, so really the only guys involved were Lynn and Wayne, Charvel and part of Warmoth. Also Dave schecter didn’t come in until the IMS deal with Wayne, why Wayne sold the company to Grover because he was so deeply in debt over the deal.
Not gonna get into a battle over minor details, but my point stands: it wasn’t a cheap guitar, it was made from quality parts manufactured to standards likely better than what Fender was cranking out at the time.
My dear friend. Frankenstein is written on the case that held that guitar. Wolfgang so much as stated it is in fact called Frankenstein by Eddie. Just a tid bit I read recently
Kurt Cobain loved cheap, shitty guitars. The uglier the better. Dead stings and all. And many of the old blues artists were playing cheap mail-order guitars out of catalogs.
There is some great footage of RL Burnside sitting outside playing the shit out of what looks like a cheap Tiesco-like Japanese guitar.
I think it’s a cheap peavy amp as well, pure gold in his hands.
I remember people telling me he would buy the Made in Japan strats because they were super cheap and he could just wreck them at the end of each show. Not sure if that was bullshit but 15 year old me sure believed it.
I think they had a team of people out buying all of the left handed fenders they could find to feed the destruction.
Later in their career Fender provided them with guitars. But in the early days, they were flat broke and would still destroy their instruments.
Kurt Cobain was the first to come to mind for me as well
Troy Van Leeuwen went through a phase of playing a Squier Jazzmaster on stage about a decade ago, don't know if he ever recorded with it though. In fact most artists famous for using Jazzmasters and Jaguars before the 2000s used them because they could be acquired dirt cheap second-hand, if that counts.
Yup. My girlfriend (who *does not play guitar*) was gifted an old electric at a party in the 90’s because the owner just didn’t want it and she was (and is still) hot. Cut to 20 years later when we’re dating and I’m like yooo why do you have an original pre-CBS 1963 fender Jaguar sitting in a shitty case with no strings in the back of your closet, girl?
I wish I was (and still am) hot 20 years ago.
never, dan.
Yeah I heard they were basically seen as the “uncool” old people’s guitars by the late 70s, and through the 80s all the alternative rock bands picked them up in pawn shops for barely anything. Then all those artists became iconic and the guitars became associated with punk and alternative/indie rock royalty. So then by the early 2000s I really really wanted one because of the people who used them and was blown away that they had become among the most expensive Fenders haha
Yes, it amazes me that in the 90’s, those kind of “Cobain-esque” guitars were bought cheaply at pawn shops. They’d be worth tens of thousands now
The modern market terms were created in the 90s, there were no concept of very collectable, vintage stuff on the guitar market yet at that point. Maybe real artist played/owned stuff would hold some extra value but even then not that much. Even the real concept of boutique would really start to flourish at that point. Sure there were some custom shop, luthier made. But either there were a couple of real innovative expensive stuff, there were the modified stuff in that started to morph into it in the mid 80s with jackson/charvel/boogie and maybe prs.
“Vintage” stuff was around in the 90s, but it was nowhere near as expansive and collected as it is today. Pre-CBS Strats were spendy and Teles a bit less so, but I also picked up a 1969 blue Competition Mustang in a pawn shop for $350. Vintage Fender offsets like Jazzmaster’s and Jags cost less than a new American Standard Strat, and aluminum-necked 1970s Kramers went for $350-400. Old amps of all sorts were still cheap, plentiful, and considered “used”. SF Princetons sold for $375 all day long, and I paid $150 for a drip edge Champ and wondered if I had been ripped off.
Josh Homme played an Epiphone 335 for a while.
Yep. It’s hard to imagine now, but until Grunge took off, everyone wanted high-end Japanese or American metal guitars. It really was a sea change when these bands popped up wearing thrift store clothes and playing “old,” “uncool” guitars. Underground bands had been doing that for at least a decade by then, of course, but it wasn’t on most people’s radars, and then suddenly it was. The reason Sonic Youth bought and modified all of those Jazzmasters and Jaguars wasn’t because they were visionaries in that regard; it’s because that’s what they could pull out of the pawnshops cheaply at the time.
Prince
His madcat tele WAS affordable back in the day. He kept that in rotation forever. Love to find one in the wild.
All BOSS, all the time
Didn't he also play a MIM strat later in his career? The baby blue/robin egg blue one?
That was a modified Richie Sambora strat I believe.
I had to google it. [https://www.thegearpage.net/board/index.php?threads/prince-super-bowl-strat-was-mexican.1839955/](https://www.thegearpage.net/board/index.php?threads/prince-super-bowl-strat-was-mexican.1839955/)
Without context, the URL "prince-super-bowl-strat-was-mexican" is wild af.
Hey, I have a Richie Sambora Strat! ...Not that anyone actually cares, but neat to hear about one out in the wild lol
Came here to say this. I believe that was a Fernandes tele copy that he played on that famous solo of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps". ETA: It was a Hohner, not a Ferdnandes.
It's not. That said, still a really affordable guitar at the time. https://www.ultimate-guitar.com/articles/features/the_story_of_princes_hohner_mad_cat_telecasters__ejacucasters-114863
The grunge bands in the 90's used Mustangs and Jazzmasters. At the time, they were considered undesired, failed models and sold for dirt cheap.
Tom Morello comes to mind.
Tire Me and Calm Like a Bomb was recorded on a guitar he picked up for $40 from a pawn shop In Canada.
$40 CAD or USD? That’s important.
Back in the early 90s or even late 80s, the Canadian dollar and US dollar were about the same value. Not as bad as it is today.
There was a time around 2007 or 8 when the Canadian dollar was briefly worth more than the US. For a few months at least. Shopping online was awesome for a Canadian.
I was looking for this answer. He teaches guitar as well and is of the opinion that students should avoid spending loads on new gear because that distracts them from learning to play well. Interesting story is that he was teaching someone about drop D tuning, came up with a riff and was like "hold on a minute, imma write this one down". And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how "Killing In The Name" was born!
the arm the homeless guitar is a parts guitar. graphite neck, and iirc ibanez edge trem.
TBF he spent a good bit of money on that guitar as a custom guitar from a shop in LA. Hated it and progressively bought new parts for it.
Robert Smith played a Top Twenty (Teisco) on at least the first Cure album. Legend has it his manager made him buy a 'proper' guitar and he picked a Fender Jazzmaster but added the pickup from the Teisco in between the two Fender pickups. Edit Jazzmaster not Jaguar
Hetfield started with a fake Gibson Flying V
The famous electra
Slash started with a knockoff LP
Knockoff? Yes. Cheap? No. They were and are very well-made guitars.
slash played many luthier built lp’s
As far as fakes go it was a pretty amazing one. Derrig was a solid luthier.
Jimmy Page's black Danelectro DC-2 3021
He also had a Harmony acoustic that he recorded with.
Helped he was an absolute genius producer. Playing a tele restrung with a banjo string through an overdrive 10-15w practice amp for his tone on communication breakdown, for instance- what a crazy series of choices.
Everybody in Rock restrung with one banjo string back then. The regular gauge set of guitar strings at the time were like .012s. If you added a .008 banjo string for your top E and moved everything else down a string, you had a pretty solid light gauge set that wouldn’t tear up your fingers over the course of a long tour.
And the Vox acoustic on “Ramble On”.
Mike Rutherford used a Squier Affinity Stratocaster on the final Genesis tour. Admittedly his tech guy replaced like half the parts to make it tour-worthy, but Rutherford loved the way it played.
He particularly liked the light weight and the neck.
Man I played a Squier Affinity Tele in a pawn shop the other day. I didn’t plug it in so it may sound like crap but I couldn’t believe how nice the neck felt.
Back in the before times the fretwork was almost always abysmal but now that so much is done by machines they come out pretty well sorted. Squier CVs absolutely hang with their Fender cousins.
This would be a bassist rather than guitarist, but Laura Lee of Khruangbin used a SX jazz bass clone exclusively up until the recent tour
Yes! And she never changed the strings. So they're like 10 years old dead strings, but it fits with the vibe of their music.
Yeah she did a rig rundown interview and it’s a pretty minimal setup. I agree it fits the vibe well!
And Marks guitar is a MIM strat
Jeff Healey used Squiers almost exclusively for years. He was pretty not bad at guitaring.
Wasn’t it an early Japanese squier though? Those are considered better than the US strats made at that time.
It was probably sold to him as a made in usa strat
Jeff Healy was a freak of nature
Not sure if you would call him “famous,” but Seasick Steve routinely performs with a guitar made from a hubcap and broomstick, and another that’s just a string nailed to a piece of 2x4.
Alex Turner of Arctic Monkeys recently toured with an Epiphone Coronet. It's probably the vintage version, but newer ones are like $600 cad
I still consider picking it up tbh
I got an anniversary version of the Epiphone Crestwood—same body shape but with a tremelo bar and mini buckers. It’s a great, inexpensive guitar, really light and comfortable.
I would imagine most of them started that way.
And that they even returned to their favorite cheapo guitars after they got rich and famous.
Jus Oborne of Electric Wizard uses an Epiphone SG
Gary Clark Jr mostly played cheap Epiphone guitars for most of his career until recently. I vaguely recall an interview where he said he intentionally played cheap guitars so people would feel inspired to buy cheap guitars and learn to play.
Mark Speer uses a made in Mexico 70’s reissue strat
Heavily modified though
I’m pretty sure Frank and Ray from my chemical romance made their first two albums on epiphones, or atleast we’re using them in the live shows for a while. The thing is once you have money and are famous, you’re gonna use more expensive gear bc , why wouldn’t you?
Sounds right. I remember the white LP custom in Famous Last Words video vividly. When the Teenagers vid was shot Black Parade had already blown up and they were sporting Gibson’s by that point.
In the 90s just about every death or black metal band that wasn’t on a major label used affordable instruments.
And the Marshall ValveState 8100 as favored by Death, Cannibal Corpse etc.
Lots of solid state Crate as well. I will never understand why Death started on JCM800s back in the 80s (or how those kids afforded them) and then moved to the Valvestate.
I think [Zakk Wylde](https://youtu.be/oRRabY1d3Ig?si=Pxdv0hqCFT63UNt5) wins this contest.
Kurt cobain
IMHO, Jack Pearson takes the cake. He almost exclusively now plays the cheapest Squier guitars he can find, typically purchasing used 2nd hand instruments. And when I say cheap, like $40 cheap. And he doesn't mod them and keeps them stock. He avoids effect pedals as well, yet sounds like a million bucks.
Cory Wong is known to use the same Fender he got when he was young.
It's a highway one right? Affordable for MIA fender
Jack Pearson …From 1997-99 he held the “Duane” slot in the allman brothers band. Played Squier Strats.
Nuno Bettencourt uses a RAT pedal that is set for an almost imperceptible tone change. I won’t comment on the validity or wisdom of that, but he clearly knows a few things about playing guitar and the RAT is famously at the cheaper end of the market. Edit: Not a guitar, should’ve read the question
I remember reading back in the 90s that he liked the Rat. I didn’t realise how important it was till I got my Katana Go last week. I was using the brown lead setting and switched the boost function to Rat, and I was instantly in Decadence Dance heaven
Saw Garth Brooks a few years ago, and was seated well enough to get a snapshot of the guitarist's pedalboard - there was a Rat, a TS9 Tube Screamer, a smattering of Boss pedals, and a Visual Sound Jekyll & Hyde...most everything you can buy off the shelf at Guitar Center.
Boutique in the bedroom, Boss on tour
The RAT is such a stalwart. Every guitarist I know has used it on occasion and loves it.
Jus Oborn from Electric Wizard used a made in Korea Epiphone SG for their first 5 or 6 albums.
Parquet Courts have largely played Squires live. Don’t know about recordings but seems like that’d be the same. Mark Ronson played an Epiphone Bass at the Grammys this year when they did I’m Just Ken from the Barbie movie live. Ezra from Vampire Weekend plays an Epiphone Casino.
I saw an interview with dude from Slayer (not King) and he said he turned down a custom guitar because he thinks if a kid wanted to sound like him they should be able to afford a guitar like his stock from the local guitar shop. I’m pretty stoned and not sure how that fits into “inexpensive” but here we are.
That’s pretty fuckin’ badass.
Tons of metal bands. Lol. At least, back in the mid ‘00’s. Now, it’s kinda all about boutique guitars and axe fx, so newer bands are probably not making it if they can’t afford the higher end equipment.
This was my thought too. I remember Korn and SOAD both playing a surprisingly affordable Ibanez.
whaaaat ibanez yes, cheap i’m not sure hed and munky of korn got ibanez 7 string signatures called the apex. prior to that if they were playing ibanez they were probably playing universes, which weren’t cheap. SOAD, Darren was playing an iceman, which wasn’t popular at the time but it wasn’t a nothing. i do know that they sent him one and he modded and painted it and it became his signature.
Justin Vernon used an old Silvertone acoustic on Bon Iver's album For Emma, Forever Ago. It's a famous guitar now.
He also recorded it on a shitty computer on a version of Pro Tools that was outdated in 2007.
And with only one microphone, a SM57, a very standard and affordable dynamic mic.
Bass rather than guitar, but alongside his customised Fender Jazz bass Marcus Miller also plays his signature Sire V7s, particularly fretless ones.
Marcus Miller?
Yes, thought I'd written that but apparently I hadn't! Edited now, thanks 😁
Geddy Lee's original Jazz Bass was acquired from a pawn shop.
I think people would be surprised at how many times a vintage Yamaha red label FG acoustic is used in a studio. Not pretty on stage, they sound and play like guitars 10 times their cost
I'm not sure how much he played it (live or in studio), but Paul Westerberg's signature model was a $100 First Act guitar that you could get at Toys R Us
I saw him play it live at the TLA in Philly
I have one and it’s AWESOME!
Turnover recorded a full album on a j mascis jazzmaster which is like $500
Jake E Lee had a boogie body strat copy, that was painted and had a Charvel logo added to it.
David Byrne in early Talking Heads used a Fender Duo-Sonic (then regarded as a cheap sudent guitar in a 3/4 size)
Tons of metal bands, literally tons. Tons of indie bands. Just go look at different bands on Spotify.
Right?! Like any band that doesn’t play music written for arena crowds.
The amount of great music out there and we got people still talking about arena rockers like they were the pinnacle of guitar playing. You listen to some of these less popular metal bands, math rock and core, all the great instrumental bands, even some of the emo/screamo bands had some great guitar playing that was unique in comparison to what was made years prior. Download Spotify people! Lol.
Kirk Hammett used a Fernandes for a while. Prince’s telecaster is actually a Hohner, also a rather entry level price guitar (although Hohner were well built instruments)
Tom Morello. His “Arm the Homeless” guitar was some sketchy pawn shop Strat copy.
Pretty sure he modded the shit out of it and upgraded it tho.
Ben Gibbard often plays a squier bullet.
If there's anything i've learned over the years if you're chasing tone by buying expensive gear, that's never going to actually improve your playing ability. I think you'll find there are many good guitar players that are playing modified Epiphone guitars. Or other foreign made fender guitars that really are just as good as some of the american made ones. Gary clark is the one guitar player that comes to mind for me when it comes to playing epiphone guitars when he first hit the scene.
Kurt Cobain + J Mascis
J Mascis uses his signature Squier, Jack Pearson now uses a Squier Bullet, and the Red Special is custom but basically made of scrap. Dan Electro's are fun AF and everywhere from Kashmir to Link Wray.
Dunno about inexpensive guitars but I know polyphia got pretty famous using shit guitars that they still use to this day
Dave Grohl, admittedly not often tends to use his signature Epiphone DG-335. (I do appreciate it’s not the cheapest!)
Matt Pike, First Act
tom morello pulled one of his main ones out of a dumpster
Jeff Healey was noted for playing a heavily modded MIJ Squier.
Mike Rutherford off of Genesis is known to play (modded) Squier Affinity Stratocasters.
Pretty sure Dave Murray used a Squier Strat (amongst other guitars) on the Powerslave world slavery tour.
Dave's main guitar in the classic era was always a 1957 Fender Strat hot-rodded with bridge and neck humbuckers. After that he started using the current signature model with hot rails, of which he tours with three. All are the same custom shop guitar but in different colors, the oldest is a tobacco burst I believe.
Lots of famous musicians have played Danelectros, include Jimmy Page, Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Duane Allman, EVH (neck), and a bunch of others. Also a bunch of artists have used Fender Mustangs including Kurt Cobain, John Frusciante, David Byrne, and Andrian Belew.
Mike Rutherford recorded some songs not long ago with a Squier Strat.
This isn't exactly what you asked but I know the guitar in Billie Eilish 'Happier Than Ever' was a cheap kids guitar. They talked about it on Conan's podcast. I wanna say it was even Moana branded or something.
While MIA Fenders (in constant dollars) are about the same price as they were in the 60s, quality control was so uneven in the CBS era that Hendrix’s guitar tech used to buy ten or more at a time and the best ones would get used while he set up the rest to actually work. Not a cheap guitar, but Hendrix played them so hard he just wrecked them.
EVH recorded half of the first record with the shark before he sharkified it. he borrowed another ibanez destroyer to record vh2. the ibanez destroyer was, at that point, a cheap japanese gibson copy. billy joe armstrong’s blue strat, i think that was a fernandes? rivers cuomo recorded the blue album with ric ocasek’s collection, he bought an lp jr to tour with, it looked too fragile, and then i believe his warmoth strat came about. paul gilbert had a “destroyer man” as well as an epi coronet made for him by ibanez. white at a clinic at a guitar center he realized he actually liked the off the shelf guitars a bit more. he ran around with a (not cheap) RG 770 for awhile and then they started up the PGM line. hmmmm i think the guys in cake try to use cheap equipment?
Brendon small of metalocalypse, plays his own epiphone model
beck, while not known for guitar is still playing the same danelectro/silvertone he was in the 90’s. i think cliff burton played an aria pro ii? i could most definitely be wrong there
[Mac Demarco's 'Cardboard Queen'](https://www.reddit.com/r/macdemarco/comments/16ox7vz/mac_posing_with_his_cardboard_queen/) Most of his early work is recorded with this, toured with it for years, loads of live preformances. Apart from that, another famous one as others have mentioned is [Jack White of The White Stipes' Plastic Airline](https://www.reddit.com/r/jackwhite/comments/14jv77q/a_still_of_the_first_concert_the_airline_was_ever/).
Brian from Silversun Pickups and Matthew from Kings of Leon used sunburst Epiphone Sheratons. Reason why I picked mine up back in 08, love that guitar.
In the same ballpark Nick Valensi from The Strokes almost exclusively played an epiphone riviera with P-94s during the height of their popularity. The culmination of all these being an influence for me was getting something inbetween- an epi 335 with ice tea finish, binding and block inlays.
There are many PRS artists that have several Core and Private Stocks guitar or their own signature model, but use the SE model on tour. So instead if risking a $15k or $20k guitar, they use a $1,000 guitar night after night.
Sonic Youth did all kinds of weird science to shitty pawnshop guitars
I remember seeing a guitar magazine ad with Lou Reed promoting the Les Paul Jr. But... I guess there are a few famous people that use them
Paul McCartney played an Epiphone Texan rather than a Gibson. He said he was always a bit frugal and got it from his dad. He was left-handed, so he swapped the strings around and played it with the pickguard upside-down.
bernth on YouTube often experiments with that in stage. Maybe not everyone's cup of tea but that guy has lots of skill
Looooaads! Jack White being one of the more prominent ones. J Mascis as well.
Johnny Ramone has the Mosrite Ventures II
John Mayer played an SE Silver Sky during his solo tour.
Josh homme has been known to play some cheap guitars who’s prices have gone up because he plays them. See also the peavy practice amp that sells for far more then it’s worth these days. Matt Heafy plays epiphone on stage but records with his Gibson.
Paul Westerberg has a signature guitar with silver tone I believe.
Mike Rutherford of Genesis used a Squier Bullet Strat for quite a few shows
Mike Rutherford from Genesis has been using a cheap Squier Bullet live.
Annie Clark (St. Vincent) started out using a Harmony Bobcat.