Jeff Beck's Guitar Shop

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This Stratocaster with its Roy Brizio street rod-style paint job is a natural evolution of Fender’s custom color concept and a fitting crowning touch for a custom-made guitar. Speaking with Total Guitar awhile back, Beck says that compared to a Gibson Les Paul or Fender Telecaster, “My Strat is another arm, it’s part of me. During his time with the Yardbirds, he discovered sounds lurking within that still possess the ability to startle. Beck is featured in ZZ Top’s live video for “Sixteen Tons,” from the group’s 2016 compilation album Live—Greatest Hits from Around the World.

It wasn’t just the introduction of a heavier backbeat and canny appropriation of modern electronic production that made the difference: By the end of the 1980s, Beck played guitar in a different style, eschewing effects and abandoning a guitar pick for an intricate fingerstyle that also incorporated him twiddling with volume and tone knobs. They kicked me out … fuck them,” he waspishly noted during the band’s 1992 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In his extensive career, he has authored in-depth interviews with such guitarists as Pete Townshend, Slash, Billy Corgan, Jack White, Elvis Costello and Todd Rundgren, and audio professionals including Beatles engineers Geoff Emerick and Ken Scott. Even Eric Clapton, whose departure from the Yardbirds had kickstarted Beck’s career, marvelled at his replacement, “the most unique guitarist, and the most devoted”. However, just like many street rod enthusiasts will put a Ford motor in a Chevy body, this X-500 had its original humbucking pickups swapped out for Gibson-style Seymour Duncan Antiquity P90 Dog Ear pickups, and a Gibson Tuneomatic replaced the original rosewood bridge.However, the guitar’s most visible and recognizable modification was performed before Jeff acquired the Esquire. Flash” doesn’t conventionally succeed but Beck’s playing on the record is invigorating, cutting through the computerized murk and revealing the secret to his art: He benefited from creative tension. Another Gretsch guitar played an important role in Gene Vincent’s music, although its powerful effect was more visual than aural. In each case, Beck’s playing startled in its force and originality: He would sting at moments that would seem to require finesse and relax into long, lyrical solos at periods of high tension. These records are often stronger than the albums he released in the 1970s and 1980s, where he alternated between moments of inspiration and grudging attempts at following fashion, such as “Flash,” a weird 1985 LP where producer Nile Rodgers pushed Beck to play synthesized funk and Arthur Baker sneaked a few claustrophobic collages into the mix.

Of all the career opportunities that could present themselves to an up-and-coming guitarist in the mid-60s, the offer of replacing Eric Clapton in the Yardbirds was one you might think twice about accepting. He pioneered jazz-rock, experimented with fuzz and distortion effects and paved the way for heavier subgenres such as psych rock and heavy metal over the course of his career. Stewart and Wood left the guitarist after two albums, finding the camaraderie they craved in the ragged, rowdy Faces. A chance meeting with Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page led Beck to join the Yardbirds in 1965 - replacing the band's former guitarist Eric Clapton.

The custom pinstriping on the gorgeously figured curly maple back adds an appropriate decorative touch for a hot-rodded guitar like this. After briefly attending art school in London, Beck began playing with Screaming Lord Sutch until, after Eric Clapton left the Yardbirds, Jimmy Page recommended Beck as his replacement. But Jeff Beck, who had been recommended for the job by his friend Jimmy Page, didn’t just replace Clapton.

Like Jimi Hendrix, he played with imagination and invention, harnessing the power of feedback and effects in a way that shaped the sound of modern rock. In 1970, after recovering from his skull fracture, Beck formed a new incarnation of the Jeff Beck Group, and released two records – 1971’s Rough and Ready and 1972’s Jeff Beck Group – which displayed his earliest forays into the jazz fusion sound he would become known for. It’s also one of four guitars, along with two Stratocasters and a 1958 Telecaster featuring a pair of humbucking pickups installed by Seymour Duncan, that Beck used to record Blow by Blow.These latter-day albums showcased a mature musician who had perfected an instrumental technique yet still strove to find new wrinkles, and who figured out how to surround himself with sympathetic spirits who could keep pace with his gallop.

He took me and Ronnie Wood to the USA in the late 60s in his band the Jeff Beck Group and we haven't looked back since.Although Beck never played this Guild on stage or in the studio, it was one of his favorite guitars as it reminded him of the hollowbody archtops played by rockabilly guitarists like Scotty Moore that he admired as a young child. Both 1971’s Rough and Ready and 1972’s Jeff Beck Group have their moments – I’ve Been Used and Jody on the former, Ice Cream Cakes and Going Down on the latter – but the NME critic who noted that the band’s musical skill frequently “far exceeds that of the material” had a point. He also won a Grammy for best pop collaboration with vocals for Imagine, his collaboration with Herbie Hancock. During the periods he didn’t have those collaborators on hand, he retreated to his home garage, tinkering on old automobiles and hot rods.