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SurfGuitar101 Forums » The Shallow End »

Permalink I Got to Play Dave Gilmour's Guitars!

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Not sure how many Pink Floyd fans are on here, and there is zero surf content in this post but as you may or may not know, David Gilmour is auctioning off a large portion of his guitar collection 100% for charity through Christie's on thursday.
I had the rare and incredible opportunity to closely examine and plug in and play several of his iconic guitars. Our bass player made it happen, and we made a band field trip out of it.
We were allowed to pick which guitars we wanted to check out, and what an amazing selection to choose from!
First up, one of the most incredible guitars I've ever had in my hands,
One of the very first Stratocasters ever made, serial number 0001 !!

image

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This guitar is a 1954 pre-production prototype gifted by Leo Fender to Rex Gallion - the musician that suggested that Fender put contours on the body. This guitar was used for the rhythm track of "Another Brick in the Wall" It's without a doubt the best playing guitar I've ever touched! It sounded out of this world too, it really sings. I was completely blown away by it. Absolutely smokes any guitar I've ever played!!!

Next up, the star attraction, the legendary Black Strat:

image
This is THE guitar that recorded "Dark Side of the Moon"!
It's a 1969 strat with a later replacement neck and pickgaurd. It features prominently on most of Floyd's 70's output, and can be heard on the radio several times a day all over the world. It was used for "Meddle", "Dark Side of the Moon", "Wish You Were Here", "Animals", "The Wall", and can be seen in the "Live at Pompeii" film. I can't really express what a totally surreal experience it was to play this guitar, I've heard it most of my life. It plays and sounds wonderful. Of course I couldn't resist and played a couple of Coffin Daggers songs on it...
Here it is on the stand next to a Vox guit-organ, and a 1950 Broadcaster

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The Broadcaster was another amazing axe. It felt so good and almost plays itself, absolutely effortless. It sounds incredible too! So musical and full. I'm not a Tele guy, but this one made a believer out of me.
The Vox Guit-organ has the electronics from a Vox Continental organ built in and sensors on each fret. It's practically unplayable because of the super thick aluminum neck. I didn't plug this in as it needed a special cable to connect to it's power supply, but I always wanted to see one in person anyway.
I also got to check out these three super cool instruments:
A 1955 all gold front and back Les Paul that was used for the solo on "Another Brick in the Wall" it has a stop tailpiece, a 1953 goldtop with a Bigsby vibrato, and a 63 Hofner violin bass.

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I decided to play freddy King's "Hideaway" on the 55 goldtop as I felt that was appropriate.
The Hofner bass weighs only around 3 or 4 pounds and is incredibly easy to play
Here's our drummer Alex watching me play the '53 (probably pondering his choice of instrument)

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Some guitars I didn't get to play but are part of the auction:
A very early 1959 Jazzmaster, and a 1954 sunburst strat

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Here's me and Coffin Daggers Organist Rob Morrison with a couple of guitars we're not worthy of being in the same room with, let alone play!

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Enormous thanks and gratitude to our bass player Peter for pulling the right strings and making this happen. Much respect to Mr. Gilmour for his great and charitable genorosity. The money raised by this auction will surely do a world of good. It was a mind blowing experience to be able to play all these great instruments in one day. I mean forget who owns them, just the historical value in and of themselves alone is overwhelming. They really put some kind of special voodoo into those 1950's guitars!

https://www.facebook.com/coffindagger
http://coffindaggers.com/
http://thecoffindaggers.bandcamp.com

Last edited: Jun 17, 2019 18:36:37

Incredible story and pics! Gilmour and strat fan for life!

The Kahuna Kings

https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Kahuna-Kings/459752090818447

https://thekahunakings.bandcamp.com/releases

stratdancer wrote:

Incredible story and pics! Gilmour and strat fan for life!

SAME!!!

Holy wow! Congrats! How great that you got to do that!

WHOA!
Too cool!

Wow ... how much are they asking for all that gear???

Seems like a lot of stars dumping guitars on the market now.

Awesome stuff - especially that early strat, which must be worth incredible money (same for the black strat). Was Gilmour's Bill Lewis guitar in that collection as well?

Not surf but euro instro connection.
Gilmore was a huge Shadows/Marvin fan.
And that inspired his tremolo style.

Jeff(bigtikidude)

That is awesome! Thanks for sharing this amazing opportunity!

I read an interview with Gilmour about the announcement of the auction. The interviewer asked Gilmour about the Black Strat in particular, would David miss any of these guitars? And Gilmour responded that Fender has done such a great job with the signature model, that he'll just go buy one of those if he needs one. Razz

The Reverbivores - we're local favorites!

WOW, just WOW!!!

Bob

The descending/ascending melody line that introduces the instrumental "chorus" on the first part of "Echos" is hardcore surf as far as I'm concerned.

The Vicissitones
Diesel Marine
The Rasputones

Wow, incredible Victor! Thanks for sharing here!

Site dude - S3 Agent #202
Need help with the site? SG101 FAQ - Send me a private message - Email me

"It starts... when it begins" -- Ralf Kilauea

Thanks for posting your guitar adventure. Like everyone else, I'm reduced to one word as well; WOW!!!
I also enjoy Pink Floyd, especially Gilmour's work...his first solo album is some of my favorite Floyd.
I heard the neck on the Black Strat came from a '83 '57 AVRI. I have one, and the neck is thin with a very soft V carve. What did you experience with the Black Strat?
Did 0001 Strat have one of those fat early 50's Tele-like necks?
I mean, a guy's gotta know these things!

BTW, really like the sounds you get out of that Mosrite Mark I.

Strat-o-rama wrote:

Thanks for posting your guitar adventure. Like everyone else, I'm reduced to one word as well; WOW!!!
I also enjoy Pink Floyd, especially Gilmour's work...his first solo album is some of my favorite Floyd.
I heard the neck on the Black Strat came from a '83 '57 AVRI. I have one, and the neck is thin with a very soft V carve. What did you experience with the Black Strat?
Did 0001 Strat have one of those fat early 50's Tele-like necks?
I mean, a guy's gotta know these things!

BTW, really like the sounds you get out of that Mosrite Mark I.

Yeah, I'm still wowed myself. Both strat's had a soft D shape and were not big at all surprisingly. Both were very similar and definitely on the smaller side. I have average sized hands and you can see in the first pic I could get my thumb all the way over the top of the neck no problem. The Broadcaster neck was also very similar although a little bit wider, but nothing crazy. All three were completely comfortable to play. The Black Strat definitely has a '57 reissue neck with small frets. You can clearly see the wear marks where "Shine on you crazy Diamond" is played. The trems on both guitars were flat to the body set fairly stiff, Both had the backplates on so i couldn't tell how many springs were on, but it felt like all five. The black strat has the short 4 1/2" arm - a little awkward at first but very usable. It also had a scooped out section behind the tremolo that was crudely filled in and repaired.
And thanks, I love my Mosrite even though I'm a dyed in the wool strat guy.

https://www.facebook.com/coffindagger
http://coffindaggers.com/
http://thecoffindaggers.bandcamp.com

Last edited: Jun 18, 2019 13:27:52

edwardsand wrote:

Awesome stuff - especially that early strat, which must be worth incredible money (same for the black strat). Was Gilmour's Bill Lewis guitar in that collection as well?

Here's a tour of what's being auctioned:
https://www.christies.com/features/Virtual-tour-The-David-Gilmour-Guitar-Collection-9776-3.aspx

https://www.facebook.com/coffindagger
http://coffindaggers.com/
http://thecoffindaggers.bandcamp.com

Checked out that virtual tour. Very cool. Thanks.
And thanks for the additional comments on Mr. Gilmour's guitars.

I talked to a buddy of mine that founded a PF tribute band. He's going to be bidding on several of the guitars. Not the high dollar ones.

The Kahuna Kings

https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Kahuna-Kings/459752090818447

https://thekahunakings.bandcamp.com/releases

The white 0001 strat sold for $1,815,000!!
The Black strat is still up for grabs...
Should fetch over 2 million easy

https://www.facebook.com/coffindagger
http://coffindaggers.com/
http://thecoffindaggers.bandcamp.com

It just sold for $3,975,000!!!!
That's a world record for a strat.

https://www.facebook.com/coffindagger
http://coffindaggers.com/
http://thecoffindaggers.bandcamp.com

I'm not suprised they exceeded expectations due to the Coffin Daggers provenance they now have!

My buddy has posted no pics which tells me he got blown out of the water. There was a partscaster copy of 0001 that was in the 1500.00 range that he wanted. I bet it went for big bucks!

The Kahuna Kings

https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Kahuna-Kings/459752090818447

https://thekahunakings.bandcamp.com/releases

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