Brownie | Les Paul | Martin signature
Fender
“It’s like a restaurant. If there are lots of people there, it’s gonna be good food,” Eric Clapton once said, explaining why he always preferred a worn-out neck on his Fender Stratocaster. He would find several Strats, swap out the necks, and likely the pickups as well, essentially building his perfect Strat.
Brownie is the iconic guitar from Clapton’s early ’70s era, a time that produced my favourite Clapton album, 461 Ocean Boulevard (1974), a truly groovy record. Clapton has said that it was watching Buddy Guy and Jimi Hendrix playing a Strat that inspired him to switch to the instrument himself.
Brownie was sold at a 1999 auction for an eye-watering $497,000, although the replica can be had for a much more affordable $15,000—now that’s a bargain!
Martin
In this video, Eric Clapton plays his Martin Signature Guitars and declares, “They’re perfect!” Bright, round, loud—the simpler, the better, he reflects, admiring how these guitars almost seem too good.
Clapton’s acoustic range is one that seems more suited for the living room than for the back of a van or a gig bag. The question is, will you ever want to leave your living room?
“It was always Martin,” he recalls, as if it were the holy grail of acoustic guitars. When he first saw a D28, it felt like discovering that very grail—“it almost glowed,” he says.
This experience has stayed with him, and when it comes to Martin Guitars, Clapton regards them as a proper player’s instrument.
Gibson
In the 60s, before discovering Hendrix, Buddy Guy, and the Stratocaster, Eric Clapton was a Gibson Les Paul man.
In this video, we hear the replica guitar Eric played during the 60s on While My Guitar Gently Weeps. This guitar is closely tied to his obsession with Freddie King at the time.
Clapton also used it on the Beano album, paired with a Marshall Bluesbreaker. He played this guitar so much that, as he says, it “became a part of me.”
As he plays it now, it’s evident that Clapton has turned up the treble a bit since the early days of his “woman-tone.” This might be thanks to his love affair with Fender Stratocasters, which likely influenced his sound over the years.
