Eric Clapton plays his favorite guitars!
“It’s like a restaurant. If there are lots of people there, it’s gonna be good food,” he says, explaining why he would always go for a worn-out guitar neck on a Fender Stratocaster.
Finding several of them, changing necks, and probably pickups around, he would essentially build his perfect Strat himself.
Brownie is that early 70s era which has my favorite Eric Clapton album dated 1974, the outrageously groovy 461 Ocean Boulevard.
Clapton goes on to explain how seeing Buddy Guy and Jimi Hendrix playing a Strat, was what made him swap.
Brownie sold at a 1999 auction for $497,000 (the replica is $15,000 – bargain!)
Eric Clapton and Martin guitars
In this video, Clapton plays his Martin Signature Guitars. “They’re perfect!” he exclaims.
Bright, round, louder, and the more basic the better he reflects as he looks at how these guitars are almost too good.
Clapton’s acoustic range seems to be one for the living room, rather than in the back of the van, living in a gig bag. The problem is, will you ever leave your living room?
“It was always Martin” he remembers as if this was the holy grail of acoustic guitars. When he first saw a D28 it actually seemed to be as if he discovered the grail, “it almost glowed”, he says.
This experience never seems to have left him when it comes to Martin Guitars. A proper player’s guitar, according to Clapton.
Eric Clapton and Gibson guitars
In the 60s, before Eric discovered Hendrix, Buddy Guy, and the Stratocaster, he was a Gibson Les Paul man.
In this video, we hear the replica guitar Eric played in the 60s on While My Guitar Gently Weeps, this guitar relates to Eric’s time being obsessed with Freddie King.
Eric also played this on the Beano album, paired with a Marshall Bluesbreaker. He played this guitar so much that it “became a part of me”.
As he plays it, it sounds like Eric has started to turn the treble up a bit since the early days of “woman-tone”, might be that love affair with Fender Stratocasters that played a part in this!
