David Gilmour’s 1993 Gibson Chet Atkins CE

David got this guitar sometime in 1993, during the recording of the Division Bell album. He used the guitar on the subsequent tour to play the song “High Hopes” live, and he had another identical Chet Atkins that was there as a backup and was sometimes used by Tim Renwick.

Both of these guitars were sold in 2019 through auction, selling for $118,750 each.

Gibson Chet Atkins CE is a guitar that Gibson developed together with Chet Atkins in order to make a classical guitar a little easier to play in a live setting without feedback. The body is not actually hollow like it would be on a classic guitar, but instead, it’s a solid piece of mahogany with sound chambers carved out in order to make the guitar lighter. and easier to hold.

The sound is amplified through six individual piezo pickups which are placed under the bridge, and the guitar has a built-in preamp powered by a 9V battery.

There are also two versions of this guitar, the CEC, and the CE. The difference between these is that CEC has the conventional neck width of 2″, while the CE model, which David used, had a narrower neck with a width of 1.825″.