Keith Richards' Guitars, Amps & Gear List

Keith acquired this guitar around 1970, supposedly as a gift for his 27th birthday from Eric Clapton. This piece of information could be just a myth, as neither of them mentions it in their biography books, but since most sources online mention it, there is likely some truth to this.

In any case, it would be really nice to have a direct quote from either Keith or Eric regarding this, because it seems that this should be something that they would at least mention at some point. If you happen to come across any interviews which confirm this story, please share them in the comments.

If the story is true, and Keith received the guitar for his 27th birthday, that would place it exactly on December 18, 1970. From that point on, from April to August 1971, Keith lived in southern France, in a rented villa, where the band’s 1972 album Exile on Main St. was recorded. The Telecaster was indeed seen on the photos taken during this period, so it was most likely used on that record. At that stage, the Micawber was completely stock.

Keith first appeared with this guitar on The Ed Sullivan Show aired on September 11th, 1966. He probably bought the guitar some time prior, but due to the lack of any photos or videos from early to mid-1966, we haven’t been able to pinpoint the date exactly. If you happen to know the story behind the guitar, and when and where Keith originally acquired it, please be sure to say it in the comments.

The guitar was used extensively during the late 1966 British tour, which of course included the gig played at the Royal Albert Hall. It continued to be Keith’s main axe in early 1967 and can be seen on the January 25th Top of the Pops gig and on various dates during the Rolling Stones’s 1967 European tour. This includes the last gig of the tour played on April 17th, 1967 in Athens, Greece.

In Michael Leonard’s feature Satisfaction Guaranteed: Keith Richards’ Favorite Gibsons on Gibson’s website, it is mentioned that Keith’s first Les Paul Custom was stolen during a tour in 1967 and that he bought a new one in London. However, the only tour that Stones did in 1967 was the March–April European tour, at the end of which the band played in Athens, Greece on April 17th. Based on the photos from that gig [The Rolling Stones Live, Panathinaikos Stadium], Keith had the Les Paul with him until the very end of the tour. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the theft didn’t occur, just that all the clues point otherwise. If you have any information that would help clear this up, post it in the comments.

Keith received this guitar from Ampeg likely sometime in late 1969 and was first seen using it on the Ed Sullivan Show filmed in November that year.

Keith was actually one of the first people to ever get their hands on this guitar, and he was perhaps largely responsible for its popularity later on.

The first guitar Dan Armstrong ever made me was a gem. It was one of the first prototypes or first preproduction models. And you could plug those pickups in. I know I used it on sessions. But I don’t know if anything I did on it ended up on a record. And then that guitar disappeared. They gave me two or three other ones, production models, but they were shadows of that particular one. And I gave up on them.

Keith Richards Looks Back on 40 Rocking Years with the Rolling Stones

This guitar, often referred to as the “Keith-Burst”, was first seen on August 13, 1964 [The Rolling Stones Performing at the Palace Ballroom in Douglas Isle]. It was substantially seen in September 1964 during the Live at ABC Cinema gig (photo below), and at the band’s first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on October 25th, 1964.

Keith purchased the guitar at Selmer’s Music Store in London. It was allegedly previously owned by John Bowen. Going by that story – before Bowen sold the guitar to Selmer’s, he had a Bigsby vibrato fitted on it – which is how the guitar was when Keith bought it.

The guitar was bought new in 1961 from Farmers Music Store in Luton (U.K.) by John Bowen, who played with aspiring English popsters Mike Dean & The Kinsmen. Bowen had a Bigsby vibrato fitted at Selmer’s music store in London before trading it for another guitar in 1962. Soon after, a young Keith Richards, playing guitar in a little-known band called The Rolling Stones, walked in to Selmer’s and bought it.

Keith Richards’ Favorite Gibsons

This guitar was first used around 1972, and at that point, it had a Rolling Stones tongue sticker on the upper part of the body. In the early years, the guitar seemed to have been used as a spare for Keith’s main Telecaster, the Micawber.

The two guitars are visually very similar. What sets them apart is the fact that Malcolm has wood grain visible on the body, while Micawber is finished in a solid color. Also, the humbucker pickup in the neck position is facing the opposite the way when you compare the two guitars.

This guitar was modified at some point in the 1970s when a Gibson PAF humbucker was installed in the neck position. These mods were mostly copied over from Keith’s main Telecaster, the Micawber. The Malcolm did however have the Gibson PAF installed in the standard orientation, poles facing towards the neck. Also, it’s possible that Malcolm was re-fretted, at least according to this article. (if you happen to know when this article was published, please leave a comment below).

This is the guitar that Keith used for the recording of Gimme Shelter and Midnight Rambler from the 1969 album Let it Bleed. According to an interview Keith gave to Guitar World magazine in 2002, the guitar belonged to a guy who stayed at his London apartment for a while.

He crashed out for a couple of days and suddenly left in a hurry, leaving that guitar behind. You know, “Take care of this for me.” I certainly did! It served me well through the album.

From the Archive: The Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards Looks Back on 40 Years of Making Music

However, by the end of the recording sessions, the guitar literally fell apart in Keith’s hands.

Keith likely purchased this guitar just prior to the band’s first US tour that started on June 1st, 1964. It first appeared on Hollywood Palace with Dean Martin on June 3rd, 1964. 

The model was built at the old Gibson factory in Kalamazoo, long before Epiphone became mainly a budget Gibson line. It featured a thin-line hollow laminated maple body, trapeze-type tailpiece, and two Gibson P-90 pickups.

The guitar was Keith main axe during the band’s first US tour, and it was used on the sessions at the Chess Studios in Chicago [Rolling Stones at the Chess Studios] where the band recorded a good part of their second album “12 X 5”. Keith continued using it up until late 1965 as a back-up guitar for his Gibson Les Paul Standard – the two being most likely the only electric guitars he used during the studio sessions up until that point.

Keith played this guitar in the very early days of the Rolling Stones. He acquired it on January 25, 1963, after debating whether he’d go with a Harmony or a Hawk model. The choice fell on the Harmony, mainly because it was equipped with with two pickups.

Buy new guitar, Harmony or Hawk? Harmony has good price but do you get guarantee. “Hawk” has and also has case supplied. Both models PS84.0.0
Got 2 thumbpicks–bought Harmony with two P.U.’s sunburst finish in 2-tone case PS74.

Keith Richards; Life

Keith’s Harmony guitar featured spruce top with maple back and sides, bolt-on maple neck, and two DeArmond “Golden Tone” pickups. It was finished in 2-tone sunburst, and was likely made in 1960 or 1961.

This guitar appeared sometime in late 1965. One of the first major gigs ever played with the Guild was The Ed Sullivan Show on February 13, 1966, and it was also seen on May 27th, 1966, when the Stones performed on British TV’s Ready, Steady, Go.

From that point on, the guitar served as Keith’s main axe during the June–July 1966 North American tour. It was seen on numerous occasions, including at Cleveland Arena on June 25th, 1966, and at Virginia Beach on July 4, 1966. This seems to be the last to feature the said guitar.

A stock Guild Freshman model from this time period always came equipped with a single pickup in the neck position. This means that Keith, or someone before him, modified this Guild by adding a second single-coil pickup in the bridge position. Also, two additional control knobs were installed for this pickup, and the master volume knob was added right next to the pickup selector knob on the upper horn.

Keith was seen playing this guitar during the Hyde Park gig in 1969. Apart from this, it does seem like he didn’t use the guitar at all.

Based on the looks, Keith’s Flying V had to have been 1958, or a 1959 model. Gibson started the production of the model in 1958, and stopped only a year later, after selling only 98 pieces in total. Another batch of Flying Vs was produced in the early 1960s, but these didn’t have gold-plated hardware like Keith’s guitar did, so those are out of the equation.

There’s also some talk online that Keith’s guitar was a prototype of some sort. This could be the case, as there are known Flying V prototypes that look exactly like Keith’s – apparently one of them owned by Eddie Van Halen. Allegedly, there were twelve of these in existence, and today only three are accounted for.

Keith played this ES-330 for a few songs during the concert in Hyde Park on July 5, 1969 – just two days after the tragic death of Brian Jones.

Keith’s ES-330 featured a sunburst finish on a fully hollow body of laminated maple, two P-90 metal pickups, and a trapeze-type tailpiece.

Interesting to point out that the ES-330 is basically a cousin to the Epiphone Casino – a guitar that Keith used at the early stages of his career. Both models were built at the same factory at Kalamazoo, Michigan. It is therefore likely that he purchased the ES-330 as a direct replacement for the Epiphone.

Keith appeared with this guitar on November 11, 1965, when the band played on a US TV show called Hullabaloo. Aside from this, it seems that he rarely ever used the guitar, and was seen only occasionally with it.

It is also important to note that on the Hullabaloo show Brian also played a Gibson Firebird, so there’s a chance that the second Firebird that Keith used was actually Brian’s backup guitar. This is however just a guess, and there’s an equal chance that both Brian and Keith had the same guitars.

There’s a rumor that Gibson apparently gave Brian and Keith each a Firebird sometime in 1965, and together with them a pair of Gibson Titan V amplifiers and Maestro FZ-1 Fuzz-Tone pedals. This would of course explain why both of them played the same instruments, but before we find a valid source on this, take it with a grain of salt (if you happen to know where this story originates from, leave it in the comments).

Keith bought this guitar sometime in the early sixties, and it was his first steel-string guitar. He used the guitar circa 1961 with the band called Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys, consisting of Keith, Mick, Dick Taylor, Bob Beckwith, and Allen Etherington.

My guitar, this time an f-hole archtop Hofner steel string, was Blue Boy–the words written on its face–and because of that, I was Boy Blue. That was my very first steel-string guitar. You’ll only find pictures of it in the club gigs, before the takeoff. I bought it secondhand in Ivor Mairants, off Oxford Street.

You knew it had had one owner because of the patches and sweat marks on the fretboard. He’s either playing up the top, the fiddly bits, or he’s a chord man. It’s like a map, a seismograph. And I left it either on the Victoria line or the Bakerloo line on the London Underground. But where better to bury it than the Bakerloo line? It left scars. 

Keith Richards; Life

Based on the few photos of Keith with the guitar (see comments for one of them), this was most likely not a Hofner, but a Gallotone Valencia – contrary to what Keith said. He must’ve confused the models, or there is a possibility, although less likely, that these were two different guitar – both with “Boy Blue” write on them.

Keith’s first Fender Telecaster appears to have been this mid-1960s maple-cap Sonic Blue Telecaster. He was first photographed with it on July 1, 1966, which means it predates Micawber, as well as the rest of Keith’s known Telecasters, by a significant amount of time.

Unfortunately, it is not known what happened to the guitar. However, Keith was still seen with it in several photos from around 1967, most notably in Gered Mankowitz’s photographs taken at Olympic Studios in Barnes, London, while The Rolling Stones were working on Their Satanic Majesties Request.

Because of that, it is possible that this Telecaster was used during the sessions for that album.

Keith Richards’ black Fender Telecaster Custom is generally identified as a 1975-era Fender Telecaster Custom, reportedly bought in San Antonio in early June 1975, some sources givibing the exact date as June 5, 1975, and connecting the purchase to Caldwell Music Company.

The guitar appears to have been played largely stock at first, before Keith later adapted it for 5-string open-G setup. By the 1978 tour the original three-saddle bridge had been replaced with a six-saddle bridge, apparently for better intonation. Also, before the 1981 tour, it was further modified with a Schaller bridge and Schaller tuners.

One of the guitar’s most recognizable later changes was the relocation of the pickup selector switch. A stock 1970s Telecaster Custom had four knobs and a toggle switch on the upper bout. On Keith’s guitar, the selector was eventually moved down to the neck tone-knob position, leaving three knobs and the relocated toggle. The original switch hole appears to have remained open in 1993 and was later capped, reportedly by 2006.

This 1959 Gibson Les Paul was purchased by Keith Richards sometime around 1971. It was later used by both Keith Richards and Mick Taylor for overdubs during the Exile on Main St. sessions at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles, as well as on the tour that followed.

The guitar is now owned by Simon White, a former professional guitarist and current collector. Guitar.com featured it in an article about White’s collection, where it was referred to as “The Exile on Main St. Burst.”

Keith Richards briefly used this Gibson SG Custom in 1973. According to Andy Babiuk, author of Rolling Stones Gear, Richards played it during the Exile on Main Street tour, at the L.A. Forum benefit concert for survivors of the Nicaragua earthquake, and on the subsequent Pacific tour. Babiuk specifically notes that Richards used the guitar on “Midnight Rambler,” playing it in standard tuning with a capo on the seventh fret.

The guitar is now housed in the Hard Rock Cafe’s Vault in Orlando, having been acquired from Marshall Chess, who worked with the Rolling Stones organization from 1970 to 1977.

Keith played several Gibson Firebirds throughout his career, including both reverse and non-reverse models.

One confirmed example is a Gibson Firebird V Medallion, seen in photos taken at Sumet-Bernet Studios in Dallas, Texas. Since the photo was taken in 1972, and the Medallion was a limited model produced that same year, this identifies the guitar as a 1972 Gibson Firebird V Medallion.

Keith’s first Gibson Les Paul Junior was this 1960 Cherry Doublecut which he was first seen around 1973.

Both Brian Jones and Keith Richards played this guitar around the late 1960s. The photo of Keith with it was taken sometime in 1968. Based on that image, the guitar appears to be a 1960s Gibson Non-Reverse Firebird VI with a Vibrola tremolo.