Rory Gallagher’s Rosetti Solid 7

This was Rory’s first electric guitar, bought about two years after he acquired his first acoustic guitar – a dark sunburst general model of unknown manufacturer. This guitar was made by a Dutch firm called Egmond and imported into the UK by Rosetti company, who sold them for about £20 in the 60s.

Although we couldn’t find any photos of Rory with the guitar, he most likely had the two-pickup model, since the three-pickup one was often referred to as “Super Solid 7” and it featured a tremolo bridge, both of which details Rory does not mention when talking about the guitar. The Solid 7 model also featured a hollow-body design but didn’t have any soundholes so to an observer it looked like a solid-body, and it didn’t have a truss rod which meant that over time the neck would end up with an upward bow because of the string tension.

It was quite good, it was very distorted guitar – which I didn’t quite like at the time because clean sounding guitars were the thing.

Rory Gallagher Strat Masters

I played along on the acoustic guitar for a couple of years, and about the age of 12 I got an electric guitar – a Rosetti Solid Seven with a Little Giant Selmer.

…RORY GALLAGHER talks to NICK ROBERTSHAW