Gilmour's Black Strat played at Farm Aid 2023

[Demamo]

Jim Irsay brought it out via Kenny Wayne Shepherd and they played Comfortably Numb. It was awful!

[Alanko]

Interesting! Without the Gilmour link the Black Strat is just a heavily hacked up old guitar with a significant number of aftermarket parts. It would get passed up at any pawn shop or guitar show if the price was $2k or greater.

Maybe it only really works for David Gilmour? Strats are finicky; they can feel very stiff and resistant or be very buzzy or clacky depending on the setup, and that setup becomes like a fingerprint to each player. My Strat is a parts mongrel and the final thing I figured out was that I preferred '70s-style cast bridge saddles to bent steel saddles. That seems trivial, but on a Strat every component seems to be quite a significant factor in the tone of the beast.

Therefore, anybody playing the Black Strat cold might struggle to get any semblance of musicality out of it!

[MrFender]

Interesting! Without the Gilmour link the Black Strat is just a heavily hacked up old guitar with a significant number of aftermarket parts. It would get passed up at any pawn shop or guitar show if the price was $2k or greater.

Maybe it only really works for David Gilmour? Strats are finicky; they can feel very stiff and resistant or be very buzzy or clacky depending on the setup, and that setup becomes like a fingerprint to each player. My Strat is a parts mongrel and the final thing I figured out was that I preferred '70s-style cast bridge saddles to bent steel saddles. That seems trivial, but on a Strat every component seems to be quite a significant factor in the tone of the beast.

Therefore, anybody playing the Black Strat cold might struggle to get any semblance of musicality out of it!

Spot on comments. If you didn't know it was THE Black Strat, you would look at it as a beat up '69 without the original neck and a bunch of filled in holes. 99% of the magic is in the player's hands. You're not going to be Clapton either just by buying Brownie. Although Kirk Hammett did a pretty decent Peter Green (before going crazy in the solo) at the tribute show.

[Demamo]

Totally agree. I was thinking the same thing about the strat. And nobody will ever play that Les Paul like Peter green.

[DesertRat]

Someone in a guitar group I’m part of visited it when it was on display and took this photo, noting that it was horribly set up with the high e almost falling off the fretboard!

[MrFender]

Someone in a guitar group I’m part of visited it when it was on display and took this photo, noting that it was horribly set up with the high e almost falling off the fretboard!

Yikes! Looking at the Black Strat book, there's two really good pictures of the body. One on the copyright page and the other from 184-185. The high e falls either in the middle or to the inside of the polepiece. Neither seem to be that out of whack from your picture and I can't think that Dave would play it like that either.

From the copyright page (granted some of this may be impacted by the perspective of the camera):

[buffalofloyd]

Someone in a guitar group I’m part of visited it when it was on display and took this photo, noting that it was horribly set up with the high e almost falling off the fretboard!

Yikes! Looking at the Black Strat book, there's two really good pictures of the body. One on the copyright page and the other from 184-185. The high e falls either in the middle or to the inside of the polepiece. Neither seem to be that out of whack from your picture and I can't think that Dave would play it like that either.

From the copyright page (granted some of this may be impacted by the perspective of the camera):

These two pictures don't look like the same guitar, honestly. The neck is definitely not the same at least.

[MrFender]

Phil's book came out around 2007 so depending when the pictures for the book were taken, there would be wear from the On an Island and Rattle That Lock tours plus the various other appearances. Or they may have changed the neck yet again.

[Blackstrat]

bolt on necks can move about a bit if you're not careful. Whoever said it's all in the fingers is spot on in my opinion.

[Alanko]

The good old trick of backing out the neck bolts and strong arming the neck into the alignment you want to see... Fender engineering!


A very random Black Strat thought, but does anybody know where the original black pickguard came from? It is some sort of acrylic plastic with a rounded edge, rather than a bevel-cut 45 degree edge. It also has a square neck heel route; more Telecaster than Stratocaster. You can buy a Fender-compatible single ply black pickguard for £10 on Ebat, but it won't be carefully carved from polished acrylic plastic.

I know David had a custom Dick Knight double neck guitar body, so maybe Dick Knight cut the pickguard. The weird neck heel route also indicates it came from a copy guitar perhaps. It wasn't a Fender product and I doubt many options were available in the UK back then.

[MrFender]

The book just says that in the summer of 74, he switched out the white one for a custom made black one so no help there.

[lennyif]

Phil's book came out around 2007 so depending when the pictures for the book were taken, there would be wear from the On an Island and Rattle That Lock tours plus the various other appearances. Or they may have changed the neck yet again.

I don't know if those tours / album sessions were long enough with enough use of that one guitar to produce that kind of fingerboard wear. Live, he played a lot of other guitars as well. The tele, les paul, gretch, acoustic, etc... so the black strat was a staple, but it was not being played an overwhelming amount.

I have a '79 strat that I bought in 2005, and I have played on it way more than Gilmour has played on the black strat from 2006 - sale date, and it does not have anywhere near that kind of wear on the fingerboard. I played over 300 gigs on that guitar, and played on over 20 albums with different groups etc.

I am thinking these two photos may show that either a replacement neck has been put on, or that the photo that shows no fingerboard wear just had very different lighting, etc.

[Alanko]

These two pictures don't look like the same guitar, honestly. The neck is definitely not the same at least.

Agreed. Maybe David put a 'burner' neck, or more historically significant neck on it when he retired it to become a museum piece? It has had a bewildering array of necks over the years, right back to the early '70s when it had a '60s rosewood neck for a while.

He maybe even had a Fender roadworn neck on it for a while, which would explain the heavy playing wear in that photo.


With all this in mind, the only bit left of the original 1969 black Strat is a body, chiselled out to fit a humbucker, routed for a Kahler trem and drilled out for an XLR output jack. The repairs for the latter two mods seem surprisingly basic, with the filled Kahler route clearly telegraphing through the finish.

[MrFender]

Or a third possibility - Jim Irsay has played the hell out of it since he purchased it. 😁

[OAI]

Interesting thread. The current neck, at least what should be the current neck, was taken from David's "cream #1" which he used going back to 1984. When you look at it in 2006, shortly after the neck was swapped on, you could see the years of fingerboard wear already. I'm fortunate to own said "cream #1" which now has a barely used neck which was swapped from the black strat shortly after the Live 8 performance.