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Chapter 18
Ten Great Blues Guitars
In This Chapter
Discovering great acoustic and electric guitars
Studying the best guitars through history
Before the blues and folk revival in the 1960s and the blues renaissance of
the ’80s, led by Stevie Ray Vaughan and Robert Cray, guitar makers didn’t
focus on creating blues guitars specifically. They were more concerned with
other popular genres, such as country, jazz, and rock ’n’ roll. Only recently, in
artist models — such as Fender’s Stevie Ray Vaughan and Gibson’s B.B. King —
have guitars been created specifically to pay homage to the blues. In this chapter,
I give you ten guitars that blues performers have adopted as their own and
that have played an important role in helping define the sound of blues guitar.
Gibson L-1 Flattop
Gibson’s “L” line of small-bodied flattop acoustic guitars — the ones with
round soundholes in the middle as opposed to the jazzier F-hole models —
later fell out of favor for the larger-bodied Jumbo series, which was introduced
in 1935. But the L series was the guitar of choice for solo blues players because
of its manageability and incredible tonal balance. In one of the only known
photos of Robert Johnson, he’s pictured holding a Gibson L-1. Robert Jr.
Lockwood (Robert Johnson’s “stepson”), played the L-0, which was the L-1’s
predecessor.
Gibson ES-175 Archtop
An archtop is so named because the top is curved, or arched, instead of
being table-top flat as it is on a flattop. (You can see the arch better if you
hold the guitar sideways, parallel to the floor, and raise it to eye level.) This
guitar also has F-holes (like a violin) instead of the round soundhole of a
flattop. Archtops were first acoustic and then became electrified and are
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