Over 130 guitars owned by the late guitar icon Jeff Beck are headed to auction, with his 1954 Oxblood Les Paul Standard headlining a collection that will be showcased in Los Angeles before going under the hammer on 22 January in London at Christie’s.
Some of these electric guitars need little introduction, such as the 'Yardburst' 1959 Les Paul Standard. Gibson recently unveiled a Murphy Lab replica of it, restoring its Dark Cherry Sunburst finish to make it look exactly like it did during his days as a Yardbird.
The original had been stripped and modified, as was Beck's wont. Christie's says he bought the Les Paul for £175 for it in 1966, from London’s gear hotspot of the time, Selmer’s, on Charing Cross Road. It will surely down as one of the best investments in rock ’n’ roll history.
Beck used it to record Over Under Sideways Down and Happenings Ten Years Time Ago. But it also served him well during his solo career, most notably on signature tune, Beck’s Bolero.
We can’t talk about Beck’s guitar collection without mentioning the Fender Stratocaster. This was the guitar he was synonymous with, his preternatural command of the whammy bar making the instrument talk.
This forthcoming auction will see his 1954 Strat (serial number: 0062) find a new home. Steve Marriott from Humble Pie gave Beck this guitar in 1976. Like many players of the time, including Eric Clapton, Beck took advantage of Leo Fender’s bolt-on design and swapped the neck out for a ’58.
Speaking to BBC Radio 2 in 2022, Beck said Stratocasters were perfect for his needs. “It does what I want,” he said. “It's infinitely variable in its tone and capabilities with the spring-loaded bridge. It was though it was made for me – thank you very much, Leo!”
Think of Beck and the white Stratocaster will come into mind. The oldest of these was named Anoushka, after Anoushka Shankar, daughter of Ravi, who signed the guitar at Beck’s request. It was Masterbuilt in the Custom Shop by J.W. Black and was his main recording guitar for a number of years.
Beck’s wife, Sandra Beck, says it is time these guitars and more found a new home, and said that this was what he would have wanted. They are to be played.
“After some hard thinking I decided they need to be shared, played and loved again,” she said. “It is a massive wrench to part with them but I know Jeff wanted for me to share this love. He was a maestro of his trade. He never lusted after commercial success. For him it was just about the music.
“He constantly reinvented himself with his musical direction and I could not single out one person, one recording or one guitar as his favourite. I hope the future guitarists who acquire these items are able to move closer to the genius who played them. Thank you all for considering a small piece of Jeff that I am now hoping to share with you.”
Beck’s Oxblood Les Paul [pictured at the top of the page] is forecasted to be the most valuable, with estimates between £350,000 and £500,000. It has been well played, appearing on the cover of Beck’s first solo album, 1975’s Blow By Blow.
Perhaps the guitar that best exemplifies Beck’s Frankenstein sensibility when it came to modding guitars was the "Tele-Gib", though this time it was Seymour Duncan who did the modding. This guitar started life as a 1959 Fender Telecaster. Duncan found it in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1972, when it had been “butchered” by ill-advised mods.
Working in London in 1974, Duncan took the opportunity to fix this Telecaster up and give it to Beck. He had something special in mind for the pickups, and took a pair of Gibson PAF humbuckers out of an old Flying V, once owned by Lonnie Mack, and installed them in the Telecaster.
“It was hard finding the magnet wire needed for winding the coils,” recalled Duncan, writing on the Seymour Duncan website. “I found the wire at a motor repair shop and ended up with two different rolls of wire for winding the coils. I used the heavier gauge to wind the neck pickup also because I had only a small amount. I used the finer wire to wind the bridge pickup because I could get extra turns on the bobbins for increased sustain, harmonics and output.”
Beck loved it, and used it on Cause We’ve Ended As Lovers and Freeway Jam. Duncan was given an Esquire in return. It is expected to fetch between £100,000 and £150,000.
And a particular favourite of ours from this collection – a guitar that has inspired the likes of John Mayer – was Tina, the pink Jackson Soloist that was used in (and named for) Beck’s session work with Tina Turner. It is expected to fetch between £8,000 and £12,000. We’d pay that for the Kahler vibrato unit alone.
The Jeff Beck Collection will be available to view by the public from 4 to 6 December in Los Angeles, with public viewing in London opening on 15 January 2025 before the auction on the 22nd. For more details, head over to Christie’s.
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