Trying to replace Clapton, you might assume, was a hiding to nowhere: anyone who tried was being set up to fail. By the time of February 1966’s Shapes of Things – howling feedback, a guitar solo audibly influenced by Indian raga, or, as Beck put it, “some weird mist coming from the east out of [my] amp” – the Yardbirds sounded like a completely different band from the one who had powered their way through covers of Smokestack Lightning and Good Morning Little Schoolgirl on 1964’s Five Live Yardbirds.

Fender master builder Chris Fleming painstakingly replicated the V-shaped profile of the neck, the contours that John Walker carved in the body and every scrape, scratch and ding on the body, neck and pickguard. In his extensive career, he has authored in-depth interviews with such guitarists as Pete Townshend, Slash, Billy Corgan, Jack White, Elvis Costello and Todd Rundgren, and audio professionals including Beatles engineers Geoff Emerick and Ken Scott. Like Jimi Hendrix, he played with imagination and invention, harnessing the power of feedback and effects in a way that shaped the sound of modern rock. It wasn’t just the introduction of a heavier backbeat and canny appropriation of modern electronic production that made the difference: By the end of the 1980s, Beck played guitar in a different style, eschewing effects and abandoning a guitar pick for an intricate fingerstyle that also incorporated him twiddling with volume and tone knobs.It’s unfortunate that his final project wound up as the torpid Depp collaboration “18 ,” but even that record felt true to Beck’s artistry. He took me and Ronnie Wood to the USA in the late 60s in his band the Jeff Beck Group and we haven't looked back since. The “Stuart” X-500 was Guild’s flagship archtop electric model upon its introduction in 1953, and thanks to its popularity it remained in continuous production up until 1993. Of all the career opportunities that could present themselves to an up-and-coming guitarist in the mid-60s, the offer of replacing Eric Clapton in the Yardbirds was one you might think twice about accepting. When you’re surrounded with very musical people like Max Middleton and Clive Chaman, you’re in a prison, and you have to play along with that.

Beck played this guitar in the studio and frequently on stage with the Jeff Beck Group during the late ’60s, but after the neck suffered damage in late 1968 he acquired another late-’50s sunburst Les Paul with exquisite curly maple figuring as a replacement while this guitar was repaired (that sunburst Les Paul was later stolen). But Jeff Beck, who had been recommended for the job by his friend Jimmy Page, didn’t just replace Clapton.Notable features of this guitar include its neck-through-body construction, 24-fret neck and Kahler double-locking tremolo. Songwriting didn’t come easily to him, a problem compounded by his tetchiness with lead singers, leaving him on a constant hunt for new material or writing partners.

bore the influence of ambient electronica and techno: THX138 and Psycho Sam sounded, unbelievably, not unlike the Chemical Brothers or the Prodigy. Flash” doesn’t conventionally succeed but Beck’s playing on the record is invigorating, cutting through the computerized murk and revealing the secret to his art: He benefited from creative tension. It’s fitting that the concept of the hot-rodded guitar originated in Southern California as that locale was also the birthplace of the hot rod car phenomenon. In online tributes the pair said Beck had been "on another planet" and that they had made "groundbreaking" music together.During the late ’70s and early ’80s, Jackson/Charvel was one of several companies in Southern California that specialized in making Strat-style custom guitars with flashy finishes, high-output pickups, state-of-the-art double-locking tremolos, and slender necks that were built for speed. K., when “ Hi Ho Silver Lining,” a fizzy trifle pitched halfway between mod and music hall, managed to make its way to No. Fender’s original DuPont Duco custom color guitars match the colors of various Cadillacs, Corvettes and other Chevrolet models built during this era. Stewart departed after Beck-Ola – an attempt to replace him with the then-unknown Elton John only got as far the rehearsal studio – taking bassist Ronnie Wood with him to form the Faces.