The electric guitar underpinned the rise of pop and rock music – and some aficionados are willing to pay millions for the instruments that made it happen.
Electric guitars have routinely sold for more than any other type of guitar although the most expensive guitar remains Kirk Cobain’s acoustic Martin D-18E. It is one of just three acoustic guitars to sell for more than $1 million, while more than eight electrics have sold above that mark.
However, the prices paid for many of these guitars can’t be substantiated. I’ve labelled these as ‘rumored’, ‘unconfirmed’, or ‘claimed’.
Some entries on other ‘most expensive guitar’ lists lists can be immediately debunked, such as the $1 million a collector is claimed to have paid for Keith Richards’ 1959 Gibson Les Paul. The Rolling Stone played the guitar on The Ed Sullivan Show during the band’s heyday. However, bidding stopped at $320,000, below the reserve price of around $400,000, and so it remained unsold at a Christie’s auction in December 2004.
Nonetheless, the Gibson Les Paul dominates this list, along with the classic Fender Stratocaster, although the guitarists who owned them may have had something to do with their value.
Kurt Cobain’s Fender Mustang: $4,550,000 (2022)
The Nirvana singer-songwriter, who died in 1994, played this Fender Mustang guitar in the famous “Smells Like Teen Spirit” music video.
It was bought by NFL Indianapolis Colts’ owner and guitar collector Jim Irsay for $4.6 million at Julien’s Auctions’ Music Icons event at the Hard Rock Cafe in New York City. The price was well above the estimated $600,000 to $800,000.
Cobain originally bought the left-handed 1969 Competition Mustang guitar from Voltage Guitars in Los Angeles in the early-1990s and played it while recording the Nevermind and In Utero albums, as well as during live performances.
The Mustang was far from an expensive guitar.
“I don’t favor them – I can afford them,” Cobain said in a Guitar World interview in 1992. “I’m left-handed, and it’s not very easy to find reasonably priced, high-quality left-handed guitars. But out of all of the guitars in the whole world, the Fender Mustang is my favorite. I’ve only owned two of them.”
The original bridge on the guitar was replaced with a Stewart MacDonald Gotoh Tune-O-Matic before Nirvana played in Argentina in October 1992. The original bridge pickup was also replaced with a Duncan Hot Rails Humbucker in early 1992.
The guitar was put up for auction by the Cobain family and part of the $4.55 million sale price was donated to the Kicking The Stigma mental health awareness initiative.
The acoustic 1959 Martin D-18E that Cobain played during Nirvana’s “MTV Unplugged” performance in 1993 sold for more than $6 million just two years earlier.
![In Utero[20th Anniversary Edition]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51iPhdiuntL._SL160_.jpg)
David Gilmour’s ‘Black Strat’: $3,975,000 (2019)
David Gilmour bought his iconic standard Fender Stratocaster at New York guitar store Manny’s on West 48th Street in May 1970 to replace another black Strat that was stolen after a show in New Orleans.
It would come to define Pink Floyd’s sound, appearing on every one of the band’s albums from 1970 to 1983 and all four of Gilmour’s solo albums, as well as being played on tour.
It was a true working guitar, extensively modified over the 49 years that Gilmour owned it with new pickups, switches, inputs, pickguards, tailpieces and tuners and six different neck changes. At one point, Gilmour even drilled a hole in the Black Strat to fit an XLR connection, but later filled it with sawdust and wood glue.
These ongoing modifications eventually saw it fall from Gilmour’s favor after the installation of a Kahler tremolo system in the early-80s altered its sound. Gilmour’s Candy Apple Red 57V Stratocaster became his go-to guitar for the next twenty years with the Black Strat loaned to the Hard Rock Café in return for a charitable donation in 1986.
In 1997, the guitar was returned to Gilmour and restored, including replacing the Kahler with the original Fender tremolo. Gilmour played the guitar for Pink Floyd’s historic reunion performance at Live 8 in London’s Hyde Park on July 2, 2005 – the first performance of the classic era lineup in 24 years.
The guitar was bought for almost $4 million by Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay at a famous Christie’s auction in 2019 to raise money for climate change. Several of Gilmour’s 126 guitars on auction went for record prices, raising $21 million in total.
Irsay’s collection includes several other famous guitars including Bob Dylan’s Strat played at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival ($965,000), Jerry Garcia’s Tiger ($957,500), and George Harrison’s Gibson SG, played on Revolver ($567,000).
Reach out to Asia Stratocaster: $2,800,000 (2005)
This guitar is a rarity – it wasn’t played by a well-known guitarist over their career or used to record iconic songs. This white Fender Stratocaster was simply signed by 19 of the greatest guitarists and musicians in history to raise money for victims of the 2004 Tsunami.
There are few detailed reports about its sale. However, an article in The Vancouver-Sun newspaper said the guitar was initially sold in early-2005 at a charity auction in Qatar for $300,000 to the daughter of the Emir of Qatar, Sheikha Al-Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani.
She then gave it to musician Bryan Adams to get it signed by some famous friends so that it could be re-auctioned at the Reach Out To Asia charity dinner in Qatar. She then repurchased the guitar for the mind-blowing price of $2.8 million.
Adams was the guest of honour at the event, which was held on November 16, 2005, and performed before an audience that included former U.S. president Bill Clinton, according to The Vancouver-Sun.
“I decided to launch a fund- raising event to benefit those who had been affected by the disaster,” Adams said in a statement on the Fender website in 2005.
“I asked my peers to sign one single guitar, which could be auctioned in aid of the cause, with the guitar acting as a kind of symbol of hope and solidarity. The result was overwhelming, with everyone donating their signature.”
The signatures included Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Pete Townshend, Brian May, David Gilmour, Mark Knopfler, Liam and Noel Gallagher, Jeff Beck, Ray Davies, Tony Iommi, Angus and Malcolm Young, Ronnie Wood, and Sting.
Peter Green/Gary Moore’s “Greeny” Les Paul: $2 million (2014 – rumored).
There’s no doubt that Metallica’s Kirk Hammett owns this rare 1959 Les Paul Standard, which was previously owned by Fleetwood Mac’s Peter Green and blues legend Gary Moore.
Hammett first confirmed he acquired the guitar in February 2015 on a Twitter post but I suspect it’s unlikely he paid $2 million for it. This may have been the initial asking price or what another private collector paid for it at some stage. In fact, on VH-1’s That After Show, Hammett said the guitar had been on the market for some time but the price was too high.
“And then I kind of waltzed into a situation where the owner of the guitar needed money,” he said. “And of course I totally took advantage of the situation, worked out a deal and bought it, all within an hour’s time, because I was so friggin’ blown away by the fact that I was holding a guitar that Peter Green played in Fleetwood Mac and then Gary Moore played for, like, 25 years after.”
It was originally Green’s main instrument in Fleetwood Mac. One pickup was installed in reverse, creating a distinctive tone.
Shortly after leaving Fleetwood Mac in 1970 due to mental health issues, he sold the guitar to Gary Moore. In 1995, Moore made an album of Green’s songs called “Blues for Greeny.”
Shortly before Green’s death aged 73 in 2020, he was working with Rufus Publications on a book and music project covering his life and career.
“As a result of the project, Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett, who owns Peter’s classic 1959 Gibson Les Paul, has been contributing, first by going into Abbey Road and recording something very special with said guitar – known as “Greeny” – and then by visiting Peter at his home and reuniting him with the guitar for the first time since Peter sold it to Gary Moore, 47 years ago,” the publisher said in a statement in 2020.
“It was an astonishing meeting of two great, but very different, musicians who spent much of the afternoon discussing the guitar and the music that inspires them. Kirk played Peter the guitar track recorded at Abbey Road and the day ended with Kirk telling Peter he would be sending him a full set of Metallica recordings to listen to.”
The Green Manalishi was Green’s last song with Fleetwood Mac. The video below shows Hammett playing Greeny at a tribute concert for Green at the London Palladium on February 25, 2020.
Hammett’s first Gibson was a 1979 Flying V and, in August 2021, he announced a new partnership with the guitar manufacturer, including its more reasonably priced Epiphone brand.
Jimi Hendrix’s Stratocaster: $2 million (rumored)
Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen owns the Fender Stratocaster that Jimi Hendrix played at the Woodstock festival in 1969. He bought it at a Sotheby’s auction sometime in the early-1990s but the price – rumored to be $2 million – remains unconfirmed.
In 1990, Sotheby’s sold the Strat for $325,000, according to a July 1998 report in the Wall Street Journal. The buyer wasn’t revealed. Allen was actively scooping up Hendrix memorabilia at the time to display in a museum honoring the musician.
A Los Angeles Times article from August 1995 reported that Allen once spent $50,000 at a Soetheby’s auction to buy fragments of a guitar that Hendrix had smashed during a performance.
The Seattle-based museum was originally called The Experience Music Project and is today known as the Museum of Pop Culture, which still houses the famed Hendrix guitar.
Bob Marley’s Washburn 22 series Hawk guitar: $1.2 million – $2 million (rumored)
The sale of reggae legend Bob Marley’s Washburn 22 series Hawk guitar is often mentioned but the least substantiated.
Marley owned just a handful of guitars before his untimely death aged just 36 in 1981. He reportedly gave this guitar to his friend Gary Karlson, who has written about its value and provenance extensively on his website.
The Jamaican government has also reportedly declared most of the Marley’s assets as national treasures, although there is nothing on its website to confirm it.
Jerry Garcia’s “Wolf” guitar: $1.9 million (2017)
Grateful Dead legend Jerry Garcia’s famous Wolf electric guitar was sold at auction for $1.9 million with the proceeds supporting a civil rights group.
The guitar was custom-made by luthier Doug Irwin with Garcia first using it at a 1973 concert in New York. It became a mainstay during the Dead’s perpetual touring schedule. When Garcia died in 1995, he bequeathed his guitars to Irwin who had fallen on hard times. After an initial battle with the remaining band members, Irwin received two of the guitars, which he auctioned.
Philanthropist Dan Pritzker bought Wolf for $789,500 from the auction house Guernsey’s in 2002. (Garcia’s “Tiger” guitar was sold at the same auction for a then record $957,500.)
In 2017, Pritzker decided to put it back on auction to raise money for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which was battling a rise in racially-driven hate crimes against immigrants and Muslims after the election of Donald Trump to the US Presidency.
The guitar was bought for $1.9 million by Brian Halligan, the co-founder of marketing firm HubSpot. An anonymous charity matched his pre-premium $1.6 million bid, bringing the total donation to the Southern Poverty Law Center to $3.2 million. Halligan – who counts himself as a Deadhead – had previously co-written a book on the Grateful Dead’s lessons for marketing.
Irwin has written an extensive post about Wolf, which you can read here.
1958 Gibson Korina Explorer: $1.1 million (claimed)
Denmark Street Guitars in London said it sold this rare Gibson 1958 Korina Explorer for $1.1 million in 2016.
The original Flying Vs were made in 1958 and early 1959 but proved unpopular at the time. Only a handful were ever made during the initial run, making it one of the rarest guitars.
Another original Explorer was sold for $611,000 at auction in 2006.
