A SOLID-BODY ELECTRIC GUITAR, JEFF BECK SIGNATURE STRATOCASTER

Following the untimely death of Pink Floyd keyboardist Richard Wright on 15th September 2008 at age 65, guitar legend and old friend Jeff Beck was asked to play at his private memorial service at the 20th Century Theatre in London’s Notting Hill the following October. Due to scheduling conflicts, there was some concern that Beck would not have access to his guitars for the occasion, so Gilmour’s guitar technician Phil Taylor arranged for Fender Custom Shop Master Builder Todd Krause to set up a Jeff Beck Signature Stratocaster as per Beck’s main white Stratocaster and send it to London urgently for Beck to play at the memorial. On the day, however, Beck turned up with his own white Strat and this guitar was relegated to a spare. In Nick Mason’s Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd, he relates that the event was …a wonderful send-off… Jeff Beck played a beautiful, unaccompanied guitar solo, the more beautiful for being unexpected, and Dave and I performed Rick’s ‘Remember A Day’ for the first time in nearly forty years. Rick had said that he wanted a party that was not too formal, and he absolutely got his wish. Gilmour decided to keep the guitar at his home studio, where it has remained for the past decade in case Beck should wish to play when visiting, occasionally used by Gilmour himself.