Billy Howerdel

I bought a Fender Squier Telecaster. It's funny, I don't do too much on social media but I just found the receipt from buying that guitar and put that on there. It was 310 dollars, I'll never forget that. I got it on one of the music stores on 48th street in New York. I wound up selling it when I got more into metal stuff. It was a poor decision. Squiers are more affordable but some of them are really great and that one was really great. I sold it to one of the teachers in my high school.

Gibson Les Pauls, predominantly a 1991 Les Paul Classic given to him by Trent Reznor. Plays Ernie Ball strings, with Dunlop 1.0mm Nylon picks. Tom Anderson Pickups. H3+ Bridge H1- neck. Mentioned as a part of the rig used to record his debut solo album, "What Normal Was", according to November 2022 Guitar World interview.

"I was the guitar tech on a Nine Inch Nails tour and one of the guitars that lasted the longest—a cinnaburst 1960 reissue Les Paul—is my main guitar now. It got broken all of the time—all the guitars did. They had headstocks off, necks off, just shattered. I fixed this one so many times, and then one day it got thrown into the crowd and somebody in the audience ripped the headstock off. It was sitting headless for a while. I had trunks and trunks of guitars, probably 50 or 60 of them that I traveled with and tried to fix to get ready for a show today, tomorrow, two weeks from now. A similar cinnaburst guitar got broken, and I kept that headstock and tried to marry the two. It got put back on, but at sort of the wrong angle—because, of course, the wood type didn’t match. It’s a little less angled than normal, but it’s the best-sounding and best-playing guitar I’ve ever used. It was a happy accident. I talked with Gibson several years ago about doing a signature model with the same specs. Even if it’s not for mass production, I just want some duplicates in case something ever happens to it."

Then I went and bought a BC Rich ST3 - the Strat because I wanted a wammy bar and more pickups and I just wanted the versatility. I could only afford to have one guitar so I wanted something that would do more things. I wound up putting different pickups in it and splitting the coils, just thirsty to get into things. But I regretted it - it felt like a downgrade of quality but it was an upgrade in accessibility. Then I wound up stripping all the paint off of it with a belt sander and drilling holes through it and then I started dipping it into liquid rubber, you know that stuff you put on screwdrivers to make the handles. So that guitar is sitting in my storage unit right now just sort of Frankensteined and half an art project. It actually plays OK.

It would be my main guitar, which is a 1960 Classic Reissue Les Paul that's pretty modded and customized. It's got Tom Anderson pickups on it and the headstock is on at the wrong angle. I've actually talked with Gibson about a signature model and we might revisit that. I just talked with somebody two months ago about it. So it would be that guitar, the rest would depend on the band but if it's quick and dirty and we need to get there lightly, it would be my little Gibson GA15RV amp and probably just the little Line 6 delay pedal - the little green one. I think that would be a pretty good setup.

"I was the guitar tech on a Nine Inch Nails tour and one of the guitars that lasted the longest—a cinnaburst 1960 reissue Les Paul—is my main guitar now. It got broken all of the time—all the guitars did. They had headstocks off, necks off, just shattered. I fixed this one so many times, and then one day it got thrown into the crowd and somebody in the audience ripped the headstock off. It was sitting headless for a while. I had trunks and trunks of guitars, probably 50 or 60 of them that I traveled with and tried to fix to get ready for a show today, tomorrow, two weeks from now. A similar cinnaburst guitar got broken, and I kept that headstock and tried to marry the two. It got put back on, but at sort of the wrong angle—because, of course, the wood type didn’t match. It’s a little less angled than normal, but it’s the best-sounding and best-playing guitar I’ve ever used. It was a happy accident. I talked with Gibson several years ago about doing a signature model with the same specs. Even if it’s not for mass production, I just want some duplicates in case something ever happens to it." – Billy Howerdel on his Gibson 1960 Les Paul Classic reissue