Jonny Lang

At 0:52 in this rig rundown video, Jonny Lang starts talking about his custom Telecaster Thinline. He says, "I switched to Tele Thinlines and somewhere along the line I was lucky enough to have Fender make me one," at 1:28. He mentions that it's a maple top, with a spruce back, and a bird's eye maple neck.

In this video, Jonny is playing his Benedict Custom Bluesmaster, built for him by Roger Benedict of Minneapolis, MN. http://www.benedictguitar.com/cgpg.htm tells the specs of this specific model that are as follows: BluesMaster Designed by and built for Jonny Lang -Spruce body, flame maple top -Maple neck, maple fingerboard with custom pearl inlay -Two vintage humbucking pickups with Seymour Duncan P-90 in the middle -5-way pickup switch with mini-switch to allow all three pickups on at once

Jonny Lang talks about a few of his guitars in this Premier Guitar rig rundown. At 2:16 he shows his 1958 Gibson Les Paul Reissue. He says, "I'd never tried Les Pauls before...This was the first one I played and I couldn't believe how good it sounded...it kind of beat all the old Les Pauls."

At 11:23, Jonny Lang's guitar tech says, "It has a really great, heavy, bright sound to it. And it's a fantastic guitar," about Lang's J-40 acoustic guitar.

There is no question that Jonny Lang is one of the most authentic blues artists in the modern era and if you're someone like me who has listened their whole life, even if you've just heard the hits, then this should come at no surprise to hear. I have done a bit of tone searching down the Jonny Lang path over the years and thankfully he has stayed pretty consistent for the most part. Rotating essentially the same 3-5 guitars, electric and acoustic alike, and maintaining a pretty straightforward bluesy/overdrive pedal chain setup.

That being said I had only primarily been looking into his electric set up because I have seen him live twice and he maybe played two or three solo acoustic tracks collectively. Listed on his gear page here currently and shown by Jonny himself in rig rundown interviews you'll find he strums a Martin J-40. Which made sense to me, I own a Martin myself and find them to be unmatched for any type of player. So when I discovered a video of him playing a live show with a Gibson J-45 I was intrigued as to why? Both his Martin and this Gibson J-45 have built in pickup configuration, both are on the larger body size and neither with a cutaway, and both run you nothing short of a very pretty penny. I wasn't at this live show in the video I discovered- maybe he popped a string on the Martin and jumped to the Gibson mid show? Or maybe his tastes have just shifted over the years slowly as Gibson has continued reformulating their gravitas in the global guitar community.