Keith Richards

In this photo, one can see Richards playing a Gibson Firebird VII.

In this photo, one can see Richards playing a Epiphone Casino.

In this photo, Richards is seen with Gibson SG Custom. This guitar was used around 1973.

At around 197, Keith Richards used this Dan Armstrong Plexi Electric Guitar quite a bit. On this photo, he plays the Ampeg guitar at the England Empire Theatre, in Liverpool, in 1971.

Used mostly on stage, although sometimes used in the studio

In this video Keef can be seen playing a Gibson Les Paul TV Special

On this photo we can see Keith Richards playing on a Gibson L6-S

At 0:12 in the trailer for the Netflix documentary Keith Richards: Under the Influence, Keith can be seen playing a 1928 Gibson L-1. He played the guitar throughout the sessions for his album "Crosseyed Heart," including the title track. It is featured heavily in the Under the Influence documentary, and at 13:20 of the film, Keith's longtime guitar tech Pierre De Beauport discusses the guitar, the model's association with venerated bluesman Robert Johnson, and its unique suitability for fingerstyle blues: "it almost takes you there, it makes you play that way - the notes last the right amount of time; the balance between the high strigns and what's going on in the low end, the snap."

Keith also mention in this Instagram post that this guitar is a 1928 by captioning it:

My 1928 Gibson L1. Same guitar as Robert Johnson!

Used during the recording of Exile on Main St.

Keith Richards and his guitar tech Pierre wanted to create a humbucker from two telecaster neck pickups according to the Cream T website. These pickups are installed on his Telecaster "Gloria".

Keith used the Guild Aristocrat in 1965, At the Ed Sullivan Show.

The Ernie Ball Slinky Electric Guitar Strings are the signature guitar strings of the famous Rolling Stones's guitarist Keith Richards. This has been shown by Ernie Ball on its Instagram website.

In this performance of Little Red Rooster with James Cotton, you can see him using this guitar.

According to this site, it is a "2006 Guild Custom 10 String acoustic".

2006 Guild Custom 10 String Acoustic is used on Wild Horses, in place of the 12 string Keith used to use before.

Richards can be seen in this photo, to the right of John Lennon, playing a Fender Precision Bass.

Keith can also be seen playing a Fender Precision Bass in this photo from June 10, 1968 recording the track Sympathy for the Devil at Olympic Studios in Barnes, London.

Richards can be seen playing a Gibson Les Paul Goldtop in this photo.

In this photo, one can see Richards using a Gibson L5-S.

Keith Richards uses a Shubb Capo as shown in the user-uploaded photo from Wn.

In photos from the official Fulltone artist page (the other can be found here), Keith Richards used a Fulltone Tube Tape Echo from at least the "A Bigger Bang" tour in 2005. These photos, taken at the Glasgow show of that tour, were later moved to a now defunct separate page for Richards.

Keith Richards used the Gibson Black Beauty Les Paul in this performance of "Sympathy For The Devil."

"Keith Richards reportedly owns 3000 guitars and he once jokingly said, 'give me five minutes and I’ll make them all sound the same.'

But there’s something about the guitar on “Gimme Shelter” that’s very different.

The song contains one of The Rolling Stones’ best-known riffs, it comes from one of their most critically-acclaimed albums and it has one of the most fascinating backstories in their entire catalogue.

And what was Keith Richards playing on it? A Fender Telecaster? A Les Paul Standard? A sunburst Gibson ES-330TD?

None of the above. It was a Maton SE777.

The story of how Richards ended up with an Australian guitar in his hands while recording 'Gimme Shelter' in 1969 is a happy accident.

Like so many things from that time, Richards forgets the name of the person who owned the instrument, but remembers him staying at his London apartment for a while.

“He crashed out for a couple of days and suddenly left in a hurry, leaving that guitar behind,” he recalled in a 2002 interview with Guitar World. 'You know, ‘Take care of it for me.’ I certainly did.'

Well, not exactly. In fact, the guitar ended up in two pieces. Richards played the Maton throughout the Let It Bleed sessions in February and March 1969 and particularly on 'Midnight Rambler' and 'Gimme Shelter'.

'It had been all revarnished and painted out, but it sounded great,” he said. “It made a great record. And on the very last note of ‘Gimme Shelter’ the whole neck fell off. You can hear it on the original take.'"

Used on Richards' electric guitar for "Brown Sugar", as stated by mix engineer Jimmy Johnson in this September 21, 2018 ProSoundWeb interview.

On the guitar amplifiers, let’s see there were two different ones, on Mick’s I had a SM57, and then on the other I was using… I might have been using an RE15 on Keith. But I had a real problem with Keith because he was running a Fender Twin amp wide open, I mean that sucker was getting it.

I had a real problem with distortion going on, but I happened to remember that my maintenance guy, about a month before that, had left me a 20 dB pad that he had made, a homemade pad, so I just stuck it in between. So I dropped that level before it hit the front of the Universal Audio and it saved the day. Otherwise, I would have been hosed. I still thank God for that. I would have just been screwed. So on Keith’s amp… oh no, I remember what was on his amp, an RCA 77DX, because I was having to get that level down any way I could, it was a ribbon mic.

With the pad and that RCA, I made it, just barely. A lot of that had to do with how it sounded, and I was always real pleased with that guitar sound. (...) And the sound of Keith’s guitar is so good, and I really attribute it to that RCA DX77 with the pad, going into that Universal Audio tube console which warmed it up, too. Pretty wild, huh?

Visible in this photo.

In this live performance of "Happy," Keith can be seen playing a Telecaster with a Humbucker pickup added to the Neck.

Keith Richards used a 1961 Epiphone Elitist Casino, according to this Guitar Player article:

"Richards and Wood already had a strong history with Gibson products. In the mid Sixties, Richards played a 1959 Les Paul Standard, a 1961 Epiphone Elitist Casino..."

According to this article from Gibson:

"Even some ardent Gibson Les Paul fans forget this, but Keith Richards was the first big-name guitarist to tote a Sunburst Les Paul. His most fabled was an original 1959 Les Paul Standard. The guitar was bought new in 1961 from Farmers Music Store in Luton (U.K.) by John Bowen, who played with aspiring English popsters Mike Dean & The Kinsmen. Bowen had a Bigsby vibrato fitted at Selmer’s music store in London before trading it for another guitar in 1962. Soon after, a young Keith Richards, playing guitar in a little-known band called The Rolling Stones, walked in to Selmer’s and bought it.

Richards used the ’Burst extensively in the Stones’ early days. It was seen regularly from 1964 to 1966 when Keith began to favor Les Paul Customs. Appearances on TV show Ready Steady Go and classic songs like 'The Last Time' and 'Satisfaction' were all played on this ’59 ’Burst.

Keef sold the guitar to Mick Taylor in 1967 – the future Stone had replaced fellow Les Paul maestros Peter Green (and before him, Eric Clapton) in John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers.

There are photos of Mick Jagger with the ’59 Burst at some 1970 recording sessions – by which time Taylor was in The Stones – but it then disappeared. Rumor has it that the guitar was stolen in 1971, either from London’s Marquee Club after a gig, or from Nellcote in southern France during the recording of Exile on Main St. Whatever the truth, it did end up in the hands of Cosmo Verrico of the Heavy Metal Kids who were signed to Atlantic Records (alongside The Stones).

Verrico owned the ’59 until 1974, when he then sold it to Bernie Marsden (later of Whitesnake). Marsden kept the guitar for a little over a week before, perhaps rashly; he sold it to a U.K. collector. The fabled ’59 was sold again to another collector in 2006, 'somewhere in Europe' according to auctioneers."

Keith Richards is pictured with a Gibson ES-350 electric guitar in a user-uploaded photo on Examiner. The guitar, a single-cut in yellow, is shown in the image, though further details about its use by Richards are not widely documented.

In this picture, you can see Keith cradling one of his favourite guitars; "Dwight", a 1964 Gibson ES-345.

This article from Gibson's blog claims that this 1959 Les Paul sunburst model was one of Keith's favorite Gibson guitars.

Richards can be seen in this photo playing a Vox Teardrop Bass.

On the Collings website Keith Richards is shown playing a OM2H while performing in Chicago with The Rolling Stones here.