Mike Stern

Mike's original "mutt Telecaster that he bought from Danny Gatton.

"Yamaha modeled it on a mutt Telecaster that I had been playing since back when I began recording with Atlantic, and that guitar was itself actually kind of a copy of a Tele I got from Danny Gatton, who got it from Roy Buchanan. Danny souped it up and sold it to me for $500, because he wanted to buy a used car. It was stolen from me at gunpoint many years ago."

Have you always played Teles?

Even though I’m a “jazz” player, I play a Telecaster-style guitar because I grew up playing rock and blues on Teles and Strats, and when I got into jazz I just stuck with them. I did have a Gibson ES-175 for a few years when I was studying jazz with Pat Metheny at Berklee. That was a great guitar, and everybody there was playing jazz guitars, but when I would play my rock, blues, and funk stuff, it would just start feeding back. At one point Pat heard me playing a Tele and said that it sounded great, and that I should stay with it.

Mike can be seen in this image with his signature PAC1611MS.

Mike Stern used a Fender Strat for with Miles Davis in the early '80s.