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If you were to combine two of the guitar's most colourful characters, it'd be hard to beat the combination of Billy Gibbons and Bo Diddley. Generations apart they may be but both are eccentric, and both know how to make their music dance.

Long-time Gretsch user Bo Diddley knew how to put on a show in his day, and his Thunderbird tailfin-shaped electrics and rectangular guitars were all part of his influential act. Hey, he even came up with a beat... And Billy Gibbons is no stranger to the weirdest of guitars. So how did this latest dual signature model come about?

"Some time ago, Bo gave me the guitar as a gift," says Billy. "It was during the recent ZZ Top recordings that the engineering crew and I snaked through the guitar vault searching for that 'certain something' guitar – and there it was! We didn't risk subjecting such a rare instrument to the rigours of the road, so this new reproduction model was created with some BFG mojo thrown in for good measure. It's now the main stage guitar with a groove." To prove that point, even the latest ZZ Top 'Whack Attack' tour poster features our favourite Texas triumvirate standing proudly behind the 'Billy-Bo'.

"It's an unusual-looking instrument, but quite attractive to my eyes," continues Billy. "It's from Bo's genius artistic capability. Bo told me he came up with the idea in '59. That makes sense because up until then, Gretsch was using a single-coil DeArmond pickup, but following the advent of the humbucker - Seth Lover's brainchild - the Gretsch company wanted its own version, which is the twin-bobbin Filter'Tron."

Inspiration

And, yes, it is indeed an unusual-looking instrument. But if Bo's memory is correct, it clearly wasn't just Ted McCarty and the designers of the Firebird et al at Gibson who, in

the late fifties, considered the electric guitar too conservative. Presumably inspired, and named, after the classic Thunderbird car, Bo's original vision is closely replicated here.

The long thin body contributes to an overall length of approx 107.9cm (42.5 inches) - a Strat is closer to 956mm (38 inches) - so the Billy-Bo is clearly in the Explorer/Firebird school of 'ungainly' designs. Played seated it's comfortable enough, although, as with a Firebird, the nut seems a long stretch away. Strapped on, however, it all makes sense. It's really nicely balanced, there's no neck dive, and whether by luck or judgement ol' Bo got something right here.

Although we can't see any wood due to it being covered in a Firebird Red face with black back, sides and neck, it's apparently a chambered mahogany body with an 'ultra-thin' maple laminate top. Certainly the light weight is welcome, otherwise the design could be a real shoulder-curver. Removing the three backplates doesn't tell us much more: though it's clearly substantially hollow aside from the central section under the bridge and on the bass side, where there's a back-placed rib-cage contour.