Jazz-fusion legend John McLaughlin has played many different guitars in his long and distinguished career – but he has a few regrets about some that he’s given away over the years.
Lately, the 83-year-old McLaughlin has been using a variety of gorgeous PRS Private Stock models, of which only 200 were made in 2023.
It’s this guitar – as of now, at least – that McLaughlin favours most.
As he tells MusicRadar: “The last PRS that Paul Reed Smith gave to me is unbelievable. It’s such a beautiful guitar.”
Indeed, it is.
With a stacked spec sheet, including a maple top, mahogany neck, and a tonewood usually used for marimbas for its neck – hormigo – the guitar is built to stun.
But that’s not all, as McLaughlin’s beloved PRS has a 22-fret, 25” African blackwood fretboard, and Celtic knot inlays with holly spokes and ovals made of crushed opal.
Elsewhere, McLaughlin’s high-end ($14,950!) signature guitar features TCI pickups, a three-way toggle, and two mini-toggle EQ switches, which activates tuned high-pass filters that remove low-end and give you more clarity and pronounced highs.
And so, with all of that, along with its Smoked Black finish, it’s easy to see why McLaughlin loves this guitar.
But there are many others he has loved in the past.
“I think back on how many guitars I’ve given away,” McLaughlin says. “And I do have some regret.”
One such guitar was a 1963 Gibson L4-C with a Charlie Christian [Lollar] pickup.
“It was a beautiful guitar,” he recalls. “It had a great jazz tone, but I ran out of money and had to sell it to eat!”
McLaughlin says that he sold that guitar to an “angling friend.” But a few months later, when his finances had recovered, he tried to buy it back. Sadly, his friend wasn’t having it.
“I asked him, ‘Will you sell me the guitar back?’ He said, ‘No way, man. No way.’ So that was gone forever!”
There was also the guitar that McLaughlin gifted to another legendary player.
“I gave a 1967 white [Fender] Strat to Jeff Beck after a tour we did together in 1974, or ’75,” McLaughlin says. “And when we lost Jeff, his wife wrote to me and said, ‘I’m going to sell the guitars. They’re all around me, and they keep reminding me of him.’”
McLaughlin attended the auction of Beck’s guitars.
“I went to the sale in London,” he says. “They had all these instruments, along with amps, pre-amps, and pedalboards. But there were two white Strats! I don’t know which of them I gave him, but anyway, I saw it there!”
Ultimately, McLaughlin remains philosophical. In his view, guitars are meant to be played. And if you’re not playing them, you pass them on.
“I’m not a collector,” he says. “I get guitars, but I give them away.
“Guitars are like human beings – if you don’t play them, they get sick. They really need to be played.
“Instruments are like a marriage between heaven and hell. They’re made on Earth, but the stuff that comes out of them is made in heaven. They’re wonderful in that way.”
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