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Lot Essay
This Custom Shop white Stratocaster, built by former Fender Custom Shop Founder Master Builder J.W. Black, was Jeff Beck’s principle performance and recording instrument from 1999 to 2014. Comprising a prototype neck made by Black in 1990 and delivered as a neck only, and a body made by Black in 1993, which was originally supplied with a maple neck (included in this lot), this guitar was favoured as Beck’s ‘main’ guitar for longer than any other in his career.
The neck, number four out of four prototypes made by J.W. Black for Beck, perhaps in an attempt to pin down the neck size and shape he preferred for the Signature series, was initially put onto another guitar which had been delivered at around the same time – a Surf Green instrument which would become known as ‘Little Richard’ thanks to his signature on the curved contour of the bass side. This neck on the green body was Beck’s main guitar for performances and recordings for most of the nineties, preceding the creation of this white Strat – and so this particular prototype neck (numbered 04) was in almost constant use by Beck for 24 years.
‘Little Richard’ was played hard and suffered badly during Beck’s co-headlining tour with Carlos Santana in 1995 – when a fateful accident led to the body being split and the neck sustaining a superficial crack running down its back from the throat for a couple of inches. The neck crack was stabilised and the guitar hastily glued together and it is likely that around the point the body was being restored that a new set of pickups were delivered for the guitar (as well as at least one other – the Surf Green spare – see lot 41). These were a set of stacked single coils developed by John Suhr, who was the original pickup designer for the Fender Custom Shop. The reverse of the pickguard shielding of this set of pickups – still in existence in Beck’s collection – is inscribed ‘Jeff Beck / Rebuilt new electronics / 20.9.95 / J. Black / John Suhr / #04’ – the last number denoting the serial number to the back of ‘Little Richard’s’ (and the present guitar’s) neck. That particular set of pickups became Beck’s favourite for their unique sonic properties.
John Suhr, who was the original pickup designer for the Fender Custom Shop, clarified the creation history of Beck’s favourite pickups: ‘It was a dare from J Black who was re- working Beck’s 3 main guitars and was having some feedback issues with them. So J asks if I could make something and I said I would give it a go! They are stacks and are very tall (under the pickguard), definitely flat pole pieces flush with the cover or close to that. 100% handmade pickups, bobbins and all and the used stock covers. They are dark sounding and warm which really worked for the gain and brilliance of the amps he was using making a brittle overdrive sound fat and smooth. Bill Turner then came on board and Bill Lawrence shortly after was doing some more work for Fender. Then I left. After the Fender Noiseless series was created Beck wanted something more like the prototype sets I built for him and Bill Turner used the existing new noiseless bobbins to come come up with something hotter as a Jeff model pickup, at that point I had one foot out the door. I had assumed Beck had switched to those but later found out that Beck was still using two of the original sets for special occasions loaded into a pickguards he used for special shows and recording. I might make some pickups like the original Beck sets but the guitar would need deeper cavities if I were to do it exactly the same, so it wouldn't be easy to market. These pickups have a unique character and even though stratty they are pretty far away from an authentic single coil tone.’
Steve Prior, Jeff’s guitar technician between 1999 and 2014, revealed in an interview discussing Beck’s gear in around 2003: ‘The main, white one is a basswood-body made by J.W. Black, with a J.W. Black neck, and John Suhr pickups, which there are really only two sets of in existence – that main guitar and then the Surf Green spare. Obviously, Fender would like to get those back so they could try to replicate those pickups, but that’ll never happen, because you’d never get the guitar out of Jeff’s hands long enough.’
With the new John Suhr pickups in ‘Little Richard’ Beck went on to record the first of what became known as his ‘techno trilogy’ – Who Else! – in 1998⁄9. By this point the cracks to ‘Little Richard’s body had become unstable enough that Beck decided to retire it for good and move the neck and electronics to a different guitar – an Olympic White basswood Strat body already in his possession – and from this point onwards Beck ceased to play green guitars live on stage. The new main Strat was first seen live on Beck’s American tour in 1999, with guitarist Jennifer Batten playing alongside him. A detailed analysis of Beck’s touring gear in a Japanese magazine produced during Beck’s tour of Japan later that year explained the changes and background of his ‘new’ number 1 guitar, including an interesting modification. Dan Dearnley, Jeff’s guitar technician at the time, clarified to us that he cut off the corner of the neck heel – exposing the wood and requiring the drilling of a new screw hole to affix the neck to the body – in order to both allow Jeff to play higher up the neck more comfortably and to prevent irritation to the palm of his hand caused by the nickel plating of the metal plate. This was a modification that would be copied for his main spare white Strat (see lot 68) and all subsequent Custom Shop guitars made for him by Master Builder Todd Krause. In his 2016 book BECK01, Jeff touched upon the modification: ‘I had an allergy to nickel, which was causing a rash on my palm. The corner of the neck plate was digging in and I couldn't play high up, so I shaved it off and moved the screw. Just removing that corner meant I could play much higher up The only problem is that the screw placement isn’t quite as effective as it would have been, but nothing's gone wrong yet. In fact, this set-up is better than the CBS Strats they produced in the Seventies, which had only three screws. You can actually move their necks from side to side.’
The guitar was used for the second and third albums of the ‘techno trilogy’ – You Had It Coming (2000) and Jeff (2003) – and was played at all live performances to promote these albums, including three dates at the Royal Festival Hall in September 2002. Discussing the making of You Had It Coming and how many guitars he used to record the album, Beck clarified – ‘Usually just the one. The only other one, to deviate a bit, would be a Telecaster, because that’s got a distinctly different sound, and a totally different feel to play it. As different as, say, a Gretsch, or something like that. It’s got the same neck feel, but everything else is different - the way it plays, it just makes you play different. I used that on the beginning of ”Rosebud”, that was all, though, really. Everything else is done on the Strat. I’ve only got the Gibsons that I had on ”Truth” and all that - but I would have liked to have spent some money on guitars when they were humanly reachable. I wanted a Gibson L5 - I just rented one [an ES175], and it sounded fantastic, but I didn’t want to buy it! The only thing that stops me going for one is, they scream and whistle on stage - but they sound so great. Feels like a big old suitcase, though, after a Strat - which almost becomes like a part of your body. It’s a tool.’
On one notable occasion the guitar would adopt its name ‘Anoushka’ – in much the same way as those of ‘Tina’ and ‘Little Richard’ – thanks to the guitar acquiring a signature from a fellow musician whom he hugely admired. Alongside a star-studded line-up, Beck was billed to play at Sting and Trudie Styler’s Rainforest Benefit concert at Carnegie Hall on 13 April 2002. Another due to perform was the sitarist Anoushka Shankar, daughter of sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar, whom Beck had met in the 1960s during his time in The Yardbirds and had always respected. Speaking at the time Beck said of Anoushka Shankar: ‘She's divine. She's rock and roll, innit? She laughs and jokes. She's more of a good-time player than 'Oh, I'm tradition. You're no good and I'm fabulous.' I said to her, 'Just please sign this.' And she signed my guitar. She couldn't believe I asked her. So now that Strat is Anoushka.’ The signature, running diagonally below the bridge, was sadly not carved into the body of the guitar in the same way as Tina Turner or Little Richard’s had been forever imprinted, and eventually her signature would rub off, but the name stuck.
In an interview with Barry Cleveland for Guitar Player in September 2003, discussing his latest album, Jeff, Beck clarified – ‘I think the guitar I played [on 'Bulgaria'] was 'Anoushka'. I have a new Strat that I keep in Eb tuning that was signed by Anoushka Shankar, which is why I call it that. I have another Strat in concert pitch that's called THX. Anoushka has fat strings - a .052 on the bottom, and an .011 or .012 on the top.’
The present pickups in this guitar – a set designed by John Suhr’s successor at the Fender Custom Shop, Bill Turner – were eventually substituted by Prior for the John Suhr prototypes in around 2005, so that an identical back-up set without the depth of the stacks created by Suhr could be in the main Strat and two back-ups, which were later bodies made by Todd Krause, and avoid any major change in tone on the rare occasions that Beck needed to use one of the spares on stage.
Later, in an interview for The Tone Quest Report in 2010, John Suhr detailed the evolution of both sets of pickups: ‘It really came about while J Black was working on and rebuilding Jeff’s guitars. According to J Black, Jeff was complaining about microphonics and noise from his current pickups – the Lace pickups. J and I were friends from New York (he actually talked me in to coming to Fender) and were both Senior Master Builders. Since I was doing pickup R&D at the time along with my building responsibilities, J asked if I could whip something up. So I did and Jeff liked them, I did a few more versions which he liked, and from what I hear Jeff is rougher on his guitars than I could of ever imagined. I heard some of them fell apart from bouncing guitars around and he wound up with just one or two sets left. I have since figured out how to make them ‘Jeff proof.’
The production issue was that they don’t fit in a standard cavity, so they would not be good for production. I actually made those pickups before Bill Turner came to work at Fender. I talked Bill into coming on board and had known him for many years from EMG.. Bill then took my design after I left Fender and modified his new version of noiseless pickups to be more like my prototypes for the Jeff Beck model guitar. Bill was bound by some tooling and construction differences, so it was not possible to make them identical and universally fit it the production guitars. Mine were stacks, basically, but there are construction methods that let them breathe and have more output than traditional stacks. I should be offering something similar this year since I have received so many requests.’
The guitar served Beck well for multiple landmark performances including his residency at the legendary Soho jazz club Ronnie Scott’s in 2007 and his (second) induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2009 – which saw him take to the stage with childhood friend and fellow former Yardbird Jimmy Page, playing his Fender 12-string, for an epic rendition of ‘Beck’s Bolero’ segueing into Led Zeppelin’s ‘Immigrant Song’. In February 2009, as part of a tour of Japan that both artists were undertaking at the same time, Beck came together with his predecessor in The Yardbirds, Eric Clapton, for a sell-out co-headline show. In October 2009 Beck gave a dazzling performance with this Strat at the 25th Anniversary Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Concert at Madison Square Garden, performing ‘Superstition’ with Stevie Wonder, his friend of 40 years, a song they had created together. The reunion with Clapton prompted a follow-up a year later in February 2010, the last time that Anoushka was seen on stage with her by now increasingly yellowed body.
Following the series of four shows Jeff did with Eric at the O2 in London in February 2010, the yellowing body was refinished in bright white, giving the guitar a new lease of life on stage for the next four years – albeit with her scars and knocks still showing through. Speaking to The Tone Quest Report in 2010, Prior clarified the changes: ‘As you noticed, the #1 guitar does take a bit of a beating on tour. It needed work and had turned the dreaded yellow, so I had it re-sprayed Olympic White after the Clapton shows earlier this year by Charlie Chandler, with only three days to do it! Being basswood, the body is very soft, and I’ve had to plug and re-drill the holes for the neck plate, springclaw, strap buttons and so on several times whilst on tour. Occasionally, he’ll look across at me at a show when he’s taking bows and as long as I’m looking at him he’ll give me a wink and throw the guitar to me. On a couple of occasions he’s been unaware of the fact that the guitar cable is still plugged in or snagged and it has taken a nose dive into the stage long before it got to me! So I got the guitar refinished, filled a crack in the back of the neck with Super Glue and essentially put it back in shape to go back out on tour.’
With her refreshed look, Anoushka was put to work on Beck’s next solo studio album Emotion & Commotion. Speaking to Art Thompson for Guitar Player in 2010, Beck clarified that he ‘went through about five different guitars, and they all got put back on the rack. We did one song with a Gretsch and some with Guild even, but they just didn't sound like me. I picked the Strat back up and, boom, there I am again. So why go against it?’
On 27 February 2012, Beck was invited to perform a very special concert with a host of other legends including B.B. King, Buddy Guy and Mick Jagger, for President Barack Obama at The White House, billed as Performance at the White House; Red, White and Blues. Anoushka, with her cracked neck visible in the accompanying photograph of Jeff embracing his friend B.B. King, served Beck well for renditions of ‘Commit a Crime’, ‘Let Me Love You’ and ‘Five Long Years’.
Anoushka was toured hard for the next two years until the summer of 2014, when, following an incident at a show in the South of France where she was dropped, and fearful of losing her to the same fate as ‘Little Richard’, Beck decided to retire his faithful and battered workhorse. Tim Myer, Beck’s guitar technician at the time, recalled receiving a call from Jeff just before he was due to embark on a series of American shows and his tour of the US with ZZ Top in August 2014, during which Jeff informed him that he was due to fly over for rehearsals, that he was ‘bringing a neck’, and that it was up to Tim to put together the rest. Tim quickly called Todd Krause at the Fender Custom Shop, who told him they’d just completed a large run of Custom Shop bodies for their biggest customer in Japan and might have one or two left over which were to Jeff’s specifications. The neck in question was a reverse-headstock neck which had been made by J.W. Black for Jeff back in 1995 with serial number JB16 to the back of the headstock – originally intended to be put onto a custom left-handed Strat (see lot 55) – which he wanted to try out. When the two basswood Strat bodies arrived from Krause at the rehearsal space, Myer found that the earlier neck heel didn’t fit into the much shallower neck pocket which by then was the custom profile of the Strats made by Krause for Beck. Myer therefore set to painstakingly carving out the neck pocket by hand so that eventually the neck fit perfectly. A set of Bill Turner’s pickups were installed in the guitar – almost certainly those taken from the main spare at the time – and following a few minor adjustments to the action, once the guitar was in Jeff’s hands, it rarely left his possession for the next two years. In his 2016 book BECK01, Jeff explained the change: ‘It's great when guitars become worn in. It's a big step taking on a new one! I have to just close my eyes and get into it. I threw one guitar up in the air and it landed on the bolt. Now there's a crack in the back of the headstock and it looks like the truss rod is trying to break out. The truss rod channel does encourage the neck to split at that point, but it wouldn't have happened if I hadn't dropped the guitar. My guitars take plenty of pounding - I used to chuck them all over the place. The left-handed neck is the only one that I have found to replace the split one.’
At the same time that the new no. 1 was created, Myer carried out the same adjustments to the second body sent over by Krause, and Beck’s faithful ‘04’ neck from Anoushka, as well as her pickups, were fitted onto the new guitar body (included in this lot). The new guitar became the main spare (adorned with Cam Girl tremolo cover – see the footnote to lot 68 for further details) for the rest of the tour, although, as Myer explained, once Jeff became accustomed to playing the new no. 1, with its reverse-headstock and different string tension, he was loathe to go back to the standard headstock. Following the end of the 2014 tour the ‘new’ Anoushka guitar was kept at home, until Beck decided to take it to rehearsals and on tour in 2022, during which it was used sparingly in Drop D tuning for one song – ‘Dirty Mind’.
The neck, number four out of four prototypes made by J.W. Black for Beck, perhaps in an attempt to pin down the neck size and shape he preferred for the Signature series, was initially put onto another guitar which had been delivered at around the same time – a Surf Green instrument which would become known as ‘Little Richard’ thanks to his signature on the curved contour of the bass side. This neck on the green body was Beck’s main guitar for performances and recordings for most of the nineties, preceding the creation of this white Strat – and so this particular prototype neck (numbered 04) was in almost constant use by Beck for 24 years.
‘Little Richard’ was played hard and suffered badly during Beck’s co-headlining tour with Carlos Santana in 1995 – when a fateful accident led to the body being split and the neck sustaining a superficial crack running down its back from the throat for a couple of inches. The neck crack was stabilised and the guitar hastily glued together and it is likely that around the point the body was being restored that a new set of pickups were delivered for the guitar (as well as at least one other – the Surf Green spare – see lot 41). These were a set of stacked single coils developed by John Suhr, who was the original pickup designer for the Fender Custom Shop. The reverse of the pickguard shielding of this set of pickups – still in existence in Beck’s collection – is inscribed ‘Jeff Beck / Rebuilt new electronics / 20.9.95 / J. Black / John Suhr / #04’ – the last number denoting the serial number to the back of ‘Little Richard’s’ (and the present guitar’s) neck. That particular set of pickups became Beck’s favourite for their unique sonic properties.
John Suhr, who was the original pickup designer for the Fender Custom Shop, clarified the creation history of Beck’s favourite pickups: ‘It was a dare from J Black who was re- working Beck’s 3 main guitars and was having some feedback issues with them. So J asks if I could make something and I said I would give it a go! They are stacks and are very tall (under the pickguard), definitely flat pole pieces flush with the cover or close to that. 100% handmade pickups, bobbins and all and the used stock covers. They are dark sounding and warm which really worked for the gain and brilliance of the amps he was using making a brittle overdrive sound fat and smooth. Bill Turner then came on board and Bill Lawrence shortly after was doing some more work for Fender. Then I left. After the Fender Noiseless series was created Beck wanted something more like the prototype sets I built for him and Bill Turner used the existing new noiseless bobbins to come come up with something hotter as a Jeff model pickup, at that point I had one foot out the door. I had assumed Beck had switched to those but later found out that Beck was still using two of the original sets for special occasions loaded into a pickguards he used for special shows and recording. I might make some pickups like the original Beck sets but the guitar would need deeper cavities if I were to do it exactly the same, so it wouldn't be easy to market. These pickups have a unique character and even though stratty they are pretty far away from an authentic single coil tone.’
Steve Prior, Jeff’s guitar technician between 1999 and 2014, revealed in an interview discussing Beck’s gear in around 2003: ‘The main, white one is a basswood-body made by J.W. Black, with a J.W. Black neck, and John Suhr pickups, which there are really only two sets of in existence – that main guitar and then the Surf Green spare. Obviously, Fender would like to get those back so they could try to replicate those pickups, but that’ll never happen, because you’d never get the guitar out of Jeff’s hands long enough.’
With the new John Suhr pickups in ‘Little Richard’ Beck went on to record the first of what became known as his ‘techno trilogy’ – Who Else! – in 1998⁄9. By this point the cracks to ‘Little Richard’s body had become unstable enough that Beck decided to retire it for good and move the neck and electronics to a different guitar – an Olympic White basswood Strat body already in his possession – and from this point onwards Beck ceased to play green guitars live on stage. The new main Strat was first seen live on Beck’s American tour in 1999, with guitarist Jennifer Batten playing alongside him. A detailed analysis of Beck’s touring gear in a Japanese magazine produced during Beck’s tour of Japan later that year explained the changes and background of his ‘new’ number 1 guitar, including an interesting modification. Dan Dearnley, Jeff’s guitar technician at the time, clarified to us that he cut off the corner of the neck heel – exposing the wood and requiring the drilling of a new screw hole to affix the neck to the body – in order to both allow Jeff to play higher up the neck more comfortably and to prevent irritation to the palm of his hand caused by the nickel plating of the metal plate. This was a modification that would be copied for his main spare white Strat (see lot 68) and all subsequent Custom Shop guitars made for him by Master Builder Todd Krause. In his 2016 book BECK01, Jeff touched upon the modification: ‘I had an allergy to nickel, which was causing a rash on my palm. The corner of the neck plate was digging in and I couldn't play high up, so I shaved it off and moved the screw. Just removing that corner meant I could play much higher up The only problem is that the screw placement isn’t quite as effective as it would have been, but nothing's gone wrong yet. In fact, this set-up is better than the CBS Strats they produced in the Seventies, which had only three screws. You can actually move their necks from side to side.’
The guitar was used for the second and third albums of the ‘techno trilogy’ – You Had It Coming (2000) and Jeff (2003) – and was played at all live performances to promote these albums, including three dates at the Royal Festival Hall in September 2002. Discussing the making of You Had It Coming and how many guitars he used to record the album, Beck clarified – ‘Usually just the one. The only other one, to deviate a bit, would be a Telecaster, because that’s got a distinctly different sound, and a totally different feel to play it. As different as, say, a Gretsch, or something like that. It’s got the same neck feel, but everything else is different - the way it plays, it just makes you play different. I used that on the beginning of ”Rosebud”, that was all, though, really. Everything else is done on the Strat. I’ve only got the Gibsons that I had on ”Truth” and all that - but I would have liked to have spent some money on guitars when they were humanly reachable. I wanted a Gibson L5 - I just rented one [an ES175], and it sounded fantastic, but I didn’t want to buy it! The only thing that stops me going for one is, they scream and whistle on stage - but they sound so great. Feels like a big old suitcase, though, after a Strat - which almost becomes like a part of your body. It’s a tool.’
On one notable occasion the guitar would adopt its name ‘Anoushka’ – in much the same way as those of ‘Tina’ and ‘Little Richard’ – thanks to the guitar acquiring a signature from a fellow musician whom he hugely admired. Alongside a star-studded line-up, Beck was billed to play at Sting and Trudie Styler’s Rainforest Benefit concert at Carnegie Hall on 13 April 2002. Another due to perform was the sitarist Anoushka Shankar, daughter of sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar, whom Beck had met in the 1960s during his time in The Yardbirds and had always respected. Speaking at the time Beck said of Anoushka Shankar: ‘She's divine. She's rock and roll, innit? She laughs and jokes. She's more of a good-time player than 'Oh, I'm tradition. You're no good and I'm fabulous.' I said to her, 'Just please sign this.' And she signed my guitar. She couldn't believe I asked her. So now that Strat is Anoushka.’ The signature, running diagonally below the bridge, was sadly not carved into the body of the guitar in the same way as Tina Turner or Little Richard’s had been forever imprinted, and eventually her signature would rub off, but the name stuck.
In an interview with Barry Cleveland for Guitar Player in September 2003, discussing his latest album, Jeff, Beck clarified – ‘I think the guitar I played [on 'Bulgaria'] was 'Anoushka'. I have a new Strat that I keep in Eb tuning that was signed by Anoushka Shankar, which is why I call it that. I have another Strat in concert pitch that's called THX. Anoushka has fat strings - a .052 on the bottom, and an .011 or .012 on the top.’
The present pickups in this guitar – a set designed by John Suhr’s successor at the Fender Custom Shop, Bill Turner – were eventually substituted by Prior for the John Suhr prototypes in around 2005, so that an identical back-up set without the depth of the stacks created by Suhr could be in the main Strat and two back-ups, which were later bodies made by Todd Krause, and avoid any major change in tone on the rare occasions that Beck needed to use one of the spares on stage.
Later, in an interview for The Tone Quest Report in 2010, John Suhr detailed the evolution of both sets of pickups: ‘It really came about while J Black was working on and rebuilding Jeff’s guitars. According to J Black, Jeff was complaining about microphonics and noise from his current pickups – the Lace pickups. J and I were friends from New York (he actually talked me in to coming to Fender) and were both Senior Master Builders. Since I was doing pickup R&D at the time along with my building responsibilities, J asked if I could whip something up. So I did and Jeff liked them, I did a few more versions which he liked, and from what I hear Jeff is rougher on his guitars than I could of ever imagined. I heard some of them fell apart from bouncing guitars around and he wound up with just one or two sets left. I have since figured out how to make them ‘Jeff proof.’
The production issue was that they don’t fit in a standard cavity, so they would not be good for production. I actually made those pickups before Bill Turner came to work at Fender. I talked Bill into coming on board and had known him for many years from EMG.. Bill then took my design after I left Fender and modified his new version of noiseless pickups to be more like my prototypes for the Jeff Beck model guitar. Bill was bound by some tooling and construction differences, so it was not possible to make them identical and universally fit it the production guitars. Mine were stacks, basically, but there are construction methods that let them breathe and have more output than traditional stacks. I should be offering something similar this year since I have received so many requests.’
The guitar served Beck well for multiple landmark performances including his residency at the legendary Soho jazz club Ronnie Scott’s in 2007 and his (second) induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2009 – which saw him take to the stage with childhood friend and fellow former Yardbird Jimmy Page, playing his Fender 12-string, for an epic rendition of ‘Beck’s Bolero’ segueing into Led Zeppelin’s ‘Immigrant Song’. In February 2009, as part of a tour of Japan that both artists were undertaking at the same time, Beck came together with his predecessor in The Yardbirds, Eric Clapton, for a sell-out co-headline show. In October 2009 Beck gave a dazzling performance with this Strat at the 25th Anniversary Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Concert at Madison Square Garden, performing ‘Superstition’ with Stevie Wonder, his friend of 40 years, a song they had created together. The reunion with Clapton prompted a follow-up a year later in February 2010, the last time that Anoushka was seen on stage with her by now increasingly yellowed body.
Following the series of four shows Jeff did with Eric at the O2 in London in February 2010, the yellowing body was refinished in bright white, giving the guitar a new lease of life on stage for the next four years – albeit with her scars and knocks still showing through. Speaking to The Tone Quest Report in 2010, Prior clarified the changes: ‘As you noticed, the #1 guitar does take a bit of a beating on tour. It needed work and had turned the dreaded yellow, so I had it re-sprayed Olympic White after the Clapton shows earlier this year by Charlie Chandler, with only three days to do it! Being basswood, the body is very soft, and I’ve had to plug and re-drill the holes for the neck plate, springclaw, strap buttons and so on several times whilst on tour. Occasionally, he’ll look across at me at a show when he’s taking bows and as long as I’m looking at him he’ll give me a wink and throw the guitar to me. On a couple of occasions he’s been unaware of the fact that the guitar cable is still plugged in or snagged and it has taken a nose dive into the stage long before it got to me! So I got the guitar refinished, filled a crack in the back of the neck with Super Glue and essentially put it back in shape to go back out on tour.’
With her refreshed look, Anoushka was put to work on Beck’s next solo studio album Emotion & Commotion. Speaking to Art Thompson for Guitar Player in 2010, Beck clarified that he ‘went through about five different guitars, and they all got put back on the rack. We did one song with a Gretsch and some with Guild even, but they just didn't sound like me. I picked the Strat back up and, boom, there I am again. So why go against it?’
On 27 February 2012, Beck was invited to perform a very special concert with a host of other legends including B.B. King, Buddy Guy and Mick Jagger, for President Barack Obama at The White House, billed as Performance at the White House; Red, White and Blues. Anoushka, with her cracked neck visible in the accompanying photograph of Jeff embracing his friend B.B. King, served Beck well for renditions of ‘Commit a Crime’, ‘Let Me Love You’ and ‘Five Long Years’.
Anoushka was toured hard for the next two years until the summer of 2014, when, following an incident at a show in the South of France where she was dropped, and fearful of losing her to the same fate as ‘Little Richard’, Beck decided to retire his faithful and battered workhorse. Tim Myer, Beck’s guitar technician at the time, recalled receiving a call from Jeff just before he was due to embark on a series of American shows and his tour of the US with ZZ Top in August 2014, during which Jeff informed him that he was due to fly over for rehearsals, that he was ‘bringing a neck’, and that it was up to Tim to put together the rest. Tim quickly called Todd Krause at the Fender Custom Shop, who told him they’d just completed a large run of Custom Shop bodies for their biggest customer in Japan and might have one or two left over which were to Jeff’s specifications. The neck in question was a reverse-headstock neck which had been made by J.W. Black for Jeff back in 1995 with serial number JB16 to the back of the headstock – originally intended to be put onto a custom left-handed Strat (see lot 55) – which he wanted to try out. When the two basswood Strat bodies arrived from Krause at the rehearsal space, Myer found that the earlier neck heel didn’t fit into the much shallower neck pocket which by then was the custom profile of the Strats made by Krause for Beck. Myer therefore set to painstakingly carving out the neck pocket by hand so that eventually the neck fit perfectly. A set of Bill Turner’s pickups were installed in the guitar – almost certainly those taken from the main spare at the time – and following a few minor adjustments to the action, once the guitar was in Jeff’s hands, it rarely left his possession for the next two years. In his 2016 book BECK01, Jeff explained the change: ‘It's great when guitars become worn in. It's a big step taking on a new one! I have to just close my eyes and get into it. I threw one guitar up in the air and it landed on the bolt. Now there's a crack in the back of the headstock and it looks like the truss rod is trying to break out. The truss rod channel does encourage the neck to split at that point, but it wouldn't have happened if I hadn't dropped the guitar. My guitars take plenty of pounding - I used to chuck them all over the place. The left-handed neck is the only one that I have found to replace the split one.’
At the same time that the new no. 1 was created, Myer carried out the same adjustments to the second body sent over by Krause, and Beck’s faithful ‘04’ neck from Anoushka, as well as her pickups, were fitted onto the new guitar body (included in this lot). The new guitar became the main spare (adorned with Cam Girl tremolo cover – see the footnote to lot 68 for further details) for the rest of the tour, although, as Myer explained, once Jeff became accustomed to playing the new no. 1, with its reverse-headstock and different string tension, he was loathe to go back to the standard headstock. Following the end of the 2014 tour the ‘new’ Anoushka guitar was kept at home, until Beck decided to take it to rehearsals and on tour in 2022, during which it was used sparingly in Drop D tuning for one song – ‘Dirty Mind’.