“Even though it’s a budget guitar, it’s great. Paul Stanley used to smash one up at the end of KISS shows”: The amps that defined punk, the custom electric that was “painted in a shed” – Bruce Watson on the gear behind Big Country’s sound

Bruce Watson plays a Bigsby-equipped Gibson Marauder onstage.

Some players’ collections are full of vintage-and-rare gourmet electric guitars, Fender tube amps with more road miles on them than Avis, and the kind of fare that has collectors and auctioneers hovering in wait. Others just have cool stuff that had the sound.

Bruce Watson, the guitarist and standard-bearer of legendary Scottish rockers Big Country, is one of the latter, and when Guitarist visited him on home turf in the Kingdom of Fife he brought out some of the guitars and amps that were key to his urgent punk-forward rock sound.