“I took it into rehearsals and Frank Zappa said, ‘If you wanted to ruin your guitar, why didn’t you loan it to a friend?’” Adrian Belew shares unseen photos of “the first relic’d guitar” – which he created with Seymour Duncan

Adrian Belew.

Prog rock legend Adrian Belew has shared previously unseen images of his infamous relic’d Fender Stratocaster, which he and Seymour Duncan put through the wringer for its battered look.

Today, off-the-shelf relic’d guitars are commonplace. The Fender Custom Shop and Gibson Murphy Lab are but two examples of high-end mainstream relic'ing. Plenty of other brands have hopped on the artificial aging hype train, though, from Charvel, EVH to Solar and beyond.