This is not the first time that Christie’s has played host to David Gilmour’s feted ‘Black Strat’ – the guitar he used on The Dark Side Of The Moon, Wish You Were Here, countless epochal live shows, and on Comfortably Numb.
Indeed, the first time many people heard of Jim Irsay was when he bought the Black Strat at auction at Christie’s on 20 June 2019 for $3,975,000, setting a new record for a guitar.
“No-one quite anticipated the amount of excitement it would cause among both fans and collectors – who are often the same people,” Amelia Walker recalls. “I think we had something like 19 unique bidders on that guitar, many of whom carried on bidding to a very, very high level.
“For so many people, [the Black Strat] is the [centrepiece] of the Irsay Collection and is David Gilmour’s calling card – its look is so distinct. I’ve spoken to a lot of people about it and so many of them think it will make more this time around, which is really interesting.”
It began life as a Fender 1968 to ’69 alder body Strat with a black finish painted over sunburst and originally featured a late-’60s maple neck with large headstock and 21 frets.
A switch to a rosewood neck occurred during its most famous studio stints, however, and it was in this configuration that it appeared on The Dark Side Of The Moon and Wish You Were Here.
The neck swaps didn’t end there and at one point it even had a Charvel neck fitted. At present, the Black Strat is fitted with a 1983 ’57 reissue C-shape maple Fender neck with 7.25-inch radius fingerboard and 21 vintage-style frets.
The black scratchplate that gives the guitar its iconic look was fitted in 1974 and is not a factory part as Fender didn’t make them to this spec at that point. Sensibly, and like almost every vintage Strat not in collector-grade condition, the original three-way pickup selector was swapped out for a five-way as late as 1985.
Meanwhile, the neck and middle pickups date from 1971, while the bridge pickup is a Seymour Duncan custom-wound SSL-1C, installed in 1979, which replaced a DiMarzio FS-1 that represented one of Gilmour’s early attempts to get more beef out of the notoriously thin-sounding Strat bridge pickup position.
There are further electronics mods in the form of a mini-toggle just below the pots to allow the neck pickup to be switched in independently for a somewhat Jazzmaster-like tone.
It just fell out of David’s favour when the new ’57 reissue Strats came out. So David agreed to loan the Black Strat to the Hard Rock Cafe
Phil Taylor, David Gilmour’s tech
Some mods of the past have been reversed, such as routing for an XLR socket on the edge of the body and a visibly refilled cavity where a Kahler vibrato was fitted – and, in fact, it was this mod that caused the Black Strat to be retired, for a time, from Gilmour’s go-to guitars.
“It seemed to deaden the sound somewhat,” Gilmour’s long-term tech Phil Taylor told Guitarist in 2015. “It just fell out of David’s favour when the new ’57 reissue Strats came out. So David agreed to loan the Black Strat to the Hard Rock Cafe.” It did return to service later, but that, as they say, is another story.
- Christie’s will auction The Jim Irsay Collection: Hall of Fame, including the iconic guitars in this feature and others, plus some of the most important cultural objects of the 20th century, on the evening of 12 March. For more information on the four-part sale series, visit Christie's.
- This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.
