“This is another item that people kill for. This is the sound of Diamond Sea… This is such a preposterously cool item”: Sonic Youth are selling some super rare gear on Reverb – including Lee Ranaldo’s first electric guitar and a holy grail Ludwig Phase II

Lee Ranaldo plays his Thinline Telecaster Deluxe as Sonic Youth perform at the Forum, London, in 1996. Steve Shelley, Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore are is pictured in the background.

Sonic Youth are selling stage and studio played gear via the online gear retail giant Reverb, with the store now open and stocked some super-rare vintage effects units, some super-weird gear, and Lee Ranaldo’s first-ever electric guitar.

The Hagström II is not much to look at it. Ranaldo was a teenager when he got it and painted it black when he was in high-school (when he was playing through a Sears & Roebuck combo amp). It is a slightly odd S-style with mismatched tuners, two single-coils (the Hagström III had three, and so on…), and four slider switches for selecting them. It looks like it was sourced fresh from of a pawnshop window in a bad neighbourhood.