JD & The Straight Shot ― with lead vocalist/guitarist Jim Dolan and guitarist/chief songwriter Bruce Koplow ― have crafted a new album, Right On Time, that includes guest appearances by two of the greatest musicians to ever touch a six-string.

We guitarists tend to think in boxes, where gear is concerned anyway: a Gibson Les Paul is a rock guitar, a Fender Telecaster is a country guitar, a Gibson ES-175 is a jazz guitar, and so on. Certainly many different guitars and amps have been designed to suit the needs of specific styles of music, but that hasn't stopped adventurous musicians from making their art on a vast range of odds and ends of equipment that might outwardly seem totally mismatched to the task at hand. Let's take a look at some incongruous rigs that have graced the music of guitar greats, and rocked the world in the process.

The birth of rock and roll looms large in every player’s mind. Whether you’re a punk or a metalhead, that holy conflagration of musical styles in the early to mid ’50s that launched a whole new direction for American culture remains ground zero for hot electric guitar. And rising Titan-like at the center of it all is the solidbody electric guitar, harbinger of this music of change.

American ingenuity finds many outlets, especially in the realm of luthiers and instrument modders. Ned Steinberger, trained as an industrial designer, started a revolution in the guitar market in 1980 with the introduction of his unique blend of precision engineering, radical materials, minimalist body designs and improved functionality — all aspects of his now-famous array of headless basses and guitars bearing his name.

Okay, Stevie Ray Vaughan’s tone was massive. There’s no myth there. But an entire industry has practically grown up around assisting players in replicating that monster of a sound, and I’d like to invest an installment of Myth Busters to look at what you can achieve in this realm, and what you can’t.

There’s no greater icon of late ’60s and early ’70s British blues-rock tone than Jimmy Page, the legendary guitarist with Led Zeppelin. From huge and gutsy to atmospheric and mellow, from a ominous rhythm-guitar crunch tone to soaring, wailing lead, Page’s sonic palette was every bit as broad as his chops were versatile. Any player who stamps his signature so indelibly into the annals of rock tone becomes extremely influential to others seeking to make a big sound in their own playing, and the visual that persists alongside that sonic imprint is of Jimmy Page strutting an arena stage with a sunburst Gibson Les Paul Standard or EDS-1275 Double-Neck in front of a pair of roaring Marshall amp stacks. And live, this is indeed how a major part of the tone was generated. In the studio, however, there was often a whole lot more going on—or a whole lot less—and running out to duplicate the Page live rig might not get you very close to sounding like the Page of “Dazed and Confused”, “Communication Breakdown”, “Ramble On”, or “Whole Lotta Love”.

While many fans might imagine their favorite guitarists’ efforts in the studio being much like their playing in concert — only in an enclosed room with a lot of recording gear at hand — these two roles that a professional musician plays are often extremely different. Most experienced pros will tell you that the job in the studio is to do whatever is necessary to record an interesting sound and to make the track really stand out. Achieving this occasionally even requires them to go to unimaginable extremes, or to conduct sonic experiments that are totally off the charts. I thought it would be fun to dip into some of the interviews with major players that we conducted during my time as Editor of The Guitar Magazine in London, England, in the late 1990s and early 2000s to recall some of the more over-the-top efforts the stars have made behind closed doors. Check out these six examples of total sonic rebellion:

Welcome back to Gibson’s Recording Guitars series, which I’m picking up after a gap of some weeks. We have already spent two installments discussing techniques for recording acoustic guitars in Miking Acoustics Part 1 and Part 2, but resonator guitars — which have made a resurgence in popularity in recent years — really are beasts unto themselves, sonically speaking, and demand a little further consideration.

When Gibson set about revising the Les Paul in 1961 in the wake of declining sales for the model, the exercise produced an instrument that was far more unlike than like the guitar that had preceded it. The Les Paul Standard of 1961 retained its predecessor’s two PAF humbucking pickups, tune-o-matic bridge, and 24 3/4-inch scale length, but it looked entirely different and was constructed very differently too. In place of the thick, solid mahogany back and carved, arched maple cap was a thinner body of pure mahogany, flat on top but highly contoured at the edges, with two very pointy, asymmetrical cutaways that offered access right up to the 22nd fret. It was also, arguably, a less elegant looking guitar, initially offered in a translucent cherry finish rather than the sultry sunburst of the 1958-’60 Les Paul.

Jimmy Page's Gibson EDS-1275 double neck has been named the 'coolest guitar in rock' in a new rundown on Gigwise.com. The EDS-1275, pictured below, famously allowed Jimmy Page to perform Stairway To Heaven live without the need for a clumsy mid-song guitar change.