FENDER ELECTRIC INSTRUMENT COMPANY, FULLERTON, 1963

David Gilmour purchased this guitar in North London circa January 1978 during jamming sessions for his eponymous debut solo album at Pink Floyd’s Britannia Row Studios. Gilmour had the guitar strung to a special low tuning, telling Melody Maker’s Karl Dallas in 1981: They were brought out some time in the Fifties, but they weren’t very popular because the strings were too close together and they rattled if you tried to play them like a bass guitar. I always thought they were awful until someone suggested stringing them this way, tuned up from E to A. The following year, Gilmour used the Fender VI during recording sessions for the band’s 1979 narrative concept album The Wall, notably to record a bass line on the track Run Like Hell, a Gilmour composition originally earmarked for his 1978 solo album, with lyrics subsequently supplied by Roger Waters. The Wall recordings began at Super Bear Studios in the South of France in April 1978, with final recording and mixing at Producers Workshop in Los Angeles, through to early November 1979. Studio footage exists of Gilmour playing the guitar at his Astoria houseboat studio circa 2006 with Roxy Music’s Phil Manzanera.