SYD BARRETT & DAVID GILMOUR

In the pantheon of Pink Floyd guitars, the Telecaster might not have the same cachet as David Gilmour’s Black Strat, but it was there, man. It was there. Well, kind of, because, in the beginning, just as the 60s became base camp for psychonautic misadventures, Syd Barrett’s most famous Tele was really an Esquire. Barrett covered his with metallic discs (Jimmy Page would later pay tribute with a similar design on his Tele), and used it extensively as he took us down the rabbit hole on Floyd’s reality-warping debut, The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn.

Barrett would retire the Esquire and play a 60s white Telecaster, and according to Fender he traded his Esquire for a black Telecaster Custom in 1968. We never saw the Esquire again. And tragically, we would not see Barrett, as his mental health issues left him unable to continue in the band.

Gilmour, meanwhile, might be the archetypal Strat player, but the Telecaster was his first guitar and would play a prominent role on tracks such as Dogs. Like Barrett, his most famous ‘Tele’ was a modded Esquire, one that he acquired from Seymour Duncan in the 70s.