Andy Powell Guitars & Gear: The Complete Guide to Wishbone Ash’s Flying V Icon’s Rig

Here is a fact that says everything about the strange, beautiful randomness of rock history: the guitar most closely associated with Andy Powell — the instrument he has played at almost every single concert for more than fifty years, the shape that became synonymous with his name and the band he has spent his entire adult life building — was an accident. He didn’t go to the shop looking for a Flying V. He went to test Orange amplifiers, left his regular guitar at home like an absolute muppet, and spotted two dusty, unsold 1967 Gibson Flying Vs on the wall. Nobody wanted Flying Vs in 1972. They were considered ugly, awkward, impossible to balance on a knee. Apart from Albert King, who wielded one like a weapon of mass sonic destruction, the guitar was something of a commercial embarrassment for Gibson. Powell picked one up anyway. Plugged it into a new Orange amp. And the rest is fifty-plus years of one of rock’s most distinctive guitar identities.

Andrew Powell was born on February 19, 1950, in Stepney, in the East End of London, and grew up in the new town of Hemel Hempstead, about twenty-five miles north-west of the city. His first guitar inspiration was Hank B. Marvin of the Shadows — the man who proved to an entire generation of British teenagers that an electric guitar and a spring reverb unit could produce sounds from another planet — and he absorbed the full spectrum of 1960s musical influences from there: folk rock, blues, Stax, Motown, the British blues explosion of Clapton, Beck, Page, and Peter Green. He was, in his own description, part of the “second generation” — the players who came up after the first wave of British blues-rock innovators and inherited the responsibility of carrying what they’d established into new territory. He did not approach that responsibility lightly. Unable to afford a guitar as a teenager, he built his own — a Les Paul-style instrument constructed from scratch, which tells you something essential about both his resourcefulness and his commitment to the instrument before he’d ever played a professional show.

He co-founded Wishbone Ash in 1969, and for the next five-plus decades — through lineup changes, commercial highs and lows, the punk disruption, the hair metal era, the grunge era, every trend that came along to declare the previous generation irrelevant — Powell has kept the band moving. He is today the sole original member still active in the Wishbone Ash name, having, in his own joking description, “burnt out nine guitar players” before the current lineup. The persistence is remarkable. The musical identity that has sustained it is even more so. Whether in the twin-guitar chemistry of the classic Turner-Powell era, the slightly more aggressive Wisefield-Powell combination that followed, or any of the subsequent lineups, the Powell guitar voice has remained recognizable: energetic, blues-rooted, harmonically aware, technically accomplished without being cold, and always, always in service of the song and the band rather than the individual.

The Flying V is the visual anchor of that identity — the instrument that turned Powell from a talented guitarist into an instantly recognizable figure. But it’s important to understand that the V was never the whole story. Many of Powell’s finest recorded solos were played through old Fender guitars and vintage tweed Fender amplifiers, not the Flying V and Orange setup that defines his live persona. He owns and has played a 1952 Fender Telecaster reputedly once owned by the legendary Roy Buchanan. He has played Gretsch guitars, Duesenbergs, Burns Double Sixes, custom-built luthier guitars. The Flying V is the flag he plants at every concert, the visual statement that says “this is what a rock guitarist looks like.” Behind that flag is a more complex, more curious musical intelligence than the iconic shape alone suggests.

Wishbone Ash’s influence on the twin-guitar tradition of hard rock and metal was acknowledged explicitly by Powell in an interview that managed to be both generous and matter-of-fact at once. KK Downing of Judas Priest and Michael and Rudolf Schenker, he noted, were among those influenced by Wishbone Ash’s imagery with the Flying V — a lineage that connects the band not just to the musical tradition of harmonized guitar playing but to the visual iconography of heavy metal itself. When Downing’s Flying V cuts through the air at a Judas Priest show, there’s a line of influence running back to that afternoon in 1972 when Andy Powell picked up an unsold guitar in Cliff Cooper’s Orange shop and changed the trajectory of his career. Rock history is made of moments like this. Most of them go unrecorded. This one survived.

Background: The Last Man Standing and the Guitar He Accidentally Made Famous

To fully appreciate what Andy Powell has built and maintained with Wishbone Ash, you need to understand the band’s trajectory through rock history and the specific moment at which their twin-guitar innovation made its mark. When Wishbone Ash released their debut album in 1970, they were a young band with obvious talent and a raw, blues-derived energy that impressed critics without immediately generating mass sales. The follow-up, Pilgrimage (1971), deepened the musical ambition and continued the critical respect. But it was Argus (1972) that changed everything — a third album that represents perhaps the most complete and fully realized statement of the band’s approach, a record that managed to be simultaneously hard rock, progressive rock, British folk-influenced, and emotionally sophisticated in ways that none of those individual genre labels fully capture.

On Argus, Powell and Turner divided the guitar work along lines of natural personality and musical strength. Powell was the more extrovert player — the frenetic energy, the harder-hitting passages, the rock drive. He specifically identified “Sometime World” and “Vas Dis” as his territory, the places where his more muscular, driving approach was required. Turner handled the more introspective, blues-drenched passages and the searching, melodic intros. Together, they created something that neither could have produced alone. The Argus album was produced by Derek Lawrence with engineering by Martin Birch — the same engineer who would go on to work with Rainbow, Whitesnake, and Iron Maiden, and who clearly understood how to capture twin electric guitars in a way that preserved both individual clarity and collective impact.

The story of how Powell acquired the 1967 Flying V that became his signature guitar deserves to be told in full, because it’s one of those perfect rock anecdotes where everything happens for the right reasons for the completely wrong reasons. In 1972, Wishbone Ash’s manager Miles Copeland had arranged a deal with Cliff Cooper, the founder of Orange Amplifiers, for the band to use Orange equipment. Powell went to Cooper’s newly opened music shop on New Compton Street in London to try the amps — and arrived without his Gibson SG Special, his main guitar at the time. Scanning the shop walls for something to play while testing the Oranges, he spotted two Flying Vs. They were brand new — 1967 models that had been sitting unsold in the USA and shipped to the UK as old stock. Nobody wanted them. Powell picked one up, plugged it into an Orange amp, and was immediately struck by the combination. The Flying V’s sharp, aggressive response through the Orange’s powerful, clear headroom produced something that sounded like exactly the rock guitar voice he’d been looking for. He bought it on the spot. The SG Special was retired. A guitar icon was born.

What happened next is equally instructive. As Wishbone Ash grew in visibility and the image of Powell with the Flying V ran in magazines and press materials, the guitar’s reputation transformed. Before Powell, the Flying V was a commercial failure and an aesthetic curiosity. After Powell — and after the players he directly influenced (Downing, the Schenker brothers) took up their own Vs — the instrument became one of rock’s most recognizable and coveted shapes. Powell essentially rehabilitated the Flying V’s commercial reputation almost single-handedly, which is not a sentence you’d have predicted in 1971 but which became historical fact by 1977. When he says “you’ve got to stick your neck out” to play one, he means it literally and figuratively: the guitar demands commitment, demands a player who’s willing to look as bold as they sound.

Through the various lineup changes that defined Wishbone Ash’s post-1974 history — Ted Turner’s departure and Laurie Wisefield’s arrival, the various reunions and reconstructions, Powell’s eventual assumption of full managerial control of the band in the early 1990s — the essential musical identity has remained tethered to Powell’s guitar voice and his understanding of what makes the twin-guitar approach work. He has described the dynamic with Wisefield as “more competition, more aggressive, more technical” than the Turner-Powell chemistry — a different flavor of interplay, equally valid but emotionally distinct. The subsequent lineups have each brought their own character to the twin-guitar dialogue, and Powell’s ability to find new musical chemistry with each successive partner reflects a genuine musical intelligence that transcends any single guitar relationship or band configuration.

The Rig: Andy Powell’s Guitars, Amps, and Effects

Guitars

1967 Gibson Flying V (Primary Instrument — The One That Started It All)
The 1967 Gibson Flying V that Powell acquired from Cliff Cooper’s Orange shop in 1972 is the guitar at the center of everything — his primary instrument for live performance across more than fifty years of Wishbone Ash shows. The 1967 Flying V is a specific variant: Gibson had originally introduced the radical V-shaped design in 1958 as part of their “modernistic” range alongside the Explorer, but both guitars sold so poorly that production was halted in 1959. A small number of 1967 reissues were produced to capitalize on renewed interest in the model (inspired partly by players like Dave Davies and the general psychedelic-era appetite for unusual guitar shapes), and these are the instruments that arrived in the UK as unsold stock and ended up on the wall of Cooper’s shop. The ’67 Flying V uses korina wood — sometimes called African limba — for the body, rather than the mahogany of later models. Korina has a slightly lighter, more resonant character than mahogany, with a midrange clarity and bell-like quality that complements the humbucker pickups particularly well. Powell’s specific instrument is fitted with his custom-wound Alnico 2 PAF-style uncovered humbucker pickups, wound by Pete A. Flynn to Powell’s personal specifications — voiced to capture the warmth and dynamic responsiveness of vintage PAF pickups while providing the output and reliability required for live work. The guitar also features master tone wiring and a Piezo pickup installed at the bridge, which allows Powell to blend in an acoustic-like quality alongside the electric signal — a capability he has described as allowing the band to “go massive to almost acoustic,” which opens up the dramatic range of Wishbone Ash’s live arrangements considerably. The guitar has been modified and repaired over the decades — multiple refrets have made it too fragile for regular touring, and Powell now primarily uses it for performances near his home in New England, taking it out for special occasions rather than as a daily touring instrument.

Kevin Chilcott / Royal Guitars Custom Flying V (Primary Modern Touring Instrument)
For the serious business of global touring — the 150-plus dates a year that Powell maintains as a working musician in the truest sense — his primary instrument is a custom Flying V built by the retired English luthier Kevin Chilcott of Royal Guitars. Ironically, as Guitar Interactive Magazine noted, “the world’s most famous Flying V user” primarily plays a guitar that isn’t a Gibson — it’s Chilcott’s hand-built improvement on the design, which Powell describes as being built to his precise requirements. The Chilcott V preserves the essential character of the 1967 original — the korina-like resonance, the aggressive projection of the humbucker-equipped Flying V shape — while incorporating refinements for touring durability, playability, and the specific modifications Powell has developed over decades of use. This instrument is the one doing the heavy lifting on modern Wishbone Ash recordings and live performances.

Tatalias Custom “Andy Powell Signature 67 V” (2024 Production Model)
In 2024, Powell collaborated with Tatalias Custom Guitars to produce a limited-edition signature model — the Andy Powell Signature 67 V — representing his most recent and fully specified recreation of the ’67 Flying V concept. The instrument features the custom Alnico 2 PAF-style pickups custom wound by Pete A. Flynn, vol/vol/master tone wiring, Switchcraft hardware, and a red painted finish. At $4,500 USD with a six-month build time, it’s a serious instrument for serious players who want to access the Powell tonal universe without hunting for period-correct vintage korina Flying Vs (which, as the market for them has improved dramatically since 1972, now command prices that would make even Cliff Cooper blink).

Gibson SG Special (Pre-Flying V Primary Guitar)
Before the accidental acquisition of the Flying V changed everything, Powell’s main guitar was a Gibson SG Special — one of Gibson’s less elaborate SG variants, featuring P-90 soapbar pickups rather than the humbucker-equipped SG Standard or the three-pickup SG Custom. The SG Special’s P-90s produce a biting, aggressive, harmonically complex single-coil-adjacent tone with more output and midrange presence than a Strat or Tele. Powell played this guitar through the early Wishbone Ash recordings before the Flying V supplanted it, and its tonal character — particularly the P-90’s gritty, midrange-forward voice — likely informed some of the playing approach that translates so well to the Flying V’s humbucker-driven output.

1952 Fender Telecaster (Roy Buchanan Provenance)
Among the most historically interesting guitars in Powell’s collection is a 1952 Fender Telecaster that was reputedly once owned by Roy Buchanan — widely regarded as one of the greatest and most underappreciated guitarists in American music history, a bluesman of almost supernatural expressiveness who remained in relative obscurity throughout his career despite the extraordinary quality of his playing. A 1952 Telecaster is a genuinely vintage instrument: the original Leo Fender design, built the year the model was still officially called the “Broadcaster” or the “No-Caster” before the Telecaster name was formalized, with the specific pickups, neck profile, and construction characteristics of the very early Fender production era. That this particular instrument passed through Roy Buchanan’s hands before reaching Powell’s collection is a provenance story of real resonance — two underappreciated masters (Buchanan definitively so, Powell to a lesser but real extent) connected by a single piece of aging ash and maple. Powell has played this Telecaster on Wishbone Ash albums, and many of his finest recorded solos were captured through Fender guitars rather than the Flying V that everyone associates with his visual identity.

Gibson Flying V ’59 Reissue (2003)
In 2003, Powell acquired a Gibson Flying V ’59 reissue — an early production example of the Brazilian rosewood-neck variant, which is among the most prized of the modern Gibson Flying V reissues. Brazilian rosewood was used by Gibson (and Fender) through approximately 1965, when supply restrictions and environmental concerns forced a transition to Indian rosewood. The Brazilian rosewood fingerboard has a specific density, grain, and oil content that affects both the feel under the fingers and the tonal contribution of the neck, with a warmth and complexity that Indian rosewood doesn’t fully replicate. An early 2003 Gibson reissue with Brazilian rosewood neck is a genuinely special instrument, and its acquisition alongside Powell’s custom-built Chilcott V reflects the kind of connoisseurship that a career guitarist develops through decades of living with instruments.

Gibson Les Paul (Handbuilt Teenage Prototype)
It would be wrong to discuss Andy Powell’s guitar history without acknowledging that before he could afford any of the instruments listed above, he built his own Les Paul-style guitar as a teenager because commercial instruments were financially out of reach. This kind of determined resourcefulness — the willingness to construct the thing you need when you can’t buy it — is a formative experience that no amount of subsequent gear acquisition can fully replace. The teenage Powell who built a guitar from scratch understood the instrument’s construction from the inside in a way that most players who simply buy their first guitar never do. That understanding informs everything that follows.

Duesenberg Guitar
Powell’s more recent guitar arsenal has included a Duesenberg — the German-made boutique guitar brand known for their retro-influenced aesthetics, high build quality, and distinctive semi-hollow designs that blend vintage visual character with modern construction standards. The Duesenberg’s tonal character — warm, clear, with a vintage-influenced response — provides a different color from the Flying V’s aggressive projection, and Powell’s willingness to incorporate such instruments in his live setup reflects both his continuing curiosity and the expanding sonic requirements of Wishbone Ash’s eclectic repertoire.

Burns Double Six
Also in Powell’s more recent live arsenal is a Burns Double Six — a twelve-string electric guitar from the iconic British Burns brand, founded by Jim Burns and associated with some of the most distinctive British electric guitars of the 1960s. The Double Six twelve-string’s jangly, chiming character — doubled strings creating the characteristic twelve-string shimmer — provides a textural option completely distinct from any single-string guitar, and is particularly useful for capturing the folk-influenced, melodically rich dimension of Wishbone Ash’s sound that runs as a constant thread through even their hardest-rocking material.

Amps

Orange Amplifiers (Classic Wishbone Ash Era — The Original Deal)
As noted in the Flying V origin story, Powell’s introduction to Orange amplifiers came through the same shop visit where he found his signature guitar. The band’s manager Miles Copeland had arranged for Wishbone Ash to use Cliff Cooper’s new Orange amplifier range, and the combination of Flying V and Orange proved immediately right. Powell has described the Orange sound with characteristic precision: “Massively heavy, very clean, hi-fi-sounding, midrange-y, punchy as hell, loud — it was the perfect amp to conquer the stadiums with. Because bear in mind that PAs were pretty weak in those days.” That description captures exactly what made the Orange/Matamp amplifiers of the early 1970s so well-suited to the live rock context of the period. The PA systems of 1972 couldn’t fill a large venue with reinforced sound the way modern rigs can; the guitars and drums had to do a significant portion of the actual acoustic work, and an amplifier that was “massively heavy, very clean, hi-fi-sounding, midrange-y, punchy as hell, loud” was precisely the tool required. The Flying V’s aggressive, cutting humbucker output combined with the Orange’s powerful headroom to create a combination that could fill a room without losing the individual note definition that the harmonized guitar parts required. Wishbone Ash’s entire Orange backline was stolen from their tour truck during the 1973 American tour — one of rock history’s more heartbreaking gear losses — but the Orange connection eventually resumed, and the band has returned to the brand in more recent years.

Vintage Fender Tweed Amplifiers (Studio — The Secret Weapon)
Here’s the thing about Andy Powell’s gear that surprises many fans: the guitarist who is visually defined by his Flying V and Orange amplifiers made many of his best studio recordings through vintage Fender tweed amplifiers. Powell has described using two Fender 4×10 Concert amplifiers in the studio, close-miked and distant-miked — a technique he identified as “fairly new at the time” when Wishbone Ash were recording in the early 1970s. The vintage tweed Fender Concert is a substantial amplifier: four ten-inch speakers, a pre-master-volume tube circuit producing natural saturation at working volume, and the characteristic tweed tonal signature of warm, compressed, harmonically complex clean-to-slightly-overdriven tone. Close-miking (placing a microphone directly in front of the speaker cone) captures the direct, immediate attack of the guitar signal; distant-miking (placing a microphone several feet back in the room) captures the ambient reverb, the natural bloom of the sound in the recording space, and a slightly warmer, more diffuse version of the tone. Combining the two mic signals in mixing produces a sound with both the attack and definition of close placement and the warmth and spatial quality of distant placement — a recording technique that is now standard practice but was genuinely innovative in 1971-72. The fact that the “studio Andy Powell” tone was built on Fender tweed rather than Flying V-through-Orange is a reminder that the most enduring guitar sounds are often achieved through unexpected equipment combinations.

Marshall Super Lead 100 (Modern Touring)
Powell has used Marshall Super Lead 100-watt heads in various modern touring contexts — the classic British valve amplifier that remains a reference standard for hard rock guitar tone after six decades. Documented in the Analog Man shop records, Powell was running his Flying V and King of Tone overdrive through a Marshall Super Lead 100 during a 2004 guitar trial session, producing results impressive enough to be recorded for the Analog Man website. The Super Lead’s EL34 output stage, driven by the King of Tone, produces the warm, harmonically saturated crunch that defines British hard rock guitar at its most fundamental.

Fender Combo Amplifiers (Small Modern Touring Rig)
In more recent years, Powell has downsized his live amplification considerably — running small Fender combo amplifiers that are easier to transport, more consistent across different venue acoustics, and more manageable for sound engineers who don’t want to mic a wall of half-stacks. He has noted that he sometimes uses modeling amps onstage as well, with the dual priority being making life easier for the sound people and achieving a consistent, reliable tone every night regardless of venue. This is the pragmatic evolution of a working musician who has spent fifty-plus years dealing with the logistical realities of touring: you learn which battles are worth fighting and which equipment choices are actually about preference rather than necessity.

Effects

Analog Man King of Tone Overdrive (Primary Drive Pedal — Modern Era)
The Analog Man King of Tone is one of the most sought-after overdrive pedals in the boutique effects world — a two-channel, dual-overdrive design from Connecticut-based Analog Man, offering both an overdrive and a boost channel in a single enclosure. It’s based loosely on a modified version of the classic Dallas Rangemaster-meets-Tube Screamer concept, producing a warm, harmonically rich overdrive that adds musical gain without masking the guitar’s fundamental character. The King of Tone has famously long waiting lists (measured in years, not months), which is itself a testament to how widely the pedal is respected among working musicians. Powell uses the King of Tone as his primary drive pedal, adding musical warmth and sustain to the Flying V’s output without fundamentally altering the guitar’s voice. Analog Man’s documentation of Powell using the King of Tone through a Marshall Super Lead during a 2004 session is among the earliest documented instances of this particular signal chain, and the combination proved entirely convincing.

Ibanez TS9 Tube Screamer (Silver Mod)
Alongside the King of Tone on Powell’s pedalboard sits an Ibanez TS9 Tube Screamer modified by Analog Man with their Silver Mod — a circuit modification that addresses certain limitations of the stock TS9 design, improving the low-end response and overall clarity while preserving the Tube Screamer’s characteristic midrange-forward character. The TS9 is one of the most widely used overdrive pedals in the world, originally based on the TS808 circuit and known for its smooth, medium-gain overdrive that emphasizes the midrange and adds a musical compression to the signal. The Silver Mod makes it more transparent in the low end, reducing the muddiness that the stock TS9 can introduce at higher bass settings. Running the TS9 alongside the King of Tone gives Powell a range of overdrive textures from light boost through medium drive, selectable during performance.

Analog Man Clone Chorus (Stereo Blue — Modern Pedalboard)
Powell’s pedalboard also features an Analog Man Clone Chorus — specifically the “blue” stereo-capable version that Analog Man produces. The Clone Chorus is based on the classic Boss CE-1 Chorus Ensemble circuit, the original rack-mount Boss chorus unit that defined the sound of the effect from the late 1970s. The CE-1 circuit produces a warm, lush analog chorus with a slightly warmer character than later, smaller chorus pedals, and the stereo capability of the Analog Man version allows the chorus to spread across two amplifiers for a wide, immersive effect in stereo live setups. Chorus adds harmonic width and shimmer to the guitar tone — particularly useful for the slower, more atmospheric passages in Wishbone Ash’s repertoire, where the twin-guitar arrangements benefit from additional textural depth.

MXR Phase 45 (Modern Pedalboard)
An MXR Phase 45 is also documented in Powell’s modern effects setup. The Phase 45 is a two-stage phase shifter — simpler and slightly more subtle than the four-stage Phase 90 that defined much of 1970s rock phasing — producing a gentle, smooth modulation that adds textural motion to the guitar tone without the more pronounced swoosh of the Phase 90. The Phase 45 sits in the circuit as a subtle, supportive texture rather than an identifiable effect — another “always on” device that contributes to the overall richness of the guitar sound without drawing attention to itself.

Fulltone CFV-1 (Clyde Fuzz/Vibe — Modern Pedalboard)
Completing Powell’s documented modern pedalboard is a Fulltone CFV-1 — a combination fuzz and vibe (univibe-style) pedal from Fulltone, Mike Fuller’s respected boutique effects brand. The CFV-1 combines a fuzz circuit (adding aggressive, harmonically rich distortion) with a vibe effect (a phase-based modulation that produces a throbbing, swirling sound associated with Jimi Hendrix’s UniVibe-influenced recordings). The combination provides Powell with textures that his more transparent drive pedals don’t offer — the aggressive, compressed quality of fuzz for specific passages, and the organic, psychedelic shimmer of vibe for atmospheric moments. These are not the dominant textures of Wishbone Ash’s sound, but they provide useful color at the edges of the palette.

Piezo Pickup System (Flying V Bridge)
The Piezo pickup installed in the bridge of Powell’s signature Flying V deserves specific mention as an effects-adjacent tonal tool. Piezoelectric pickups generate electrical signal from the physical pressure of string vibration against the bridge saddle, rather than from magnetic field disturbance like conventional electric guitar pickups. The result is a signal with a much more acoustic-like character — brighter, more percussive, with less of the magnetic humbucker’s warmth and sustain, and more of the natural attack and decay of an acoustic instrument. Powell blends the Piezo signal with the conventional humbucker signal, creating a hybrid electric-acoustic tone that can shift the character of the Flying V from full-throated electric rock to something approaching acoustic intimacy. He has described this capability as allowing Wishbone Ash to “go massive to almost acoustic,” and it’s a genuinely powerful tonal resource that distinguishes his approach from guitarists who limit themselves to purely electric signal paths.

Playing Style & Tone Philosophy

Andy Powell is the extrovert half of the Wishbone Ash twin-guitar equation — the player who brings energy, drive, and aggressive forward momentum to the band’s musical conversation. Where Ted Turner was the introspective, melodic, “quiet passages” voice, Powell was the one who wanted “a strong up-tempo rhythm part he could play to,” who provided the rock power and the frenetic energy that lifted the music from folk-influenced contemplation into hard rock exhilaration. His playing on the Argus recordings — particularly the driving rhythm work on “The King Will Come” and the fiery solo passages on “Sometime World” — demonstrates a guitarist who is completely at home in the higher-energy register, who knows how to build a solo to a climax and release tension with the same commitment and timing as a good songwriter knows how to write a chorus.

His primary influences were the blues — Peter Green above all, whom he has identified as his guitar hero in multiple interviews, calling him a player who “wore all his influences well” but “made it something uniquely Peter.” The influence of Peter Green on Powell’s playing is audible in his vibrato (that distinctive slow, vocal quality), his note choice (the minor pentatonic with blues notes, used sparingly rather than formulaically), and his understanding of dynamics (the way the blues tradition uses silence and restraint as deliberately as it uses volume and aggression). The early Shadows influence — Hank B. Marvin’s clean, reverb-drenched melodic approach — gave Powell an appreciation for melody and note clarity that never left him, even as he developed into a harder-driving rock player.

What distinguishes Powell from many of his generation is a sustained curiosity about tonal possibilities that has never fully settled into a fixed identity. The willingness to run Piezo acoustic blends alongside humbucker electric through small Fender combos and modeling amps in the 2010s and 2020s reflects a player who is still actively exploring rather than simply executing a perfected formula. The Flying V is the constant — the visual and tonal anchor — but what goes into it, through it, and out of it has continued to evolve across a career now spanning more than five decades. That kind of ongoing curiosity, in a musician who has every right to simply coast on a legendary catalog, is genuinely admirable.

His rhythm playing — particularly in the harmonized passages where his line and his guitar partner’s line must lock into precise intervallic relationship — reflects the same musical intelligence as his lead work. Powell has described the twin-guitar approach as something that “requires an incredible ability to listen intently and lock in perfectly with another guitarist, matching their phrasing, vibrato, and timing.” That description, precise and unglamorous, cuts to the heart of what makes great ensemble guitar playing possible: not individual virtuosity, but the kind of deep musical attention that allows two players to function as one. He has done this with Ted Turner, with Laurie Wisefield, and with a sequence of subsequent guitar partners over fifty years. The ability to find that lock with different players, to adapt his approach to each new musical personality, is Powell’s most underappreciated skill.

How to Sound Like Andy Powell

Capturing Andy Powell’s tone starts with the guitar: a Flying V (original korina-body variant or quality reissue) equipped with PAF-style uncovered humbuckers, producing the guitar’s characteristic aggressive, midrange-forward voice. Into an Orange amplifier — or a Marshall Super Lead as a well-documented alternative — pushed to the point where the power amp starts contributing warmth and natural compression. The Analog Man King of Tone provides the primary overdrive texture in the modern rig, adding musical harmonic richness without covering the Flying V’s fundamental character. For the classic recording studio sound, the surprising answer is Fender tweed amplifiers, close-miked and distant-miked simultaneously, which produced many of Wishbone Ash’s most celebrated recorded guitar tones.

The key tonal characteristic to pursue is midrange presence with clarity — the Flying V’s korina body and PAF-style pickups produce a specific combination of warmth, punch, and note articulation that sits in the mix with authority without requiring massive gain. The Orange and Marshall amps Powell favored were run for power-amp saturation rather than preamp crunch, preserving the clean headroom and note definition that the harmonized guitar arrangements depend on. Keep the gain moderate, the mids forward, and let the power amp do the work.

Influence & Legacy

Andy Powell’s influence on rock guitar operates on two distinct levels: the musical and the visual. On the musical level, the twin-guitar harmony approach he developed with Ted Turner on Argus became one of the defining templates for dual-guitar hard rock and metal — the model that Thin Lizzy, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, and generations of subsequent bands drew from when constructing their own dual-lead approaches. Powell has been explicit about acknowledging these successors while insisting on Wishbone Ash’s foundational role: they were the “second generation,” carrying forward what Beck, Clapton, Page, and Green had established, and in turn providing the template that the twin-guitar metal and hard rock tradition would draw from for decades.

On the visual level, Powell’s rehabilitation of the Flying V from commercial embarrassment to rock icon is a genuinely remarkable achievement. When he bought his 1967 V from Cliff Cooper’s shop, nobody wanted the guitar. When KK Downing and Michael Schenker and Rudolf Schenker subsequently took up Flying Vs — explicitly citing the Wishbone Ash imagery as an influence — the guitar’s transformation from curio to archetype was complete. The V is now one of the most recognizable shapes in rock, associated with aggression, energy, and an uncompromising commitment to looking as dramatic as you sound. Powell put it there. He stuck his neck out, in his own phrase, and the rest of the rock world eventually followed. For more on how the twin-guitar approach evolved from Wishbone Ash’s foundation, see Ted Turner’s gear history at #3, the band’s direct successor tradition through Scott Gorham’s Thin Lizzy work at #1, and the Flying V tradition in heavy metal through KK Downing’s approach at Judas Priest at #13.

Powell is now the last standing original member of Wishbone Ash, having navigated the band through more lineup changes, commercial cycles, and stylistic shifts than most musicians face in several careers. The consistency that has made this possible is a combination of genuine musical depth, a clear sense of what the Wishbone Ash identity means, and an apparently inexhaustible willingness to keep touring — 150-plus dates a year, year after year, into his seventies, still “thinking stadium” with whatever combination of small Fender combos and modeling amps makes the sound people’s lives easier. There is something genuinely impressive about that persistence, that refusal to treat the band as a legacy act coasting on reputation rather than a living musical entity with things still to say. The Flying V helps, of course. Nobody plays a Flying V while coasting.

Frequently Asked Questions: Andy Powell Guitars & Gear

How did Andy Powell come to play a Flying V?
The story is one of rock’s best happy accidents. In 1972, Powell’s manager Miles Copeland had arranged a deal with Cliff Cooper — founder of Orange Amplifiers — for Wishbone Ash to use Orange equipment. Powell went to Cooper’s newly opened music shop on New Compton Street, London, to test the amps, but arrived without his regular guitar, a Gibson SG Special. Scanning the shop walls for something to play, he spotted two brand-new 1967 Gibson Flying Vs that had arrived from the USA as unsold stock. Nobody wanted Flying Vs in 1972 — the model had been a commercial failure since its 1958 introduction, and apart from Albert King, virtually no prominent guitarist was associated with the shape. Powell picked one up, plugged it into an Orange amp, and was immediately struck by the combination. He bought it on the spot, the SG Special was retired, and a fifty-plus-year guitar identity was born. The Flying V’s subsequent transformation from commercial oddity to heavy metal icon is partly attributable to Powell’s use of the instrument and the influence it had on players including KK Downing and the Schenker brothers.

What amps does Andy Powell use?
Powell’s amp history is more varied than the Orange association might suggest. During the classic early Wishbone Ash era, Orange/Matamp amplifiers were the live rig — powerful, clear, midrange-focused heads that Powell described as “massively heavy, very clean, hi-fi-sounding, midrange-y, punchy as hell, loud.” In the studio, however, many of his best-recorded solos were captured through vintage Fender tweed amplifiers — specifically a pair of 4×10 Fender Concerts, close-miked and distant-miked simultaneously. In more recent years, his live setup has downsized considerably: small Fender combo amplifiers and sometimes modeling amps, chosen for consistency and logistics rather than maximum volume. He has also been documented using a Marshall Super Lead 100 during a 2004 session with Analog Man. The common thread across all these amp choices is the emphasis on clean headroom and midrange presence rather than heavy preamp distortion.

What pedals does Andy Powell use?
Powell’s pedalboard in the modern era is modest but well-considered. The primary drive pedal is the Analog Man King of Tone — one of the most sought-after boutique overdrives in the world, used to add warm harmonic richness to the Flying V’s output without fundamentally altering the guitar’s voice. Alongside it sits an Ibanez TS9 Tube Screamer with Analog Man’s Silver Mod, used as a lighter boost/color pedal that can be stacked with the King of Tone for additional drive. Modulation comes from an MXR Phase 45 (two-stage phasing, more subtle than the Phase 90) and an Analog Man Clone Chorus — the blue stereo version based on the classic Boss CE-1 circuit. A Fulltone CFV-1 combination fuzz/vibe provides more aggressive textural options. The pedalboard is notably less populated than those of many contemporary players, reflecting the Wishbone Ash approach: serve the music, keep the signal transparent, use effects purposefully rather than decoratively.

Does Andy Powell still play his original 1967 Flying V?
The original 1967 Flying V that Powell acquired in 1972 is still in his possession, but has become too fragile from extensive use and multiple refrets to serve as a regular touring instrument. Powell primarily takes it out for special performances near his home in New England. For the serious business of global touring — 150-plus dates a year — his primary instrument is a custom Flying V built by the retired English luthier Kevin Chilcott of Royal Guitars, constructed to Powell’s precise specifications and incorporating the same tonal characteristics as the original 1967 instrument. In 2024, Powell also collaborated with Tatalias Custom Guitars on a limited-edition signature model — the Andy Powell Signature 67 V — which represents the most fully specified recreation of his 1967 instrument available to the public.

What is the Roy Buchanan Telecaster in Andy Powell’s collection?
Among the most historically resonant instruments in Powell’s collection is a 1952 Fender Telecaster reputedly once owned by Roy Buchanan — the American blues guitarist widely regarded as one of the greatest and most underappreciated players in rock and blues history. A 1952 Telecaster is a genuine vintage instrument from the very early years of Fender production, with the specific construction characteristics and tonal properties of the original Leo Fender design. The provenance connection to Buchanan — a player of extraordinary expressiveness who remained somewhat obscure despite his obvious gifts — makes the instrument particularly meaningful within a collection built around appreciation for musical depth over commercial profile. Powell has played this Telecaster on Wishbone Ash recordings, and many of his finest studio solos were captured through Fender guitars rather than the Flying V that defines his live identity.

How does Andy Powell describe the Wishbone Ash twin-guitar approach?
Powell has been thoughtful and generous in his descriptions of both the original Turner-Powell twin-guitar chemistry and the approach more generally. He has noted that the twin-lead guitar concept was “an unplanned stroke of genius” — something that emerged organically from the combination of two different guitar personalities rather than a preconceived strategy. The approach requires, he has said, “an incredible ability to listen intently and lock in perfectly with another guitarist, matching their phrasing, vibrato, and timing to create a single, unified melodic voice from two separate instruments.” Powell’s comparison of his dynamic with Ted Turner (introspective vs. extrovert, quiet passages vs. energetic drive) against his later dynamic with Laurie Wisefield (more competitive, more technically aggressive) reflects a genuine understanding of how different guitar personalities produce different qualities of musical conversation.

What is Andy Powell’s tone philosophy?
Powell’s tone philosophy has evolved across fifty-plus years but has retained a consistent core: midrange presence, clean headroom, and the natural voice of the guitar itself rather than heavy processing. His description of the Orange amplifiers — “massively heavy, very clean, hi-fi-sounding, midrange-y, punchy as hell” — captures the tonal priorities that have guided his amp choices across the decades. The Flying V’s PAF-style humbuckers in a korina body produce a specific combination of warmth, punch, and articulation that rewards amplification with clean headroom rather than preamp saturation. In recent years, his adoption of small Fender combos and modeling amps for touring reflects a pragmatic evolution: the same tonal priorities, achieved through different technology, with less logistical complexity. He is, as his decades of consistent work demonstrate, more interested in making music than making a statement about his equipment — which, ironically, is probably the most effective way to build a genuinely distinctive guitar voice.