Bob Weir Guitars & Gear: Ibanez Cowboy Fancy, Modulus Blackknife, ES-335 and the D’Angelico Bedford

In a review of the reissue in the November 2016 issue of Vintage Guitar, Pete Prown writes that Ibanez built a custom solidbody for Weir around 1976. The “Ace” inlay at the 20th fret is named, per the same piece, for Weir’s 1972 solo album Ace. Wikipedia’s guitar section and a fan blog add that Weir began developing a custom instrument with Ibanez’s Jeff Hasselberger in 1974, that the sliding-pickup Ibanez 2681 was a testbed during the Blues for Allah sessions, and that he played the Cowboy Fancy from 1976 to the mid-1980s. We treat those details as leads rather than settled history, because neither source points to a primary document we could open.

Sotheby’s sold a Blackknife as lot 224 in its “From the Vault: Property from the Grateful Dead and Friends” sale, which closed on 14 October 2021. The lot is described as property of Bob Weir and as used on stage by him with the Grateful Dead. Per the catalogue, it is a US-made guitar with no serial number, with graphite neck-through-body construction, a laminate body of maple, ash and walnut, three active EMG single-coil pickups each with an on/off switch, master volume and tone controls, and a Floyd Rose bridge and locking nut. The estimate was 5,000 to 7,000 USD. Those specifications describe this one guitar, not every Blackknife. Wikipedia and the same fan blog say Weir moved to a Blackknife after the Cowboy Fancy years and used a hybrid Modulus and Casio guitar for the “Space” segment; neither gives a year, and we could not trace either claim to a primary source.

The ES-335 appears in nearly every account of Weir’s guitars, but the sources do not agree on which one. Far Out magazine’s Tom Taylor, writing on 18 July 2022, calls a 1958 ES-335 Weir’s first trusted guitar. The Uber Pro Audio gear list gives a 1959 ES-335 in tobacco sunburst. Wikipedia’s guitar section says he settled on a cherry red 1965 ES-335 as his main guitar for about a decade and played a sunburst ES-335 in The Grateful Dead Movie, filmed in October 1974. Guitar Player’s 2026 retrospective on a 1998 interview is described as having Weir name an early-1970s ES-335 as one of his two favourite guitars; we could not read the article body to check it. We cannot say which of these is right, and they may describe different guitars. Our Gibson ES-335 guide covers the model itself.

Guitar Player’s January 2026 article is about a Telecaster that Weir owned, and Wikipedia says he played a Telecaster briefly after the band formed; we could not read enough of the article to say more about his early Telecasters. Sotheby’s 2021 sale also listed lot 182, titled “Bob Weir | Fender, 1969, Rosewood Telecaster,” with an estimate of 20,000 to 25,000 USD; the catalogue page gives no further specification. Nothing we read ties the Telecaster given to Bryan to that lot or to any particular year, so we do not match them. If you are comparing the Telecaster with other classic solid-bodies, our solid-body comparison is the place to start.

Guitar.com’s Evigan Xiao reported on 16 January 2020 that D’Angelico had announced this as its first signature solid-body model, at $999 with availability promised for January. The guitar has a basswood body, a maple, walnut and maple set neck, an ovangkol fingerboard, a six-point tremolo, and two Seymour Duncan Designed P-90s at the neck and bridge with an SC-101 single-coil in the middle. A blender knob mixes the neck and bridge pickups, or all three in the in-between positions. D’Angelico’s own page lists a 24.75-inch scale, a 14-inch radius, 22 frets, a five-way blade selector, push/pull volume and tone controls and a made-in-Indonesia build, in Matte Stone only. In a launch statement quoted by JamBands and Guitar.com, Weir said that the more sounds an instrument has, the more colours it gives a player to work with. For how P-90s sit between single-coils and humbuckers, see our P-90 comparison.

D’Angelico’s page for the Deluxe version lists two stacked Seymour Duncan DA-90 P-90 pickups at the neck and bridge, a Lollar Blonde single-coil in the middle, one volume, one tone and one blend control, a pau ferro fingerboard, Grover 509 Super Rotomatic locking tuners, gold hardware and a made-in-Korea build. The page lists it at $1,999.99 as we read it on 16 October 2026. Its text says Weir co-designed the guitar and that the push/pull knobs drop out the dummy coil, which D’Angelico says makes the stacked P-90s quieter and the tone more open. Guitar.com’s 2020 report says the Premier model followed a Bob Weir Deluxe Signature series released in 2019.

This is a single-cutaway semi-hollow with two custom TV Jones DA’Tron humbuckers, a 25-inch scale, 22 frets and a made-in-Korea build, per D’Angelico’s page. The page lists the Satin Trans Wine version at $2,199.99 as we read it on 16 October 2026, and its text says the guitar was road-tested with Dead and Company and with Bobby Weir and Wolf Bros. It gives no release date. Guitar Interactive Magazine’s announcement of this third signature model is dated 8 August 2024, and Guitar World’s headline has Weir saying he plugged it in at a soundcheck, cranked it up and decided it was what he was looking for. We could not read the Guitar World article’s body, so the headline is all we can offer from it.

JamBase’s Scott Bernstein wrote on 5 August 2016 that Weir played a Martin at a New York showcase for the Blue Mountain album and that, according to the article, it was the only instrument he used during the sessions; the piece gives no model. Retailer listings describe the Alvarez-Yairi WY1 as designed with Weir, and Wikipedia lists WY1 Bob Weir signature acoustics among his instruments. We could not open an Alvarez page for the model, so we give no specifications.

Sotheby’s 14 October 2021 sale listed lot 40 as “Wall of Sound | Bob Weir’s MC 2300,” estimated at 3,000 to 5,000 USD, and lot 44 as “Wall of Sound | Weir’s cab,” estimated at 2,000 to 3,000 USD. The sale introduction says it included amplifiers that powered the guitars of Jerry Garcia and Weir. The catalogue pages we read give no year and no further description. Live for Live Music’s Michael Broerman, reporting on 18 October 2021, wrote that the sale included nearly 40 of Weir’s guitars, many of them used on stage.

Uber Pro Audio’s gear list for Weir gives Mesa Boogie Stereo Rectifier 2:100 power amps driving two single 12-inch cabinets with Tone Tubby speakers, plus Vox cabinets used only for stage sound while his guitar signal goes to a direct box. The list cites no primary source and gives no year for any of the amplifiers, so we treat it as unconfirmed.

Premier Guitar’s news item of 6 July 2018, a press release dated 5 July, describes an all-analog acoustic preamp that splits the signal into low and high bands, applies separate gain to each and recombines them into a mono output. A single knob sweeps the filter point from 300 Hz to 3 kHz, and the pedal takes one source or two, with a balanced microphone input that has phantom power and an 18V DC supply. Pigtronix’s own page adds 24 dB per octave optical filters, 60 dB of gain on the microphone channel and phase inversion. The release quotes Weir saying that a real acoustic guitar has three-dimensional depth and that the only way to capture it is with a microphone. It also has him saying the design cuts about 90 percent of the feedback a microphone brings; that is a claim from the maker’s side of the table, and we found no independent measurement of it.