Brent Mason Guitars & Gear: The Complete Guide to Nashville’s Most Recorded Guitarist

He found it in a Nashville guitar shop in the early 1980s for a few hundred dollars.

It was a 1967 Fender Telecaster that someone had stripped of its original finish and re-sprayed in gray automotive primer. A Telecaster that a previous owner had decided should look like an unfinished car body. Nobody at the shop knew quite what to make of it. Brent Mason bought it.

He outfitted it with new pickups and controls. He added a B-string bender — specifically a Joe Glaser Bender, which is the smoothest and most reliable B-bender system available, the result of fifty years of Nashville luthiery development. He modified the pickup configuration until the guitar could produce Telecaster twang, Stratocaster shimmer, and humbucker warmth depending on the selection. He kept the gray primer finish because he liked it.

That gray primer Telecaster has been on well over a thousand albums. Alan Jackson, Brooks & Dunn, George Jones, Dolly Parton, Blake Shelton, Shania Twain, Carrie Underwood, Willie Nelson — if you heard country radio between 1985 and the present day, you heard that guitar. It won Mason twelve Academy of Country Music Guitarist of the Year Awards. It won him two CMA Musician of the Year awards. It won a Grammy in 2008, for the guitar work on Brad Paisley’s “Cluster Pluck.” Guitar World named him one of the Top Ten Session Guitarists of All Time.

Chet Atkins discovered him. That’s the complete endorsement.

Background: Van Wert, Ohio, Nashville, and the Session That Never Ended

Brent Mason was born July 13, 1959, in Van Wert, Ohio. At age five, he taught himself to play guitar by ear — the same autodidact starting point as many guitarists in this series, but with specific consequences in Mason’s case: the ear-trained foundation produced a guitarist whose musical judgment was always primary, with technique developing in service of what he heard rather than in service of displaying what he could do.

He moved to Nashville as a young man to pursue session work — the specific Nashville studio musician ecosystem that supported the country music industry’s prodigious recording output. Nashville’s session economy in the 1980s and 1990s was arguably the most active in American music: country music’s consistent commercial output, combined with the A-list session player community concentrated in the city, produced a recording environment where exceptional players could build extraordinary resumes simply by being available, capable, and professional.

The career-defining early connection: Chet Atkins discovered and mentored Mason. This is the most significant biographical credential possible for a Nashville guitarist — Atkins was simultaneously the most influential guitarist in country music history, the head of RCA Nashville who had shaped the Nashville Sound, and the musical arbiter who could open or close doors across the industry. Atkins’s endorsement of Mason was the specific introduction that established his session career.

The session discography that followed is genuinely extraordinary in its breadth and volume: over a thousand albums, spanning virtually every significant country artist of the past four decades. The list of artists he’s played for reads like a complete index of country music history from 1985 onward. He became the first-call guitarist for producer after producer, artist after artist — the specific player whose Telecaster tone was the sound of the Nashville studio in its commercial peak period.

He won the ACM Guitarist of the Year award twelve times: 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2004, 2006, and 2009. He was CMA Musician of the Year in 1997 and 1998. MusicRow Session Guitarist of the Year multiple times. Grammy winner. Country Music Hall of Fame Nashville Cats inductee in 2023. Musicians Hall of Fame inductee in 2019. National Thumbpickers Hall of Fame in 2011.

Beyond the session work, he released two instrumental studio albums — the 1996 album Hot Wired and its follow-up — that demonstrated the full range of his playing outside of the session context. These recordings remain benchmarks for what Nashville studio guitar can be when the guitarist isn’t constrained by serving a song or a singer.

Tone note: He won ACM Guitarist of the Year twelve times. Twelve. In a row for much of it. This is not an anomaly of a single outstanding year — this is sustained, consensus recognition from the country music industry that he was the best working guitarist in the genre for over a decade. The gray primer Telecaster was on every session that produced those awards. The guitar is not a coincidence.

The Rig: Brent Mason’s Guitars, Amps & Gear

Guitars: The Gray Primer Telecaster and the Brent Mason Mod

The 1967 Fender Telecaster in Gray Primer — The Signature Instrument

Mason’s primary guitar for his entire session career is the 1967 Fender Telecaster he found in a Nashville guitar shop in the early 1980s. Guitar Player confirmed the discovery: the guitar “had been stripped of its original finish and re-sprayed in gray auto primer.” Someone had given a vintage Telecaster the most unglamorous possible finish — the flat gray of automotive primer, the pre-paint coating that normally gets covered before the actual color goes on.

Mason bought it for a few hundred dollars. He recognized what it was beneath the finish: a 1967 Fender Telecaster with the specific construction, neck feel, and resonance that his ear told him was right. The finish was irrelevant. The guitar was correct.

He then transformed it from a standard vintage Telecaster into what Guitar Player described as “a bastardized 1968 Fender Telecaster” — the modifications accumulating over decades into what is now known as “the Brent Mason mod.” The modifications:

• Three-pickup configuration: A standard Telecaster has two pickups. Mason’s has three — bridge, middle (in the standard Strat middle position), and neck. This requires routing the guitar body for the additional pickup and creates significantly more tonal flexibility
• Gibson mini-humbucker at neck: Instead of the standard Telecaster neck single coil, a small Gibson mini-humbucker provides a warmer, fuller neck-position sound that suits jazz-voicings and certain country lead approaches better than the Tele neck single coil
• Middle pickup: A Stratocaster-style single coil in the middle position, activated by a push/pull on the tone knob rather than the standard selector. This allows middle-pickup-involved combinations not available on a standard Telecaster switch
• Bridge pickup: A Telecaster-style single coil in the bridge position — the foundation of the Nashville country guitar tone
• Three-knob control layout: Master volume, master tone (with push/pull for middle pickup engagement), and middle pickup volume — the three-knob layout that Telecasters don’t normally have
• Joe Glaser B-Bender (later Glaser Bender system): The pedal-steel pitch-bending mechanism built into the guitar that bends the B string up when the strap is pulled. This allows the guitarist to produce pedal-steel-style bends without a pedal steel guitar — essential for the specific country sound that requires the pedal-steel’s characteristic note bending

The Glaser Bender specifically: Joe Glaser is a Nashville luthier who builds what is considered the smoothest and most reliable B-bender system available. The Glaser Bender activates by pushing down on the guitar strap (or pulling on it, depending on configuration), bending the B string up by one whole step. Sweetwater confirmed: “The result of 50 years of development, the Nashville-built Glaser Bender System is user-convertible between a B- and G-bender. It’s smooth, lightweight, non-intrusive, and most importantly, it sounds amazing.”

The result of all these modifications: a guitar that can produce Telecaster bridge twang (bridge pickup), Stratocaster-adjacent shimmer (middle or bridge-middle combination), and warmer humbucker character (neck mini-humbucker), plus authentic pedal-steel bending (Glaser Bender) — all from a single instrument. For a session guitarist who needs to produce any country tone requested on any session without switching guitars, this versatility is not a luxury but a practical requirement.

Guitar Player described Mason cradling the guitar in the interview and “casually playing some faux pedal-steel licks on its B-Bender” over a Skype connection, noting that even through that compressed signal “it sounds incredible.”

Mason described it: “After all, as a session player you’ve got to have one guitar in the boat that’ll do it all.”

Tone note: He found a guitar painted in automotive primer and bought it for a few hundred dollars. He then spent years modifying it into an instrument that can produce every major electric guitar tone required in country session work from a single guitar without changing. The primer finish is still there. The guitar is now worth exponentially more than a few hundred dollars. The modifications that made it worth that much were made possible by the cheap purchase that started everything.

The Fender Brent Mason Signature Telecaster

Fender released the Stories Collection Brent Mason Telecaster in 2020, based on his modified ’67. The production model recreates his specific modifications with production-grade implementations:

• Body: Ash, primer gray finish (satin urethane approximating the auto primer aesthetic)
• Neck: Maple, late-1960s “C” shape profile
• Pickups: Seymour Duncan Vintage Stack Tele STK-T3B (bridge), Hot Stack Strat STK-S2 (middle), Vintage Mini HB (neck) — hum-cancelling versions of the three pickup types that approximate Mason’s original configuration
• Controls: Master volume, middle pickup volume, master tone with push/pull for middle pickup activation
• Bender: Glaser Bender System (Nashville-built)
• Tuners: Sperzel locking tuners

A Limited Edition Fender Custom Shop Heavy Relic version was also produced, handbuilt by Master Builder Kyle McMillin — reliced “to perfection down to the last dent and scratch” to reproduce the physical character of Mason’s decades-played original.

Other Instruments

• Hagstrom Swede: Guitar Player confirmed Mason was playing a Hagstrom Swede before finding the Telecaster — the Swedish-made electric guitar that was his primary instrument before the gray primer Tele changed everything
• Valley Arts Brent Mason Signature (2003-2010): A Telecaster-style signature model produced by Valley Arts Guitar before the Fender relationship
• PRS Brent Mason Signature (2013): PRS produced a signature model; Mason has also been documented using a PRS Mike Mushok Signature SE Baritone in his rig for specific session sounds, praising its “awesome sound” and “great meaty tone”
• Various acoustic guitars: Session work requires acoustic guitar; specific models not consistently documented

Complete Guitar List

• Hagstrom Swede — Pre-Telecaster primary guitar
• 1967 Fender Telecaster (gray primer finish, three pickups, Glaser Bender) — Primary instrument throughout entire session career; the “Brent Mason mod” reference instrument; found for a few hundred dollars; 1,000+ albums; twelve ACM Guitarist of the Year awards
• Fender Stories Collection Brent Mason Signature Telecaster — Production model; Seymour Duncan three-pickup configuration; Glaser Bender; satin primer gray finish
• Fender Custom Shop Brent Mason Signature Telecaster (Heavy Relic, Kyle McMillin) — Limited edition; handbuilt; reliced to match original wear
• Valley Arts Brent Mason Signature (2003-2010) — Earlier signature model before Fender relationship
• PRS Brent Mason Signature (2013) — PRS collaboration
• PRS Mike Mushok Signature SE Baritone — Used in current rig for specific extended-range sounds

Amps: Vintage Fender Variety Plus the Fender Bandmaster

The Fender Bandmaster — The Documented Primary

Premier Guitar’s rig rundown article confirmed Mason uses the 1963 Fender Bandmaster as a primary amplifier. The Bandmaster is a head-only amplifier (no built-in cabinet) producing approximately 40 watts of clean tube power — the professional session guitarist’s choice for a specific reason: at this power level, with the right cabinet, the Bandmaster provides enough clean headroom for studio work while remaining physically manageable and tonally responsive.

The Bandmaster’s character: warm, clear, American tube tone with moderate headroom — clean but not sterile. At working session volumes, it provides the natural compression and warmth of tubes operating at their intended range without the excessive volume that higher-powered amps require to reach saturation. For studio recording where volume can be controlled precisely, the Bandmaster’s moderate power suits the specific dynamic range of recording contexts.

Additional Fender Amplifiers

Mason’s amp collection, as documented in the Premier Guitar rig rundown and other sources, includes vintage Fender amplification across multiple eras — consistent with his approach of using vintage Fenders as the sonic foundation for the Nashville country tone. Specific confirmed models include vintage Fender combo and head amplifiers spanning the tweed, blackface, and silverface periods.

He uses a Radial Cabbone speaker switching system — confirmed in his own words: “The Radial Cabbone has made my life so much easier. Now on a session there is no hassle of switching speaker cables manually between cabs. At a click of a switch it’s done! Best of all, the Cabbone does not mess with my tone!” The ability to switch between multiple speaker cabinets — presenting different tonal characters — allows him to optimize the amp-speaker pairing for different session sounds without physically moving cables.

Pedals & Signal Chain: The Serious Nashville Pedalboard

Mason’s effects chain is substantially more elaborate than the guitarists directly preceding him in this series (Buchanan, Gatton) — which reflects both the commercial production context of Nashville session work and the post-1990s evolution of effects pedal sophistication. The session guitarist needs to produce any sound on demand; more tools mean more sounds available.

Core Pedals

• Analog Man King of Tone — His primary overdrive; the same boutique dual-overdrive that Joe Bonamassa uses; confirmed in Analogman’s artist documentation: “Renowned Nashville guitarist Brent Mason is known to use the Analog Man King of Tone Overdrive pedal, frequently employing his V4 version in recording sessions and occasionally borrowing Sol Philcox’s pedal for live performances.” The King of Tone’s transparency and low-gain character suit session overdrive — adding natural warmth and slight saturation without dramatically coloring the guitar’s fundamental character
• Wampler Ego Compressor — The Brent Mason Wampler signature pedal (also available as the “Hot Wired” version); optical compression for sustain and dynamics control. Wampler produced this specifically in collaboration with Mason
• Wampler Pedals “Hot Wired” overdrive — Mason’s signature overdrive pedal produced by Wampler; currently version 2. A transparent-to-driven overdrive voiced for Nashville twang
• Voodoo Lab Sparkle Drive — Confirmed in Premier Guitar article; a transparent overdrive/boost based on the Tube Screamer circuit but with a clean blend control
• Electro-Harmonix Stereo Memory Man — Analog delay with stereo chorus/vibrato; Premier Guitar documented this as part of his “trippy effects” loop station
• Pigtronix Tremvelope — Envelope-controlled tremolo; dynamic tremolo effect where the tremolo depth responds to picking dynamics. Also in the secondary effects loop station
• Various boost and dirt pedals — On a no-name loop box bought “from a dude on eBay”: Mason’s primary clean boost and dirt pedals run through this switcher

Signal Chain Structure

Premier Guitar’s rig rundown documented the specific signal chain organization: Mason separates his effects into two loop stations. The primary loop station contains his clean boost and drive pedals. A separate loop station runs what he calls his “more trippy effects” — the Stereo Memory Man and Tremvelope. The Radial Cabbone handles speaker cabinet switching between different speaker configurations.

This organized approach — separate switchers for different categories of effects — is the professional session guitarist’s practical solution to having many options available while keeping individual signal paths clean and manageable.

Strings, Picks & Setup

Strings: The National Thumbpickers Hall of Fame induction (2011) confirms Mason’s hybrid picking approach, which influences string choice. The Glaser Bender requires specific consideration: bender systems work best with consistent string gauges, particularly for the B string that the bender affects. Standard light or medium-light electric gauge is typical for Nashville session guitarists who need to balance feel, tone, and bending facility.

Thumbpick: Mason’s National Thumbpickers Hall of Fame induction confirms his primary technique. The thumbpick provides the driving bass-string rhythm foundation while the fingers handle the chicken-pickin’ treble work — the same fundamental approach as James Burton’s, Glen Campbell’s, and the broader Nashville fingerpicking tradition.

The Glaser Bender technique: The B-string bender activates by pushing down on the guitar strap, bending the B string up by one whole step. In E-position chord shapes, this produces the pedal-steel-characteristic bend from B up to C# — the most distinctive interval in traditional country guitar. Controlling the speed and depth of the bender activation requires physical practice: the body movement that activates the bender must be coordinated with the fretting-hand position that makes the bent note land in tune.

Setup: The Telecaster’s three-pickup configuration requires specific routing of the guitar body, modified pickup selector wiring, and the physical installation of the Glaser Bender mechanism — all of which Mason’s custom shop builds incorporate into the instrument’s structure. The .05 capacitor in the tone circuit (recommended for the wah-sweep technique) is a carry-over from the Gatton-influenced approach that Mason may share as part of the Nashville Telecaster tradition.

Playing Style & Tone Philosophy: Every Sound on One Guitar

Brent Mason’s playing style is the definitive example of the Nashville session guitarist’s specific virtues: reliability, versatility, taste, and the ability to produce exactly what the song needs without excess. He is celebrated for his chicken pickin’ — the percussive, staccato treble-string technique he inherited from the James Burton tradition — but his full range extends from clean jazz voicings through rockabilly twang, country double-stops, blues bends, and anything else the session requires.

Chicken Pickin’ — The Nashville Technical Foundation

Mason’s chicken pickin’ is considered the benchmark in Nashville. Guitar Player called his Telecaster work “Tele-whacking, chicken-pickin’, double-stopping, face-melting, mind-blowing solos.” The technique — damped bass strings, snapping treble attacks, rapid alternate picking — is the same vocabulary James Burton developed in Louisiana, transmitted through the Nashville studio tradition and applied to the specific commercial country context with commercial results that Burton himself never achieved.

The National Thumbpickers Hall of Fame induction (2011) specifically acknowledges his thumbpick-based approach: the thumbpick on the right thumb driving bass strings while the fingers handle melody and chicken-pickin’ work — the complete hybrid picking tradition applied at the highest professional level.

The B-Bender — The Pedal Steel in a Guitar

The Glaser B-Bender’s contribution to Mason’s sound is fundamental to the Nashville country guitar aesthetic he represents. Pedal steel guitar is the defining tonal element of traditional country music — its characteristic bending, its smooth glissandos, its ability to sustain bent notes — and the B-bender allows a Telecaster player to produce approximate versions of those effects without a second instrument or a second player.

Mason’s B-bender work on sessions is what allows him to produce the complete Nashville guitar package from a single instrument: the chicken pickin’ twang of the Telecaster bridge pickup, the pedal-steel bending of the Glaser system, the warmer jazz-chord character of the neck mini-humbucker, and all the in-between combinations of the three-pickup system.

The Session Player’s Philosophy

Guitar Player’s interview framing captured his philosophy: “As a session player you’ve got to have one guitar in the boat that’ll do it all.” This is not a philosophical statement about simplicity — it’s a practical description of the session guitarist’s constraint. In a recording session, switching guitars takes time, disrupts momentum, and introduces variables. A single guitar that can produce every required tone, instantly, at the reach of a pickup switch, is the professional’s tool.

His modifications to the gray primer Telecaster — the three pickups, the custom switching, the Glaser Bender — are all in service of this single-guitar versatility. Each modification solved a specific session problem. The mini-humbucker neck pickup solved the “need warmer jazz tones” problem. The middle pickup solved the “need Strat-style shimmer” problem. The B-bender solved the “need pedal steel bends” problem. The guitar’s evolution was the session career’s evolution — each year of sessions revealing a need, and Mason’s mechanical creativity finding the modification that addressed it.

Tone note: He plays a guitar painted in automotive primer. In Nashville — the most aesthetically self-conscious commercial recording environment in American music — the player who won Guitarist of the Year twelve times plays a guitar that looks like it’s waiting for its first coat of actual paint. That’s either extreme confidence or complete indifference to appearances. Both interpretations are consistent with someone who can hear whether a guitar is right regardless of what it looks like.

How to Sound Like Brent Mason: The Nashville Session Guitar Tone

Mason’s tone is the most complete implementation of Nashville Telecaster session sound available. It requires specific equipment but is theoretically achievable with modern production instruments.

The Guitar

Fender Telecaster with three-pickup configuration, mini-humbucker at neck, and B-bender system. The modifications collectively are the “Brent Mason mod.”

• Fender Stories Collection Brent Mason Signature Telecaster — The production model that replicates his specific modifications; the most straightforward path to his complete setup
• Modified standard Telecaster: Install mini-humbucker at neck position, add middle Stratocaster-style pickup (requires routing), install Glaser or similar B-bender system. This is achievable but requires luthiery work
• Any Telecaster with B-bender: Even without the three-pickup configuration, a standard Telecaster with a B-bender produces the most distinctive Mason sound characteristic — the pedal-steel bending

The Amp

Fender Bandmaster (1963 or equivalent) or similar Fender clean tube amplifier with moderate power. Clean, warm, American tube character.

Control	Setting	Notes
Volume	5–7 (clean)	The Nashville tone is predominantly clean; drive comes from pedals, not amp saturation
Treble	6	Present for Telecaster clarity and chicken-pickin’ definition
Middle	5–6	Moderate; the Telecaster bridge pickup’s natural presence is the character
Bass	4–5	Controlled; Nashville guitar is not bass-heavy in the mix
Reverb	Light	Subtle spatial depth; not prominent in the Nashville production mix

The Essential Pedals

• Compressor — Wampler Ego or similar optical compressor for sustain and dynamics; the Nashville session tone has a specific compressed, even dynamic character
• Analog Man King of Tone or equivalent transparent overdrive — Low-gain, transparent; adds warmth and slight saturation without dramatically coloring the tone
• Wampler Hot Wired — Mason’s signature overdrive for the heavier drive tones when the session calls for it
• Analog delay — EHX Stereo Memory Man or equivalent; for the specific depth on chicken-pickin’ passages

Budget vs Authentic

Budget — Nashville approach:

• Guitar: Fender Player Telecaster; add Hipshot or Palm Steel B-bender kit (budget bender alternative)
• Amp: Fender Blues Junior or Blues Deluxe (clean)
• Pedals: Boss CS-3 compressor + Boss BD-2 Blues Driver (low gain) + Boss DD-3 delay

Authentic:

• Guitar: Fender Stories Collection Brent Mason Signature Telecaster (or custom-modified Telecaster with Glaser Bender)
• Amp: 1963 Fender Bandmaster or equivalent vintage Fender head with appropriate cabinet
• Pedals: Wampler Ego Compressor + Analog Man King of Tone + Wampler Hot Wired + EHX Stereo Memory Man

The B-Bender Technique

The B-bender activates when pressure is applied downward on the guitar strap. Practice coordinating the strap pressure with fretting-hand position: to produce the characteristic country bend, hold an E-position chord shape and push down on the strap — the B string bends from B up to C#, while the other strings remain at pitch. This produces the pedal-steel sound without the pedal-steel instrument.

The coordination required: the strap pressure must be smooth and controlled; the fretting hand must hold the chord clearly; the picking hand must strike the B string cleanly at the moment of maximum bend. All three of these simultaneous actions require physical practice before they produce the seamless result heard on Mason’s recordings.

The chicken pickin’: thumbpick on the right thumb for bass strings (E, A, D), fingers for treble strings (G, B, E). Combine with palm muting on bass strings for the percussive, staccato “cluck” quality. Learn the fundamental James Burton approach (detailed in the James Burton section of this series) and then apply Mason’s specific Nashville context to it: cleaner, more precise, serving the commercial country arrangement rather than the solo rock and roll performance.

Influence & Legacy: The Sound of Country Radio

Brent Mason’s influence on country music is measured in records rather than in individual influenced guitarists — because his primary contribution is the accumulated sound of more than a thousand commercial albums across four decades, not the development of a technique that other players copied.

He is the sound of country music in its peak commercial era (1985-2005). The specific Telecaster tone, the chicken-pickin’ licks, the B-bender pedal-steel approximations on hit records by Alan Jackson, George Jones, Dolly Parton, and Shania Twain — all of these represent Mason’s specific contribution to the texture of the genre as it reached its largest audiences.

The “Brent Mason mod” — the three-pickup Telecaster configuration with Glaser Bender — has influenced how Nashville session guitarists think about instrument configuration. The modifications he made to his gray primer Telecaster have become a reference point for session guitarist instrument design: the Fender signature model makes those specific modifications available in production form.

The musicians who most directly cite him as an influence are the contemporary Nashville guitarists — Brad Paisley, Vince Gill, Keith Urban — who grew up in the era where Mason’s session work was the sonic standard for Nashville country guitar. Playing on “Cluster Pluck” alongside Paisley was simultaneously a tribute and a confirmation: the guitarist who had defined the Nashville sound in the 1980s and 1990s, acknowledged by the guitarists who had grown up hearing his work.

Guitar World’s Top Ten Session Guitarists of All Time list — which places Mason alongside Jimmy Page, Larry Carlton, Tommy Tedesco, and Steve Cropper — acknowledges both the quality of his playing and the extraordinary volume of his output. Over a thousand albums. Across five decades. On the same gray primer Telecaster he found for a few hundred dollars.

Tone note: He found the guitar in primer gray, unfinished, for a few hundred dollars. He won the ACM Guitarist of the Year Award twelve times with it. That’s the complete mathematics of instrument appropriateness: not what the guitar looks like or what it originally cost, but whether it produces the right sound in the right hands. The gray primer was exactly right for exactly thirty-something years of sessions.

In Nashville, Tennessee, in the early 1980s, Brent Mason walked into a guitar shop and found a 1967 Fender Telecaster that someone had painted in automotive primer. He bought it for a few hundred dollars. He added three pickups — mini-humbucker at neck, Stratocaster-style in the middle, Telecaster bridge — and a Glaser B-bender and modified controls. He kept the primer finish because he liked it.

Over the next four decades, he played that guitar on over a thousand albums. Alan Jackson. Brooks & Dunn. George Jones. Dolly Parton. Blake Shelton. Shania Twain. Carrie Underwood. Willie Nelson. Chet Atkins discovered him. The ACM gave him the Guitarist of the Year Award twelve times. Guitar World named him one of the Top Ten Session Guitarists of All Time.

He used an Analog Man King of Tone overdrive and a Wampler compressor and a Fender Bandmaster. He used a thumbpick. He used the B-bender for pedal-steel bends. He served the sessions. The sessions were country radio for a generation.

“As a session player you’ve got to have one guitar in the boat that’ll do it all.”

His one guitar is gray. It still is. It still does it all.

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If Mason’s Nashville session Telecaster approach — the B-bender, the three-pickup flexibility, the chicken pickin’ — has you exploring the country session guitar tradition, check out our complete guide to James Burton’s guitars and gear — the architect of chicken pickin’ whose technique runs directly through the Nashville tradition that Mason represents and dominates.

And for the Chet Atkins who discovered Mason and whose musical philosophy — produce every sound possible from one guitar, serve the song — runs through Mason’s entire career approach, don’t miss our breakdown of Chet Atkins’ complete gear guide.

FAQ: Brent Mason Guitars & Gear

What is Brent Mason’s guitar?

His primary guitar throughout his entire session career is a 1967 Fender Telecaster he found in a Nashville guitar shop in the early 1980s, stripped of its original finish and re-sprayed in gray automotive primer. He bought it for a few hundred dollars and transformed it with extensive modifications — the “Brent Mason mod” — including: three pickups (Gibson mini-humbucker at neck, Stratocaster-style single coil in middle, Telecaster bridge pickup), three-knob control layout, push/pull tone control for middle pickup activation, and a Joe Glaser B-bender system. This same gray primer Telecaster has been on over 1,000 albums, earning him twelve ACM Guitarist of the Year awards.

What is the Glaser Bender and why does Brent Mason use it?

The Glaser Bender is a B-string (or G-string) bender mechanism built into a Telecaster guitar by Nashville luthier Joe Glaser. When the guitarist pushes down on the guitar strap, the mechanism bends the B string up by one whole step, producing a pedal-steel-characteristic pitch bend without a pedal steel guitar. Mason uses it because pedal steel sounds are essential to traditional country music, and the Glaser Bender allows him to produce those sounds from a single guitar without switching instruments or hiring a pedal steel player. Sweetwater confirmed the Glaser Bender as “the result of 50 years of development” and “the smoothest B-/G-bender out there.”

What is the “Brent Mason mod”?

The set of modifications Mason made to his 1967 gray primer Telecaster that have become known collectively as the “Brent Mason mod”: adding a third pickup in the middle position (Stratocaster-style single coil), replacing the standard Telecaster neck single coil with a Gibson mini-humbucker, installing a three-knob control layout (master volume, master tone with push/pull for middle pickup, middle pickup volume), modifying the pickup selector wiring for the new configurations, and adding the Glaser B-bender mechanism. This configuration gives the guitar Telecaster twang (bridge), Stratocaster-style shimmer (middle or combinations), and humbucker warmth (neck), plus pedal steel bending — all from one instrument.

What amplifier does Brent Mason use?

A 1963 Fender Bandmaster is confirmed as his primary amplifier according to Premier Guitar’s rig rundown. The Bandmaster is a head-only (no built-in cabinet) tube amplifier producing approximately 40 watts — providing clean headroom appropriate for studio recording with the specific warm, clear character of Fender’s early-1960s amplifier design. He uses a Radial Cabbone speaker switcher to move between different speaker cabinets without physically switching cables.

What pedals does Brent Mason use?

His confirmed core pedals: Analog Man King of Tone overdrive (Version 4, his primary drive pedal — he’s been documented using this “frequently in recording sessions”), Wampler Ego Compressor (his signature compression pedal, also available as the Wampler Hot Wired version), Voodoo Lab Sparkle Drive (transparent overdrive/boost), Electro-Harmonix Stereo Memory Man (analog delay with stereo chorus/vibrato, used in a separate “trippy effects” loop), and Pigtronix Tremvelope (envelope-controlled tremolo). His primary drives are organized on a no-name loop box bought “from a dude on eBay”; the more experimental effects are on a separate loop station.

How many albums has Brent Mason played on?

Well over 1,000, spanning five decades of Nashville session work. His credits include virtually every significant country artist of the past four decades: Alan Jackson, Brooks & Dunn, George Jones, Dolly Parton, Blake Shelton, Shania Twain, Carrie Underwood, Willie Nelson, and hundreds of others. He won the ACM Guitarist of the Year Award twelve times (1993-2009, with gaps) and the CMA Musician of the Year twice (1997 and 1998), both reflecting his sustained excellence and dominance of the Nashville session market.

How do I get Brent Mason’s guitar tone?

The most direct path: Fender Stories Collection Brent Mason Signature Telecaster (which replicates his specific modifications including the Glaser Bender, three-pickup configuration, and primer gray finish). Through a Fender Bandmaster or similar clean Fender tube amp. With a compressor (Wampler Ego or similar), transparent overdrive (Analog Man King of Tone or Wampler Hot Wired at low gain), and light analog delay. The technique requires a thumbpick for the bass-string driving foundation and bare fingers for the chicken-pickin’ treble work. The B-bender operation requires physical practice coordinating strap pressure with fretting-hand chord shapes to produce smooth, in-tune pedal-steel bends.