He had nine 1959 Gibson Les Paul Sunbursts. At the same time.
They each have names. “Snakebite” — his favourite, with two side-by-side screw holes where a Bigsby was installed and subsequently removed, which look like serpent’s fang marks. “Carmelita” — the one he paid the most for: “There was a four in the number. It may have been the first number.” “Magellan” — the first one, bought on payment plan from dealer Eliot Michael in 2007-8 when he said “I’d like to drive a Ferrari too, but there are things I can’t afford” and Michael replied “Here, take this one. You can make payments until it’s paid off.” So Bonamassa took it around the world — Australia, South America, Europe — and named it for the navigator.
At his peak, he owned 300 guitars. He sold many of them. Currently somewhere around 120–130. He has every year of Les Paul from 1952 to 1961. Three PAF Goldtops. Six sunburst Standards. A factory-black Standard. The 1960 “Royal Albert” Les Paul he bought for approximately $190,000 after it was found sitting unplayed under a staircase for fifty years.
He also bought a Dumble amplifier from Steven Seagal.
Joe Bonamassa is simultaneously the most prolific blues-rock guitarist of his generation and the most obsessive vintage gear collector in rock music. Both things are the same person, and both things inform each other completely. This is the gear story.
Background: Utica, B.B. King at Age Twelve, and the Career of a Child Prodigy Grown Up
Joseph Leonard Bonamassa was born May 8, 1977, in New Hartford, New York — a small city outside of Utica in upstate New York. His parents Len and Deborah Bonamassa owned Bank Place Guitars, a local guitar shop, which meant that Joe grew up literally surrounded by guitars, amps, and the equipment knowledge that most guitarists have to actively pursue. The music store background is the foundation of everything: his technical knowledge of instruments, his collecting instincts, and his ability to evaluate gear authentically rather than through marketing speak all come from growing up behind the counter of a guitar store.
He began playing guitar at age four, started taking lessons at six, and was performing professionally in local venues before he was in his teens. The transformative professional encounter came at age twelve, when he opened for B.B. King at a concert. King said of the young guitarist: “This kid’s got it. He’s going to be something else.” At an age when most guitarists are still learning their first chords from YouTube, Bonamassa was getting career endorsements from the King of the Blues.
He signed to a label at fourteen, received what he describes as “a $5,500 inheritance from his great-grandmother” and used it to buy his first vintage guitar — a 1954 hard-tail Stratocaster. By his late teens he had vintage examples of “all the classics: a 335, a Telecaster, and others.” The collecting habit was established before his professional career was fully launched.
His recording career proper began with A New Day Yesterday (2000) — a debut that established his approach: blues-based, guitar-centric, with the vocabulary of the British blues-rock tradition (Clapton, Cream, Led Zeppelin, Peter Green) applied to original songs with exceptional technical facility. Subsequent albums built the audience: So It’s Like That (2002), Blues Deluxe (2003), the collaboration albums with Beth Hart, the Blues of Desperation era, the Royal Albert Hall recordings that remain among his most celebrated live documents.
He runs his own label (J&R Adventures), books his own tours, and manages many of the commercial aspects of his career independently — a professional model that has given him unusual control over his output and his image. He is among the most commercially successful blues artists working today, selling out Carnegie Hall and the Royal Albert Hall while maintaining the artistic independence that major label deals typically constrain.
He was diagnosed with a fear of flying in 2012, which led him to travel by private bus across the United States and by ocean liner internationally for several years. This affected touring patterns but also produced a kind of forced engagement with American geography that influenced his music in ways he has discussed.
Tone note: He grew up in his parents’ guitar store. He bought his first vintage guitar with his great-grandmother’s inheritance money. He named his favourite Les Paul after a ship’s captain who circumnavigated the globe, because he took the guitar around the world before he’d paid it off. The gear is never just equipment for Bonamassa — it’s biography.
The Rig: Joe Bonamassa’s Guitars, Amps & Gear — Complete Era-by-Era Breakdown
Bonamassa’s gear story is one of the longest, most documented, and most extensive in this series. He gives detailed gear interviews, discusses his collection extensively, and has been unusually transparent about acquisition prices, favourite instruments, and the emotional and musical reasoning behind his choices. The following is a thorough but necessarily selective account — a complete accounting of his collection would require a separate book.
Guitars: The 1959 Les Paul Collection and Its Context
The 1959 Gibson Les Paul Sunburst Collection — The Heart of Everything
The central fact of Bonamassa’s guitar collection is nine named 1959 Gibson Les Paul Sunburst Standards. The 1959 Les Paul is widely considered the most desirable electric guitar ever produced — a specific twelve-month production run that combined the carved maple top, mahogany body, late-1950s neck profile, and PAF (Patent Applied For) humbucker pickups in proportions that have never been exactly replicated before or since. Values for exceptional examples have exceeded $500,000; average examples trade above $300,000; and acquiring nine of them, each individually evaluated and named, represents an investment of multiple millions of dollars.
Key named guitars from the sunburst collection:
- “Snakebite” — His favourite. A Bigsby vibrato tailpiece was installed at some point and subsequently removed, leaving two side-by-side screw holes that resemble a snake’s fang marks. He described it: “Any collector would gravitate toward it, because it has such a great patina and it’s worn in the right way. I’ve never had a guitar attach itself to me like Snakebite.” The “best Gibson I own” and “the most satisfying acquisition.”
- “Magellan” — The first 1959 he acquired, in 2007-8, on a payment plan from dealer Eliot Michael at Rumbleseat Music. He took it to Australia, South America, and Europe while still paying for it, naming it for the circumnavigating navigator. “So that was the beginning of a kind of addiction. I’ve been able to acquire a second, third and fourth ’59 Les Paul… and now a ninth.”
- “Carmelita” — His most expensive. “There was a four in the number. It may have been the first number.” A price beginning with four hundred thousand dollars for a single guitar.
- “Principal Skinner” (formerly “Skinner Burst”) — Originally known as the “Skinner Burst” after the auction house that sold it in 2006; Bonamassa renamed it. He described it as “The most rock Les Paul I own. Big flame equals big tone.”
- The “Royal Albert” Les Paul — A 1960 Les Paul Standard (not a 1959, but close in specification and adjacently significant) purchased in 2022 for approximately $190,000 after it was discovered sitting unplayed under a staircase for approximately fifty years. The guitar was brought backstage at the Royal Albert Hall by revered vintage dealer ATB Guitars and inspected by Bonamassa before he purchased it. It features a mysterious additional switch on the pickguard that he theorizes was a “phase switch” installed at the factory. “It’s the original pickguard, and that switch has been on there for a long time. You can tell that.”
He also has: a factory-black 1959 Les Paul Standard (extraordinarily rare — factory custom colour at a time when Gibson almost exclusively produced sunburst finishes), a 1959 “grey-burst” Les Paul (“apparently designed to look good with Johnny Cash’s black attire”), and additional 1959 examples at various price points across the collection.
Tone note: Nine named 1959 Les Pauls. Not nine indistinguishable vintage guitars — nine individual instruments, each with documented history, tonal character descriptions, and emotional significance that he can discuss in detail. This is not hoarding. It’s a specific form of guitar connoisseurship applied at extraordinary scale.
The Full Les Paul Collection — Every Year 1952–1961
Beyond the nine 1959s, Bonamassa has confirmed owning every year of Gibson Les Paul production from 1952 through 1961 — the complete decade of original Les Paul production before Gibson discontinued the model in 1960 and the briefly-produced 1960 and 1961 examples that ended the original run. This includes:
- Three PAF Goldtop Les Pauls (the PAF-equipped Goldtops from 1957-1958, rarer and more expensive than P-90 Goldtops)
- 1958 Les Paul Goldtop (confirmed in Vintage Guitar interview)
- 1952–1956 Les Paul models (earlier P-90-equipped instruments)
- 1960 Les Paul Standard (with 1959 neck profile — the transitional year)
- 1961 Les Paul / SG Standard (the year Gibson changed the design to the SG body; these early “SG/Les Pauls” are considered part of the Les Paul lineage)
He described the collection’s completeness to Guitar Player: “My collection is indicative of that” — referring to his identity as “an electric guitar player” who focuses on the core American electric guitar tradition rather than archtops, acoustics, or exotica.
The Gibson Semi-Hollow Collection
Beyond the Les Pauls, Bonamassa’s Gibson inventory includes:
- 1959 ES-345 in sunburst (with “a patriotic sticker that somebody put on it during the Vietnam War… and it ain’t comin’ off”)
- 1962 Cherry Red ES-335 with Maestro vibrato
- 1964 ES-335 sunburst with stop tailpiece (with original tags)
- 1961 ES-335 dot-neck, purchased from a fan who brought it to a show (played it that night as part of the deal)
- 1950 Gibson ES-5
- 1959 Gibson ES-140 3/4T
- 1974 Gibson ES-175
- 1963 SG Junior (“big baseball-bat neck on it, and it’s a killer guitar”)
- 1965 white SG Special
- 1961 SG/Les Paul with sideways vibrato
The Fender Collection
- 1963 Stratocaster sunburst with clay-dot fret markers — bought for $3,000 in 1992 with EMI Records advance money; “my father yelled at me because he thought I paid too much… That was probably my best bargain ever.”
- 1964 Stratocaster sunburst — “the loudest Strat I’ve ever owned; it’s a killer slide guitar”
- 1954 hard-tail Stratocaster — first vintage guitar, bought at 14 with $5,500 great-grandmother’s inheritance
- 1961 Esquire “slab-board” — “sounds like a Les Paul Junior with a P-90”
- 1970 Telecaster — used on the opening of “Tea For One” (the Jimmy Page tribute)
- Various additional vintage Strats, Teles, and other Fender models
- 1957 Fender double-neck steel
- Mid-1960s Musicmaster and Mustang (completely stock)
The Miscellaneous Significant Instruments
- 1958 Cadillac Green Gretsch Country Club (with flatwound strings) — “very valuable in studio sessions; the DeArmond pickups are very clear-sounding”
- 1961 Guild X-350 — “I call it a poor man’s Switchmaster. It sounds better than my ES-5”
- Airline guitar (post-Jack White vintage) — “a cool guitar”
- 1960 Les Paul Standard “Royal Albert” — the $190,000 staircase guitar, purchased at the Royal Albert Hall
- Various Gibson Custom Shop instruments — “sound and play killer and look just like the originals, if you saw them from row G”
Tone note: He bought the 1961 ES-335 from a fan who brought it to a show. The strings were rotten, the pots were bad, the tuners were “all fucked up.” But it sounded fantastic. He agreed to the deal on the condition that he’d play it during that night’s show. He played it. That’s how you evaluate a guitar — you play it through an amp and listen.
Amps & Cabinets: The Dumble He Bought From Steven Seagal, and Much More
The Howard Dumble Overdrive Special — Purchased From Steven Seagal
The single most discussed amp in Joe Bonamassa’s collection is his Howard Dumble Overdrive Special (ODS) — a hand-built amplifier from the most celebrated and most reclusive boutique amp builder in history. Dumble amplifiers are valued at hundreds of thousands of dollars; only a small number exist (Howard Dumble built them personally for specific clients); and their tonal reputation — among the warmest, most touch-responsive, most musically expressive amps ever made — has made them the object of desire for serious players worldwide.
Bonamassa’s specific Dumble was purchased from actor and martial artist Steven Seagal. This is not a detail that requires further elaboration — it is simply true, which is already remarkable. He named it his “go-to studio amp” to Guitar World.
The Dumble ODS’s character: a specific American clean-to-driven sound that responds to the guitar and player’s touch with extraordinary sensitivity — clean at low volumes, gently breaking up as the player digs in harder, allowing the dynamic range between light and heavy playing to express itself without adjusting any controls. For a blues player whose expressive vocabulary depends on this kind of dynamic response, the Dumble is not just a prestigious acquisition but a functionally important instrument in its own right.
Tone note: He bought a Dumble from Steven Seagal. There is no way to write that sentence that doesn’t sound strange. It is also entirely factual, and the amp has been his primary studio reference since he acquired it. Tone doesn’t care about provenance.
The Vintage Fender Tweed Collection
Bonamassa’s tweed Fender amp collection is as significant as his guitar collection and follows the same principle: acquire the best examples of the most important American amplifiers from the period when they were made at their best. Key pieces:
- 1957 Fender Deluxe tweed — Part of his tweed collection, visible in Vintage Guitar photographs alongside his guitars
- Multiple tweed Fender combos — The tweed construction Fender amplifiers from the 1950s (before the transition to Tolex covering in 1960) are among the most tonally celebrated amps ever made; the tweed Bassman, tweed Deluxe, tweed Pro, and tweed Twin represent distinct tonal characters within the American clean tradition
He has confirmed owning “a bunch of old tweed Fenders” and displays them alongside his vintage guitar collection.
Marshall 1959 Plexi — British Character
Bonamassa uses vintage Marshall Plexi amplifiers for the British hard-rock character that appears in his playing alongside the American blues vocabulary. The Marshall Plexi — the 100-watt non-master-volume Super Lead from the late 1960s — provides the aggressive, harmonically rich British saturation that the Fender tweed amps can’t produce at the same gain levels.
He owns and uses multiple vintage Plexis; the specific models across different touring and recording setups are not exhaustively documented, but the Marshall presence in his rig is confirmed across multiple sources.
Alessandro Amplification — The Boutique Partnership
George Alessandro has built Bonamassa-specific custom amplifiers based on the tweed Fender circuit tradition but with Alessandro’s component choices and voicing modifications. Premier Guitar described Alessandro as being among “a Mount Rushmore of guitar tone” for boutique amp building, with Bonamassa among the clients who have cited him in current gear lists. The Alessandro amps have appeared in multiple Bonamassa recording and live contexts.
Friedman Amplification
For heavier, more aggressive material, Bonamassa uses Friedman amplification — specifically the Friedman BE (Brown Eye) head, which provides the high-gain, Marshall-influenced character suited to the harder rock edge of his playing. The Friedman BE is documented in the Premier Guitar Epiphone review context: “Recorded with Friedman BE and custom-built tweed Deluxe-style amps.” The combination of tweed Deluxe character and Friedman high-gain character covers the full range from clean American blues to hard-edged rock.
Other Amps
- Vox AC30 — British jangle and class-A character for specific applications
- Dr. Z amplification — Boutique American amp builder whose circuits are based on vintage Fender and Marshall designs
- Carol-Ann amplification — Another boutique maker with specific Bonamassa associations
- Carr Amplification — Confirmed in the Premier Guitar review context alongside the Friedman
- Fractal Audio Axe-FX III — For studio use when flexibility across multiple amp characters is required
| Amp | Context | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Howard Dumble Overdrive Special (ODS) | Primary studio amp | Purchased from Steven Seagal; named go-to studio amp; extraordinarily touch-responsive American clean-to-driven character |
| Vintage tweed Fender Deluxe, Bassman, Twin (various) | Studio and specific live | Multiple tweed Fenders; 1950s American clean character; “classic R&B sounds” |
| Vintage Marshall Plexi 1959 Super Lead | Hard-rock material | British aggressive saturation; multiple vintage Plexis in collection |
| Alessandro custom amps (tweed Deluxe-based) | Studio and live | Custom-built by George Alessandro; tweaked tweed Fender circuits |
| Friedman BE-100 (Brown Eye) | Heavier rock material | High-gain Marshall-influenced character; documented in Premier Guitar review context |
| Vox AC30 | Specific applications | British class-A character |
| Fractal Audio Axe-FX III | Studio flexibility | Multiple amp modelling for recording contexts requiring tonal range |
Pedals & Signal Chain: Selective Use of Classic Effects
Bonamassa’s effects philosophy mirrors his amp philosophy: classic, quality, and used purposefully rather than elaborately. He is not a complex pedalboard guitarist — the vintage Les Pauls and authentic vintage or boutique amps are doing most of the heavy lifting; the pedals provide specific additional colours when needed.
Core Effects
- Analog Man King of Tone — One of the most sought-after boutique overdrive pedals in the world; a dual-overdrive based on the Tube Screamer circuit but with significantly expanded options and improved transparency. Bonamassa’s use of it is one of the reasons it became even more legendarily difficult to obtain — Analog Man has had a waiting list measured in years
- Xotic AC Booster — Clean boost with treble and bass controls for pushing the front end of vintage amps without adding harsh gain character
- Fulltone OCD — FET-based overdrive/distortion with specific hard-clipping character; used for specific heavier moments in his playing
- Ernie Ball Volume Pedal — Standard professional volume control
- MXR Carbon Copy Analog Delay — Warm, analog bucket-brigade delay for the warmth and slight degradation of character that suits vintage blues tone
- Boss TU-2 Chromatic Tuner — Standard live tuning reference
- Jim Dunlop Wah — Cry Baby or similar; used selectively for blues wah expression
- TC Electronic effects — Various TC units documented in different rig configurations
- Hermida Zendrive — Dumble-circuit-inspired overdrive; popular with players chasing the Dumble character without the six-figure amplifier
Tone note: The Analog Man King of Tone’s waiting list is measured in years. Bonamassa’s endorsement didn’t help availability. When someone with a Howard Dumble in their studio uses a specific boutique overdrive pedal, the guitar community notices.
Strings, Picks & Setup
Strings: Ernie Ball strings in standard electric gauges; the specific gauge varies by guitar and context. For his vintage Les Pauls, medium-light or medium gauges (.010–.046 or .011–.052) are standard; heavier gauges suit the specific tension requirements of certain vintage instruments. His 1958 Gretsch Country Club uses flatwound strings specifically — as he noted: “I’ve got flatwound strings on it, naturally.”
Picks: Not documented in specific commercial detail. His highly expressive lead playing — with wide vibrato, aggressive bending, and dynamic variation from light to heavy attack — suggests medium-to-heavy gauge picks for the control required.
Guitar Setup Philosophy:
- Vintage instruments maintained as authentically as possible — he described the 1959 Les Pauls’ original specifications as not requiring modification when the guitar is right
- PAF pickups in vintage configuration — the original PAF humbuckers in his vintage Les Pauls are maintained rather than replaced
- String height (action): vintage Les Pauls typically require setup work after decades of storage; his tech maintains them for playability within vintage authenticity standards
- Authentic vintage tuners — Grovers or original Klusons depending on the specific year’s factory configuration
Tunings: Standard E for most of his catalog. He uses open tunings for specific slide guitar passages — both Hawaiian and Dobro-adjacent approaches. The 1964 Strat is described as a “killer slide guitar,” confirming that specific instruments are assigned to specific technical applications.
Tone note: His 1958 Gretsch Country Club has flatwound strings because that’s what suits the DeArmond pickups and the guitar’s character. Peter Buck has flatwounds on his Rickenbacker for the same instinct — matching string choice to the specific instrument’s character rather than using one standard string type across everything.
Tunings & Tone Philosophy
Bonamassa’s tone philosophy is rooted in authenticity — the pursuit of vintage equipment because vintage equipment was made differently from modern equipment and those differences are audible and meaningful. He has described the specific properties of 1950s PAF humbuckers that modern replicas can approximate but not precisely replicate: the specific scatter-wound coil winding that produced small variations in output and frequency response between individual pickups; the specific magnet types (Alnico 2 and Alnico 5 variations); the specific wire gauge and insulation; and the specific tone of mahogany and maple from 1950s American timber that has different characteristics from today’s supply.
His collecting philosophy: “I’ve gone past the point of necessity. Right now the stuff I buy is super clean vintage stuff or if a just killer vintage guitar comes my way.” The transition from need to aesthetic judgement — buying because an instrument is exceptional rather than because it fills a functional gap — is the mark of a collector who has acquired the foundational tools and is now pursuing excellence within that foundation.
He described his criteria simply: “When you are looking for a new guitar, what specifically are you looking for? I don’t need anything.” This is an unusual and honest admission from someone who has clearly continued buying anyway — because the pursuit itself has value beyond any individual acquisition.
Tone note: He doesn’t need any more guitars. He has 120-130. He has every year of Les Paul from 1952 to 1961. He still buys when “a killer vintage guitar comes my way.” The collecting instinct and the playing instinct are the same instinct: the pursuit of the best possible version of the thing.
Playing Style & Tone Philosophy: British Blues-Rock Through American Blues Eyes
Joe Bonamassa’s playing style is one of the most technically accomplished and most stylistically comprehensive in contemporary blues-rock. He absorbs influences explicitly and comprehensively — from the American blues masters (B.B. King, Freddie King, Albert King, Robert Johnson) through the British Invasion players who absorbed those masters (Clapton, Green, Kossoff, Page) through the modern rock era that absorbed the British players. His playing sounds like all of this history running through one man’s hands.
The Blues Foundation
Bonamassa was twelve years old when B.B. King said he had “it.” That specific assessment — from the master of a specific kind of emotional guitar expression — came before Bonamassa had developed the technical facility that makes his playing impressive; it came because he had already absorbed the fundamental expressive quality of blues guitar playing in a way that most guitarists never fully achieve.
His vibrato is wide, expressive, and fully committed — the kind of vibrato that B.B. King and Eric Clapton both practice, where each sustained note is given its full emotional weight through the physical action of the fretting hand. His bending is precise and musical — bent notes land exactly where they’re supposed to and stay there. These are not decorations on his playing; they are the core of it.
Tone note: He was twelve when B.B. King endorsed him. The vibrato that earned that endorsement is still there in every solo he plays. Technique is learned; that kind of musical communication is either present or it isn’t.
The Technical Facility
Beyond the blues foundation, Bonamassa has developed extraordinary technical ability across his career — the ability to play at high speed without losing tonal quality or expressive content. His solos frequently move from slow, singing blues phrases to fast, articulate runs within a single performance, demonstrating that the technique is in service of musical ideas rather than replacing them.
The Peter Green influence — specifically the out-of-phase Les Paul tone and the melodic directness of Green’s solos — runs through his work directly. He has described working with Peter Green’s actual “Greeny” Les Paul, and the experience of playing that specific instrument informed his understanding of what the best vintage Les Pauls feel and respond like.
The Vintage Instrument Effect
Bonamassa has described how vintage instruments affect his playing — the specific interaction between a 1959 Les Paul’s PAF pickups and a tweed Fender amp is not just tonally different from modern equivalents but encourages different playing, different dynamic decisions, different note choices. “Any musician who has ever picked up a great old guitar will feel the difference,” he has said. “Something about those old guitars makes you want to play differently.”
This is not mysticism — it’s a practical observation. The way a vintage instrument responds to different pick attacks, the way its neck feels under the hand, the way its tone changes when you roll back the volume knob — all of these physical properties encourage specific playing decisions that modern instruments, for all their technical consistency, don’t fully replicate.
How to Sound Like Joe Bonamassa: Building the Blues-Rock Tone
Bonamassa’s specific tone — the nine vintage 1959 Les Pauls through the Howard Dumble — is not achievable for most players. But the fundamental character of his sound is accessible through equipment that doesn’t require a trust fund to acquire.
The Guitar
Les Paul with PAF-type humbuckers. His tone is fundamentally Les Paul-voiced — the combination of mahogany body warmth, maple cap brightness, and PAF humbucker midrange presence that defines the vintage Les Paul character.
- Gibson Les Paul Standard (current or vintage) — The authentic starting point; any budget level
- Gibson Les Paul Goldtop (P-90 or PAF) — For specific P-90 or early PAF character applications
- Epiphone Joe Bonamassa signature models — He has official Epiphone collaborations that provide the visual and general tonal character at accessible prices
- Any humbucker Les Paul — The pickup type and body construction are the essential elements; specific year matters less at accessible price points
The Amp
American clean-to-driven character, at the right volume for natural tube saturation. The Dumble ODS character can be approximated at lower cost through specific boutique amplifiers and pedals that target the same circuit principles.
| Control | Clean Blues Setting | Driven Blues-Rock Setting | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Volume / Gain | 5–6 (edge of breakup) | 7–8 (natural saturation) | The amp should respond to picking dynamics — light touch = cleaner, heavy touch = driven |
| Treble | 5–6 | 6 | Present but warm — PAF humbuckers handle upper-mid naturally |
| Middle | 6–7 | 6–7 | Mid presence for the singing, vocal quality of blues lead tone |
| Bass | 5 | 5 | Warm but controlled; the Les Paul adds natural warmth |
| Reverb | Light-moderate spring | Light spring | Fender-style spring reverb adds space without overwhelming the tone |
Good amp alternatives to the Dumble: Carr Rambler, Dr. Z Route 66, Alessandro Crocodile — all boutique amps with Dumble-adjacent American clean-to-driven character at significantly lower cost than the genuine article.
The Essential Pedals
- Analog Man King of Tone (or Tube Screamer TS808 as an accessible alternative) — Low-to-medium gain overdrive for pushing the amp; the KoT’s specific character suits vintage Les Pauls particularly well
- MXR Carbon Copy Analog Delay — Warm analog delay for depth and space on solos
- Wah pedal — Standard Cry Baby for expressive filtering; used selectively
Budget vs Pro Rigs
Budget — Blues-rock character:
- Guitar: Gibson Les Paul Standard (any decade) or Epiphone Les Paul with pickup upgrade
- Amp: Fender Blues Junior or Blues DeVille — American clean character at accessible price
- Pedal: Ibanez TS9 Tube Screamer (low gain for amp push, medium for solo boost)
- Strings: Ernie Ball .010–.046
Pro — Authentic approach:
- Guitar: Gibson Les Paul Standard with PAF-replica humbuckers (Seymour Duncan Seth Lover or equivalent)
- Amp: Vintage tweed Fender Deluxe or Bassman; or boutique Dumble-influenced amp (Carr, Alessandro, Dr. Z)
- Pedals: Analog Man King of Tone + MXR Carbon Copy Analog Delay + Wah
Tone note: The Analog Man King of Tone has a waiting list measured in years. The Tube Screamer TS808 gets you most of the way there for $150. Buy the TS808, put it in front of a tube amp with the gain low and the volume up, and develop your vibrato. The vibrato is what B.B. King heard in a twelve-year-old Bonamassa. No pedal produces it.
The Technique
Develop the vibrato. Bonamassa’s most essential technique is not speed — it’s the expressive vibrato that gives his sustained notes their emotional weight. Practice: fret a note on the B string at the 10th fret (A note). Hold it. Shake the string up and down with the wrist, from the knuckle, maintaining a consistent pitch arc. The goal is for the vibrato to add expressiveness to the note without making it sound out of tune. This takes time. B.B. King spent decades developing his. Start now.
Second: learn to play expressively at a wide range of dynamics. The vintage Les Paul through a responsive amp responds to how hard you pick. Practice the same phrase at different dynamic levels and listen to how the amp responds. This dynamic interplay between guitar, amp, and touch is what makes blues guitar expressive rather than merely fast.
Influence & Legacy: The Man Who Put Blues Rock Back on the Map
Joe Bonamassa’s commercial and cultural influence on the blues-rock genre is demonstrable and direct: he is the artist who has most consistently demonstrated, across two decades, that the tradition of British and American blues-rock guitar that reached its peak in the late 1960s and early 1970s still has a living audience and a future.
He sells out Carnegie Hall. He sells out the Royal Albert Hall. He regularly returns to both venues because the audiences continue to fill them. For a genre that was dismissed as obsolete by the music industry in the 1990s and 2000s, this sustained commercial success is remarkable — and it’s been achieved entirely independently, without major label support, through the quality of the music and the direct relationship with the audience.
His specific tonal influence — the demonstration that vintage equipment is not merely a collector’s indulgence but a different-sounding tool that produces music that sounds different from its modern equivalents — has influenced how a generation of younger blues-rock players think about their own gear choices. The Analog Man King of Tone’s impossible waiting list exists partly because Bonamassa confirmed, through his own high-profile use, that it was worth acquiring.
His gear advocacy has also had the effect of educating a broad blues-rock audience about what makes vintage instruments significant — the specific properties of 1950s PAF pickups, the construction differences between tweed and blackface Fender amps, the specific tonewood character of pre-CBS Fenders and 1950s Gibsons. This gear education — carried primarily through his own interviews and his enthusiasm for the subject — has raised the sophistication of his audience’s gear knowledge alongside his own.
The collecting at extraordinary scale — nine 1959 Les Pauls at one point — represents an unusual intersection of serious musician and serious collector that is rare in rock music. Most serious collectors are not performing guitarists; most performing guitarists are not serious collectors. Bonamassa is both, at the highest level of both categories simultaneously, and the relationship between the collection and the playing is genuinely interactive: he plays the vintage instruments, which shapes how he plays, which shapes the tone he pursues, which shapes which vintage instruments he seeks out.
Tone note: He kept the 1963 Stratocaster his father yelled at him for buying in 1992 because he thought $3,000 was too much money. That guitar is worth $25,000+ now. He never sold it. Some guitars you don’t sell, regardless of price. Bonamassa has learned to tell the difference between the guitars you don’t sell and the ones you can let go. That’s the collector’s wisdom, and it comes from playing the instruments rather than just owning them.
Somewhere in a climate-controlled storage facility in Las Vegas — or perhaps in his home — nine 1959 Gibson Les Paul Sunburst Standards are waiting. Each has a name. “Snakebite” with its two fang-mark screw holes. “Magellan” that went around the world before it was paid off. “Carmelita” whose price begins with a four. “Principal Skinner” with its “most rock” character. The Royal Albert Hall Les Paul that sat under a staircase for fifty years before it went home with him.
The Howard Dumble amplifier is in the studio. It came from Steven Seagal. It is the best studio amp Bonamassa owns. Tone doesn’t care about provenance.
The boy who opened for B.B. King at twelve years old has spent the forty years since building the collection of vintage instruments and amplifiers that the blues he heard on those first records was actually played through — not reproduction, not approximation, but the real thing, maintained and playable and waiting to be used.
He has 120-130 guitars. He has every year of Les Paul from 1952 to 1961. He has vintage Marshalls and tweed Fenders and a Howard Dumble and whatever boutique amp has most recently earned his respect through the simple test of sounding right when he plays it.
He doesn’t need any more guitars. He still buys them anyway, when a killer vintage guitar comes his way. As someone once noted: some addictions have worse consequences than others. The guitars get played. The music gets made. The tradition continues.
If Bonamassa’s approach to the vintage Les Paul as the defining instrument of British and American blues-rock has you wanting to trace the tradition back to its roots, check out our complete guide to Peter Green’s guitars and gear — the British blues player whose “Greeny” Les Paul is the direct ancestor of the instrument Bonamassa most obsessively pursues, and whose tone is the specific reference point Bonamassa has returned to throughout his career.
And for the player whose specific approach to the Les Paul through a Marshall defined what British blues-rock sounded like before Bonamassa was born, don’t miss our complete breakdown of Paul Kossoff’s gear guide — whose Les Paul-into-Marshall emotional intensity is the most direct ancestor of what Bonamassa is pursuing when he picks up Snakebite.
FAQ: Joe Bonamassa Guitars & Gear
- How many 1959 Gibson Les Paul Sunbursts does Joe Bonamassa own?
- Nine. Each has a name: “Snakebite” (his favourite, with two fang-mark screw holes where a Bigsby was installed and removed), “Magellan” (the first, bought on payment plan and taken around the world before it was paid off), “Carmelita” (the most expensive, with a price beginning with the number four — likely $400,000+), “Principal Skinner” (formerly the “Skinner Burst,” described as “the most rock Les Paul I own”), and five others. He entered what he calls “serious reacquisition mode” around 2007-8 when prices came down after the financial crash, and acquired his first 1959 Les Paul from dealer Eliot Michael at Rumbleseat Music.
- What is “Snakebite” and why is it Bonamassa’s favourite?
- Snakebite is Joe Bonamassa’s favourite 1959 Gibson Les Paul Sunburst Standard. Its distinctive feature: a Bigsby vibrato tailpiece was installed at some point in the guitar’s history and subsequently removed, leaving behind two side-by-side screw holes that resemble a serpent’s fang marks — hence the name. Bonamassa described it: “Any collector would gravitate toward it, because it has such a great patina and it’s worn in the right way. I’ve never had a guitar attach itself to me like Snakebite.” He rates it “the best Gibson I own” and his “most satisfying acquisition.”
- What is the Howard Dumble amp and why is it significant?
- Howard Dumble is a legendary and reclusive boutique amplifier builder who handbuilt small numbers of amplifiers for specific musicians. Dumble amplifiers are valued at hundreds of thousands of dollars and are considered among the most tonally sophisticated guitar amplifiers ever made — extraordinarily touch-responsive, warm clean-to-driven character that responds to the player’s dynamics with exceptional sensitivity. Bonamassa’s Dumble ODS (Overdrive Special) is his self-described go-to studio amp. He acquired it from actor and martial artist Steven Seagal.
- What was Bonamassa’s first vintage guitar?
- A 1954 Fender Stratocaster hard-tail, purchased at age 14 with a $5,500 inheritance from his great-grandmother. This was followed by his first 1963 Stratocaster, purchased with money from an EMI Records advance in 1992 for $3,000 — his father yelled at him for spending too much. “That was probably my best bargain ever,” he said. By his late teens he had vintage examples of “all the classics: a 335, a Telecaster, and others.” He grew up working in his parents’ guitar shop, Bank Place Guitars in New Hartford, New York.
- How many guitars does Joe Bonamassa currently own?
- Approximately 120-130, down from a peak of around 300. He confirmed to Seymour Duncan: “I had up to 300 at one point but I sold a bunch of them because I wasn’t playing them and it seemed like I needed to justify a number. I had better quality stuff and it’s been more manageable.” His current collection includes every year of Gibson Les Paul from 1952 to 1961, three PAF Goldtops, nine 1959 Les Paul Sunburst Standards, multiple vintage Fenders, Gibson semi-hollows, and various other instruments.
- What pedals does Joe Bonamassa use?
- His primary overdrive is the Analog Man King of Tone — a highly sought boutique pedal with a famously long waiting list. Other confirmed pedals include the Xotic AC Booster (clean boost), Fulltone OCD (overdrive/distortion), MXR Carbon Copy Analog Delay (warm analog delay), Ernie Ball Volume Pedal, Hermida Zendrive (Dumble-circuit-inspired overdrive), Boss TU-2 tuner, and a wah pedal. His effects usage is deliberately selective — the vintage Les Pauls and boutique amps are doing most of the tonal work.
- How do I get Joe Bonamassa’s guitar tone?
- Start with a Les Paul with PAF-type humbuckers (any era Gibson or equivalent). Run through a touch-responsive tube amp at natural breakup gain — the amp should clean up when you pick lightly and break up when you dig in. A Fender Blues Junior or Blues DeVille approximates the American clean character; a Tube Screamer TS808 in front of the amp with low gain push mimics the Analog Man King of Tone’s function. The most important element is not the specific gear but the vibrato technique: wide, expressive, fully committed vibrato on sustained notes is the foundation of the blues-rock tone he developed from B.B. King’s influence. No pedal produces that — only practice.
