Gear Timeline
There is a version of guitar greatness that announces itself with sweep-picked arpeggios and seventeen-second sustain. That’s one kind. Then there is another kind — rarer, deeper, and infinitely harder to fake — where a single chord, stripped of frills and played with the right attitude at the right tempo, hits you somewhere below the ribs and doesn’t let go. That’s Keith Richards. The man who took five strings, tuned them to open G, and produced more iconic riffs than the rest of rock history combined.
The Rolling Stones guitarist is known by many epithets — “The Human Riff,” “the world’s most elegantly wasted human being,” and a dozen other phrases that gesture at the extraordinary combination of musical genius and supernatural durability that defines his existence. Born in a council estate in Dartford, Kent, he spent his childhood reaching for a guitar on a shelf he couldn’t quite touch — literally. His grandfather put it just out of reach and told young Keith he could have it if he could get to it. Eventually the kid stacked books and cushions on a chair and climbed up. That guitar, and the first tune his grandfather taught him — “Malagueña” — set a course that produced “Satisfaction,” “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” “Brown Sugar,” “Start Me Up,” and about fifty other songs that are, collectively, the DNA of rock and roll.
Here is what makes Keith Richards perennially fascinating from a gear perspective: he has owned approximately three thousand guitars, and the one he keeps reaching for is a beat-up, butterscotch Telecaster from the early 1950s with only five strings on it. That guitar — Micawber — was given to him by Eric Clapton for his 27th birthday. He then removed the low E string, installed a vintage Gibson humbucker in the neck backwards, ran it through whatever amp was available and cranked, and produced the rhythmic foundation of some of the most beloved music ever recorded. The lesson here is not subtle.
Richards’ approach to gear is the antithesis of the rack-effects era, the boutique amp obsession, and the worship of vintage precision that dominates guitar culture. He plays what sounds right. He modifies what needs modifying. He throws away what gets in the way. “Five strings, three chords, two hands, and one attitude,” he once summarized. That attitude, translated through a succession of Telecasters, Gibsons, Ampegs, and one famously deployed Maestro Fuzztone, produced the sonic architecture of the twentieth century’s greatest rock band.
This is the complete guide to Keith Richards’ guitars, amps, effects, tunings, and the philosophy behind a tone that remains as vital and instantly recognizable in 2026 as it was in 1965. Whether you want to unlock the secrets of open G, understand why Micawber sounds like nothing else, or simply want to know what the greatest rhythm guitarist who ever lived actually plugged into — read on.
Background: The Dartford Kid Who Reinvented Rhythm Guitar
Keith Richards was born on December 18, 1943, in Dartford, Kent — a commuter-belt town southeast of London that could not have looked less like the Delta or Detroit but managed, through the medium of one boy’s obsessive listening, to absorb the entire history of American blues and rhythm and blues and then export it back across the Atlantic at enormous volume. His mother’s side of the family was the musical side: his maternal grandfather, Augustus “Gus” Dupree, led a jazz big band called Gus Dupree and His Boys, toured Britain, and passed the guitar obsession to his grandson with the deliberate cruelty of placing the instrument just out of reach. When young Keith finally got his hands on it, he practiced “Malagueña” until it was perfect, and then kept going.
The other crucial meeting happened on a train platform in Dartford. Keith Richards and Mick Jagger had known each other in primary school, drifted apart, and then encountered each other again at Dartford station in October 1961 — Richards with a stack of imported American blues LPs under his arm. Jagger recognized the records. They talked. Within months they were playing together in a revolving cast of musicians that would eventually solidify as the Rolling Stones, initially with Brian Jones as the dominant creative force and guitar player.
The early Stones were blues interpreters and brilliant ones — covering Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, Robert Johnson, and the Chess Records catalog with a ferocity that British youth culture had not previously experienced. Richards at this stage was playing Harmony and Framus guitars through small amps, learning the vocabulary of American blues from records and from the visiting musicians who were beginning to come through London. By 1964, he’d graduated to more significant instruments: a Gibson Les Paul Junior and a Fender Telecaster, running through Vox AC30 amplifiers. Those sounds produced “Satisfaction,” “Get Off of My Cloud,” and the band’s first global explosion of success.
The revelation that changed everything came with open tunings. Around 1967, during a period when the Stones had unexpected time off, Richards began experimenting with alternate tunings. “Most people used open tuning basically just for slide,” he explained years later in a Guitar World interview. “Nobody used it for anything else. But I wanted to use it for rhythm guitar. And what I found was, of all the guitars, the Telecaster really lent itself well to a dry, rhythm, five-string drone thing.” He was taking a tuning approach used by Delta blues players for slide and repurposing it entirely — using it for chord-based rhythm playing, creating the droning, ringing, percussive quality that would define the Stones sound from Sticky Fingers onwards.
His grandfather, he later noted, had been a banjo player, and banjo is also a five-string instrument tuned to an open chord. The connection between the jazz big band his grandfather led, the Delta blues records he obsessively collected as a teenager, and the rock and roll he was making was not accidental. It was all the same music, approached from different angles, and Keef was smart enough to see the connections and exploit them. Removing the low E string didn’t just change the tuning — it changed the feel, the response, the harmonic texture, and the physical relationship between the player and the instrument. The Telecaster became something new in his hands.
By the time Exile on Main St. was recorded in 1971-72 — in the basement of Villa Nellcote, a rented mansion in the South of France, in conditions of magnificent chaos — Richards had fully developed the approach that would define his sound for the next five decades. Micawber was there. The Ampeg amps were there. The open G tuning was locked in. The result was the album that many critics consider not just the Stones’ masterpiece but one of the greatest albums in rock history — a rambling, loose, gloriously imperfect celebration of everything that makes rock and roll worth playing.
The rest of the story is lived at a volume most people never reach. Richards survived things that killed lesser mortals, kept playing, kept writing riffs, kept showing up. At this writing, in 2026, he is 82 years old and has outlived three of his Rolling Stones bandmates. He is still, reportedly, playing. The guitar collection — rumored to approach three thousand instruments — sits in various states of readiness across multiple locations. Micawber, battered and irreplaceable, still gets pulled out at every Stones show.
The Rig: Keith Richards’ Guitars, Amps, and Effects
Keith Richards’ gear story is unusual among guitar legends in that the most important part of it happened in reverse — he went from relatively conventional equipment early in his career to an increasingly stripped-down, unconventional setup as his musical identity solidified. The Stones’ ’60s gear was largely standard British Invasion fare. The ’70s saw the emergence of the tools and approach that remain definitive today. Here is the complete breakdown.
Guitars
This is the guitar. The one the guitar world returns to endlessly, the instrument that has probably generated more analysis and reverence than any other single piece of equipment in rock history — with the possible exception of Jimi Hendrix’s Stratocaster. Micawber is a butterscotch blonde Fender Blackguard Telecaster from the early 1950s — most accounts suggest 1953, though no visible serial number allows definitive dating. Eric Clapton gave it to Richards as a 27th birthday present around December 1970, just before the Stones relocated to France for the Exile sessions. What Richards and his tech Ted Newman Jones subsequently did to it is the stuff of gear legend. The original neck pickup was replaced with a 1950s Gibson PAF humbucker — installed, crucially, backwards, with the magnet poles facing the tail of the guitar. This unconventional modification changes the pickup’s response characteristics in ways Richards never fully explained but clearly preferred. The bridge has been modified with brass saddles replacing the original steel, affecting sustain and warmth. Modern Sperzel locking tuners replaced the originals for tuning stability. And most famously: the low E string was removed entirely, leaving only five strings tuned to open G — G, D, G, B, D, from low to high. Richards uses a custom Ernie Ball five-string set (.011, .015, .018 plain, .030, .042) with a wound G for tension uniformity. The result is a guitar that doesn’t sound like any other Telecaster that has ever existed. The nickname came later: “Micawber” after Wilkins Micawber, the cheerfully optimistic character from Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield. Richards said there was no particular reason for the choice beyond the uniqueness of the name. “All these guitars Pierre presides over have nicknames and personalities,” he noted, Pierre being his longtime guitar tech Pierre de Beauport.
Micawber’s equal partner in open G crime, Malcolm is a 1954 Telecaster named after a former Stones roadie. It is set up identically to Micawber — five strings, open G tuning — and the two guitars are used interchangeably during tours, with Malcolm serving as Micawber’s live backup and sometimes primary instrument. Richards has noted the sonic difference between them: “Micawber’s got a lot of highs; Malcolm’s got more bottom on it.” They are complementary weapons. The roadie Malcolm apparently found the guitar somewhere in the Stones’ orbit, and it has stayed ever since.
A third key Telecaster in Richards’ collection, Dwight is maintained in standard six-string tuning rather than open G. It is named after the Fender factory inspector whose name appears inside the guitar body — many of Richards’ Telecasters are named after their factory checkers, whose names were stamped on cards inside the guitar as quality control records. As Richards explained in his memoir Life: “Most of the people who made them in ’54, ’55, ’56 are dead and gone, but you can still read the names of the checkers, the ones who gave them the seal of approval, inside the guitars. So the guitars get their nicknames from their checkers.” Dwight is the “in-betweener” — a middle ground between Micawber’s highs and Malcolm’s bottom.
A later-period Telecaster with a different character from the Blackguard models. Richards used this guitar extensively during the late 1970s and ’80s, including an infamous moment at a 1981 Hampton Coliseum concert when a fan rushed the stage and Richards took a swing at the intruder with the guitar — still strapped on — fended him off, strapped it back on, and kept playing without missing a beat. This incident is entirely consistent with the Keith Richards mythology.
Richards is often assumed to be a pure Telecaster man, but his Gibson collection is substantial and significant. His primary Les Paul Junior is a TV Yellow Doublecut model he acquired around 1971 and nicknamed “Dice.” The P90 pickups give it a rawer, more aggressive character than the Teles — a stringy, biting single-coil bark that appears throughout the Stones’ catalog. “Tumbling Dice” was named with this guitar in mind. The raw P90 sound can also be heard on “Start Me Up” alongside a Telecaster.
During the mid-1960s Stones era, Richards was frequently seen with three-pickup Les Paul Customs — the so-called “Black Beauties.” By 1966 he was using them regularly, but they had an unfortunate tendency to be stolen: one was taken on the 1967 tour. A replacement was painted by Richards and his then-partner Anita Pallenberg. Multiple Black Beauties came and went, several through theft, at least one through what Richards’ biographers describe as “forgetful carelessness” — reportedly left in a Canadian guitar shop. The Les Paul Custom on the 1969 tour was tuned to open G for “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” and “Street Fighting Man.”
One of the genuinely odd entries in any guitar legend’s collection. The Dan Armstrong was made from clear plexiglass rather than wood, with interchangeable sliding pickups and — according to players who used them — extraordinary sustain due to the density of the material. Richards received one of the first prototypes in late 1969 and used it on the Ed Sullivan Show in November of that year. He loved it. The guitar was then stolen from Villa Nellcote during the Exile sessions, along with numerous other guitars and assorted other items in what appears to have been one of the great gear heists of the 1970s. Replacement production models never satisfied him the same way.
Richards’ go-to acoustic guitar since 1964. The Hummingbird is a spruce-top dreadnought with the distinctive ornate pickguard and Gibson’s particular slope-shouldered warmth. It appeared on recordings including “Street Fighting Man” (where Richards played both a standard six-string and a five-string acoustic in open tunings) and “Not Fade Away.” “On Street Fighting Man, there’s one six-string and one five-string acoustic,” he told Guitar World. “They’re both in open tunings, but then there’s a lot of capo work.” The Hummingbird represents the acoustic side of Richards’ playing — the side he considers foundational. He has said that he regards acoustic guitar as the basis of everything, and that playing electric exclusively would cause him to “lose that touch.”
A semi-hollow body that appeared in live rotation around 1969-70. The stereo-capable ES-355 gave Richards a different sonic territory — warmer, more rounded, with the feedback-friendliness of a semi-hollow construction. Fitted with a Bigsby vibrato, it suited slide parts and bluesy lead work. This guitar represents the more overtly blues-influenced side of Richards’ playing vocabulary.
Used for “Prodigal Son” on Beggars Banquet, a song drawn directly from the Robert Johnson tradition. The resonator’s metallic, penetrating tone was the correct tool for material that came directly out of the Delta blues, and Richards understood that perfectly. His ability to reach for historically appropriate instruments for specific musical purposes is one of the hallmarks of his deep roots approach.
Amps
The foundational amp of the early Stones and essentially the standard amp of British rock in the early 1960s. The AC30’s particular combination of top-boost treble character and the natural compression of its EL84 tubes produced the bright, jangly overdrive that defines the Stones’ early sound — “Satisfaction,” “Get Off of My Cloud,” “The Last Time.” Richards has almost always run two amps simultaneously, a practice that began here and continued throughout his career, and the stereo or dual-amp approach became characteristic of his live setup. The AC30 pairs perfectly with the Telecaster’s natural clarity, and the top-boost channel’s presence and shimmer sits beautifully against a vocal melody.
The Ampeg era is when Richards’ tone reached its defining form. These combo amplifiers — tube-driven, with a particular warmth and grunt that differed from both the Vox and Marshall sounds — were Keith’s mainstay on the 1972 tour and during the recording of Exile on Main St., Sticky Fingers, and Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out. The Ampeg VT-22 in particular, a 100-watt combo with two twelve-inch speakers, produced the warm, punchy, not-too-bright character that the open G Telecaster approach required. Too much treble emphasis would make the droning open G chords harsh; the Ampeg’s relative softness at the top end let the guitar’s natural resonance come through without getting brittle. Richards ran multiple Ampegs simultaneously — the dual-amp approach again — and the combination produced the massive, slightly blurry, immensely powerful rhythm sound on those essential records.
A vintage Fender Twin — originally tweed-covered, later recovered in early-60s brown Tolex — has been part of Richards’ live setup for much of his career, running alongside whatever other amp he was using at the time. The Twin contributes a bright, clean, American character that complements the warmer Ampeg or Marshall tones. Its four 6L6 tubes and pair of twelve-inch speakers deliver substantial clean headroom. As noted, Keith almost always plays through two amps at once, and the Twin’s clean presence provides contrast and clarity against a more driven second amp.
Marshall heads have appeared in Richards’ live setup at various points, providing the British crunch and midrange authority that Marshalls do better than almost anything else. While he’s not primarily associated with Marshalls the way that Clapton or Page are, the Marshall character — particularly on larger stage setups — adds definition and authority to the Stones’ live sound.
For the 1978 Some Girls album — the Stones’ punk/disco-influenced pivot that produced “Miss You” and “Beast of Burden” — Richards used a Mesa/Boogie Mark I, one of the first high-gain amps built specifically for rock. The Boogie’s cascading gain structure gave him something more aggressive than the Ampegs for that particular recording context. The Mark I’s compressed, saturated character sits differently from his typical setup, contributing to the more urgent, slightly edgier sound of that album.
Effects
Keith Richards’ effects philosophy is possibly the most instructive in all of rock guitar: he essentially started the entire effects pedal craze with a single recording in 1965, then largely stopped using effects. The irony is exquisite.
This is where it all begins — not just for Keith Richards, but for the entire world of guitar effects. In 1965, trying to replicate the sound of a horn section without actually having a horn section available, Richards plugged his guitar into an early Maestro Fuzztone FZ-1 and played the riff for “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” The result was one of the most famous guitar sounds in history — a buzzing, aggressive, immediately attention-grabbing distortion that the band initially considered a placeholder, intending to replace it with actual horns. Andrew Loog Oldham heard the recorded version and told them to release it as-is. The rest is history. The Maestro Fuzztone FZ-1 was one of the earliest commercially produced fuzz boxes, and Richards’ use of it on “Satisfaction” single-handedly launched the multi-billion-dollar guitar effects industry. Then he largely moved on. “Ironically for a man who has outwardly rejected effects pedals ever since, Richards is responsible for the whole craze kicking off to begin with,” as Mixdown Magazine put it with characteristic directness.
One of the few pedals in Richards’ contemporary setup. The Zinky Master Blaster is a clean boost — no coloration, no drive, just level. Used to push the amp harder for specific passages or to compensate for volume differences between guitars with different output levels. It’s the kind of utility pedal that serious players who understand their signal chain reach for rather than another layer of processing.
The MXR phasers appear in Richards’ rig for specific applications. The Phase 90 in its original “script” version (the early, hand-stamped logo version, generally considered superior to later versions) provides a smooth, musical modulation effect. Phaser appears in several Stones recordings as a subtle texture rather than an overt effect. The Phase 100 offers more stage settings and a wider range of phasing character.
Tape-style echo has appeared in Richards’ setup for atmospheric moments. The MXR Analog Delay provides a warm, slightly degrading repeat character that suits the loose, organic Stones sound better than the precision of digital delay. Some accounts also reference a Fulltone Tube Tape Echo for this function — genuine tape echo for players who want the authentic variable-speed wow and flutter of original tape units.
A rack-format multi-effects unit that has appeared in various configurations of Richards’ live setup. Unlike most of his gear, this represents a practical concession to the requirements of large-scale live production — having controllable, consistent effects in a reliable form factor for arena touring.
Occasionally deployed as a boost or light overdrive, though Richards is not associated with it in the way many blues-influenced players are. He typically prefers to crank the amp’s natural gain rather than using a pedal for distortion. When the Tube Screamer appears, it’s as a push rather than a primary drive source.
Ernie Ball Slinkys, .010 gauge for standard-tuned guitars. For open G guitars, the custom five-string Ernie Ball set (.011, .015, .018 plain, .030, .042) with a wound G string for tension uniformity across the five remaining strings. This is a bespoke set manufactured specifically for Richards — not commercially available in this configuration, though Ernie Ball has produced tribute sets approximating it.
Playing Style & Tone Philosophy
Keith Richards plays rhythm guitar the way a great drummer plays rhythm — as a physical, groove-based activity where the space between the notes is as important as the notes themselves. His is not a technique in the conventional sense of scales, positions, and technical benchmarks. It is something more fundamental: a deep understanding of how a chord, struck at the right moment with the right weight, creates the sensation of groove.
The open G tuning is central to everything. In standard tuning, the chord shapes a guitarist learns are closed systems — patterns of pressed strings that require multiple fingers on multiple frets. In open G, the guitar is already ringing as a chord when no strings are fretted. A barre across a single fret produces a major chord. Two fingers produce complex harmonies. The physical demands are reduced; the harmonic possibilities — particularly for droning, ringing chord textures — are expanded. Richards understood intuitively that what he was hearing in banjo music and Delta slide guitar was a kind of rhythmic chord vocabulary that six-string standard tuning couldn’t access as naturally.
Removing the low E string was the other masterstroke. In open G, the low E string — tuned down to D — is actually the same note as the next string up. It’s redundant, and worse than redundant: it’s a source of low-frequency mud that clutters the sound and gets in the way of the clean ringing drone character Richards was after. Remove it, and the guitar becomes tighter, more defined, more percussive. The even string tension — with the custom wound G helping equalize the response — means every string hits with similar force and sustain. The result is that distinctive chimey, ringing, almost banjo-like attack that you hear on the opening chord of “Brown Sugar” or “Start Me Up.”
His rhythm playing operates on the principle of groove through restraint. He doesn’t fill every beat. He doesn’t strum through transitions. He locks in with the drummer — historically, the irreplaceable Charlie Watts — and creates a rhythmic pocket that everything else fits into. The famous “chuck” or “chicken scratch” technique, where the chord is struck and then immediately muted, creates a percussive element within the rhythm guitar part that functions almost like an extra drum hit. The Stones’ grooves sound easy until you try to replicate them, at which point you discover that the relaxed looseness requires extraordinary command of timing.
His tone philosophy can be summarized simply: clarity above all else. He doesn’t pile on gain. He doesn’t stack effects. He uses enough amp drive to give the chords life and sustain, but not so much that the definition of individual strings within the chord gets compressed into mush. The open G voicings depend on hearing the individual strings within the chord — the ringing drone of the open G on the fifth string, the bass note on the fourth, the inner voices on the second and third. Excessive gain destroys this. Richards’ tone is always recognizable in a mix because the guitar has presence and character rather than just mass.
He also plays with a genuine economy of technique that is harder than it looks. He once said that the greatest lesson he learned from Chuck Berry — one of his primary influences, whose material the early Stones covered extensively — was that you don’t have to play all six strings, all the time, to fill the sonic space. Sometimes two strings, two notes, the right two notes, do more work than any full-chord strum. That economy, applied to the open G tuning’s naturally resonant character, is what makes a Keith Richards riff sound inevitable — like it was always there, waiting to be found.
How to Sound Like Keith Richards
Getting the Keith Richards tone is both simpler and more complicated than it looks. Simpler because the gear requirements are not exotic — a Telecaster, a decent amp, minimal effects. More complicated because the tone lives in the open G tuning and the playing approach, neither of which can be dialed in with a knob.
Guitar: A Fender Telecaster is the correct starting point, ideally a vintage-style model with a single-coil bridge pickup. The Telecaster’s natural twang and clear high-end definition suits the open G approach perfectly. For the open G guitars, remove the low E string and tune the remaining five strings to G, D, G, B, D (low to high). Use a wound G string for even tension. For standard-tuned songs, any Telecaster works. A Gibson Les Paul Junior with P90s gets you into “Tumbling Dice” territory for a different color.
Amp: The Ampeg VT-22 is the holy grail for the Exile-era tone, and they’re findable on the vintage market though increasingly expensive. Vox AC30 gets you the early Stones sound. A Fender Twin provides the clean American foundation. If you only have one amp, set it for a warm, moderately driven tone — not high-gain, not sparkling clean, but that sweet spot where the chords have some hair on them without losing clarity. Running two amps at once — a dirty one and a cleaner one — is historically accurate and produces excellent results.
Amp Settings (Fender Twin or similar clean/mid-gain amp):
| Control | Setting (0–10) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Gain / Volume | 5–6 | Edge of breakup, not clean, not saturated |
| Bass | 5–6 | Warm but not boomy — open G needs definition |
| Mid | 5–6 | Present, not scooped — midrange is the riff’s home |
| Treble | 6–7 | Bright but not harsh — let the Tele sing |
| Presence | 5–6 | Adds definition and cut through the mix |
| Reverb | 1–2 | Just a hint — very dry overall |
Vox AC30 Settings (for early Stones tone):
| Control | Setting | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Volume (Top Boost) | 6–7 | Push the amp for natural EL84 breakup |
| Treble | 7–8 | The top-boost channel thrives on treble presence |
| Bass | 4–5 | Moderate — the AC30’s low end can get flabby |
| Cut | 6–7 | The cut control rolls off top end — keep it forward |
| Reverb/Tremolo | 0–2 | Minimal on both |
Effects: Very few. If you want the “Satisfaction” fuzz, any germanium fuzz box in front of a clean amp gets you there. The Maestro Fuzztone is the historically correct choice, but any smooth, warm germanium fuzz — Dunlop Fuzz Face in BC108 or BC109 configuration, for instance — will work. Set it for buzzy, medium-gain fuzz rather than modern high-gain distortion; the original sound is rawer and more open than contemporary fuzz tones. Beyond that: optional phaser (set slow and subtle), optional tape-style echo (sparse and warm), clean boost if needed. Nothing else is required.
The actual secret: Practice open G. Spend time learning the chord shapes and the droning vocabulary of the tuning. Listen to Exile on Main St. and Sticky Fingers with the guitar in hand in open G. Hear how “Brown Sugar” and “Tumbling Dice” and “Honky Tonk Women” work as rhythm guitar parts. The technique — the loose, confident strumming, the muting, the groove — is the tone. The gear gets you in the neighborhood. The playing gets you home.
Influence & Legacy
It is impossible to overstate Keith Richards’ influence on rock guitar without beginning to sound like the kind of hyperbole that guitar writing is sometimes accused of. So let us try a different approach: name a rock guitar player from the last six decades who doesn’t owe something to Keith Richards. Go ahead. Take your time.
The difficulty is that his influence operates at the deepest level — not at the level of technique or licks that can be identified and isolated, but at the level of philosophy. He established, almost single-handedly, the idea that rhythm guitar is an art form equal in stature to lead playing. Before Richards, the conventional hierarchy placed the lead guitarist at the top and the rhythm player below, in a supporting role. After Richards — after “Satisfaction,” after “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” after “Gimme Shelter,” after “Start Me Up” — the riff was king. The rhythm part was the song. The lead was decoration.
His approach to open tunings democratized an obscure technique and put it in the center of rock. Countless players have adopted open G or open D or open A as primary playing approaches because Richards demonstrated that the tuning produces something that standard tuning can’t touch for certain musical purposes. Joni Mitchell, one of the other great explorers of open tunings, arrived at her approach from a different direction — but both she and Richards expanded the harmonic vocabulary of rock guitar by refusing to stay in standard tuning.
The Maestro Fuzztone story is its own chapter in the history of rock: one pedal, one song, one famously uncommercial buzz that accidentally became one of the most recognizable sounds in recorded music. The entire guitar effects industry — the Fuzz Faces and Big Muffs, the wah-wahs and envelope filters, the delay units and modulation pedals, the overdrive boxes and boutique germanium devices — owes its existence, at least in part, to Richards reaching for a novelty gadget in a New York recording session in 1965 and stumbling upon something eternal.
His influence on subsequent Stones-adjacent musicians — most obviously Ronnie Wood, who has played alongside him for fifty years, but also the entire lineage of British rock rhythm guitarists — is continuous and ongoing. Bands from the Black Crowes to the Faces to Jack White to countless others have drawn from the Richards playbook of riff-centered, groove-based, relatively unadorned rock guitar. The lesson is always the same: find the right riff, play it right, and leave space for everything else.
The comparison with his contemporary and fellow legend Jimmy Page’s approach to guitar and gear at #3 is instructive — two British players of the same generation, both blues-informed, who went in entirely opposite directions stylistically. Page toward the orchestral, the mystical, the technically dense. Richards toward the minimal, the groove-locked, the riff-first. Together they represent the two poles of what electric guitar can do within rock, and everything else in between.
Similarly, Mark Knopfler’s gear and technique at #17 represents another tradition of British guitar minimalism — the idea that tone and feel matter more than technique — that Richards helped establish. And if you want to understand how the open G approach translates into a completely different genre, look at Duane Allman’s slide guitar innovations at #16, where the same Delta blues tuning tradition that informed Richards produced an entirely different but equally revolutionary result.
Keith Richards will outlive most expectations, as he always has. He is 82. Micawber still has five strings on it. The low E is still missing. The open G is still ringing. And somewhere in that butterscotch Telecaster, beaten and modified and named after a Dickens character, the spirit of everything rock and roll was supposed to be is still very much alive.
Frequently Asked Questions: Keith Richards Guitars & Gear
What guitar does Keith Richards play?
Keith Richards is most closely associated with Fender Telecasters, particularly a butterscotch blonde early-1950s Blackguard model known as “Micawber” — a birthday gift from Eric Clapton around 1970-71. Micawber has been extensively modified: a 1950s Gibson PAF humbucker installed backwards in the neck position, brass saddles on the bridge, Sperzel locking tuners, and most famously, only five strings in open G tuning (G, D, G, B, D) with the low E removed entirely. He also plays “Malcolm,” another 1954 Telecaster in the same five-string open G configuration, and “Dwight,” a 1954 Tele in standard six-string tuning. His Gibson collection includes Les Paul Juniors, Les Paul Customs, and semi-hollow guitars for different sonic applications.
Why does Keith Richards only use five strings?
Richards removed the low E string from his open G-tuned Telecasters because, in open G (tuned D, G, D, G, B, D before removing the low string), the bottom string effectively doubles the fourth string and contributes muddy low-frequency resonance that clutters the chord voicings. Without it, the guitar’s tone becomes tighter, more percussive, and more clearly defined — each string contributing a distinct note to the open G chord rather than blurring the bottom end. The approach was inspired partly by banjo — his grandfather was a banjo player — and partly by the Delta blues tradition of open tuning. It changed the way he could play rhythm guitar, allowing droning, ringing chord textures that standard tuning couldn’t match.
What is Micawber and why is it famous?
Micawber is Keith Richards’ primary guitar — an early 1950s Fender Telecaster Blackguard given to him by Eric Clapton as a 27th birthday present around December 1970. It takes its name from Wilkins Micawber, a character in Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield — Keith chose the name simply because it was unique. The guitar has been modified with a backwards Gibson PAF humbucker in the neck, brass saddles, Sperzel locking tuners, and five-string open G tuning. It has appeared on virtually every Stones recording and tour since Exile on Main St. (1972) and is considered one of the most historically significant guitars in rock history. Despite Richards owning an estimated three thousand guitars, Micawber remains his primary performance instrument.
What amps does Keith Richards use?
Richards has used several amps across his career, almost always running two simultaneously. In the early Stones years, Vox AC30 amplifiers provided the bright, jangly British Invasion tone. By the Exile on Main St. era (1971-72), he had switched to Ampeg combo amplifiers — the VT-22, VT-40, and Gemini GV-22 — which provided the warm, punchy character of that definitive period. A 1957 Fender Twin Reverb (originally tweed, later recovered in brown Tolex) has also been a constant. Marshall heads have appeared in his live setup, and a Mesa/Boogie Mark I was used on Some Girls (1978). The dual-amp approach — running two different amps for complementary tonal characters — has been consistent throughout his career.
What effects does Keith Richards use?
Richards is one of rock’s most minimal effects users, which makes it all the more ironic that he launched the guitar effects industry. His use of a Maestro Fuzztone FZ-1 on “Satisfaction” in 1965 was one of the first high-profile uses of a fuzz pedal and inspired a generation of players to buy effects. Since then, his setup has been sparse: a Zinky Master Blaster clean boost, occasional MXR Phase 90 or Phase 100 for subtle modulation, MXR Analog Delay or Fulltone Tube Tape Echo for atmospheric echo, and occasionally an Ibanez Tube Screamer as a boost. He typically cranks the amp for natural drive rather than using distortion pedals. His philosophy is that the guitar and amp should do the work.
What is Keith Richards’ open G tuning?
Keith Richards’ open G tuning is G, D, G, B, D — from the lowest remaining string to the highest. He achieves this by removing the low E string entirely and retuning: the standard A string becomes G, D stays as D, G stays as G, B stays as B, and high E becomes D. The result is a guitar that plays a G major chord with no fingers on the frets. A barre across any fret produces a major chord in that key. The tuning enables the droning, ringing chord textures and rhythmic push-pull that characterize the Rolling Stones’ greatest records. It was inspired partly by banjo tuning and partly by the Delta blues tradition of open tuning for slide playing — Richards repurposed the technique for rhythm guitar in a way nobody had done before.
What strings does Keith Richards use?
For standard-tuned guitars, Richards uses Ernie Ball Regular Slinky strings in .010 gauge. For his open G five-string Telecasters, he uses a custom Ernie Ball set manufactured specifically for him: .011, .015, .018 plain, .030, .042 — with a wound G string. The wound G is unusual (most players use a plain G in this gauge range) but provides more uniform tension across the five strings in open G tuning, giving every string a similar feel and attack. Ernie Ball has produced tribute versions of this set for retail sale, though the exact specifications remain proprietary. The even tension profile of the five-string set is a significant part of what makes Micawber’s chord attack so characteristically chimey and percussive.