Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen's best-known guitar is a Fender Esquire-Telecaster hybrid he found in 1972, soon after signing with Columbia Records, at a New Jersey shop run by Phil Petillo, reportedly for around $180 to $185. It is a single-pickup Esquire with a neck cavity routed so it could take a second pickup and be converted to Telecaster specifications; sources disagree on its exact year, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which has it on loan, dates it to about 1953 to 1954.

It came with an odd history. Petillo said it had belonged to a record company and was rigged with four pickups wired to separate channels on a recording console, which he removed before the sale, leaving it extremely light. Springsteen later had Petillo add a six-saddle titanium bridge and hot-wound waterproofed pickups. He said he wanted a guitar that could handle funk and feeling.

The guitar is on the cover of Born to Run (1975), Live/1975-85, Human Touch (1992) and Wrecking Ball (2012). One report says it has been retired from the road, with clones used on stage while the original is still used to record. Fender's Esquire history gives context: the single-pickup Esquire predated the Broadcaster and the Telecaster, first produced in the spring of 1950.