Watch Ritchie Blackmore breakdown his favourite guitars
Ritchie Blackmore is an icon of guitar playing. One of the original shredders, he helped to take rock down a more visceral path alongside the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page and Tony Iommi. Without his efforts, the guitar-playing style of rock and its harder offshoots would be without some of their most treasured aspects. His form of expression on the six-string is as unmistakable.
Capable of delivering thunderous solos and more laid-back traditional moments, Blackmore remains one of the most dextrous axemen out there. His oeuvre is so extensive that whether it be Deep Purple, Rainbow or his solo efforts, there is always something for everyone to dig into and enjoy, ranging from metal to medieval, a testament to just how multifaceted he is as a guitarist and musician.
Reflecting just how much of an iconoclast Blackmore is, when speaking to Guitar World in 1991, he discussed the haphazard nature of his guitar playing when he was asked if he prepares his solos in advance. He revealed that many of his greatest moments have been in-the-moment flashes of genius.
Blackmore said: “I never work out my leads. Everything I do is usually totally spontaneous. If someone says, “That was good; play that again,” I’m not able to do it. The only solo I’ve committed to memory is “Highway Star” [from 1972’s Machine Head]. I like playing that semitone run in the middle.”
Then, discussing his notable penchant for hammering his whammy bar, Blackmore explained: “I went crazy with it. I used to have quarter-inch bars made for me because I’d keep snapping the normal kind. My repairman would look at me strangely and say, “What are you doing to these tremolo bars?” Finally, he gave me this gigantic tremolo arm made of half-an-inch of solid iron and said, ‘Here. If you break this thing, I don’t wanna know about it!'”
Given that Blackmore is such an individualist when it comes to the guitar, it is unsurprising that the models he uses are particularly special. Luckily for us, when appearing with his wife and collaborator Candice Night in 2013 on a video uploaded to YouTube, Blackmore broke down his favourite guitars as well as giving a little background on them.
The first model he discusses was his former weapon of choice, the olympic white Fender Stratocaster which comes with a rosewood fretboard, large headstock and custom black pickups. The former Deep Purple man revealed that he rarely plays it anymore due to an “overzealous” roadie who had changed the custom configuration of his fretboard.
Other guitars he exhibited were another Olympic White Stratocaster, complete with matching pickups, an Alvarez acoustic guitar that has a “very classical tone”, a custom French electric with a neck made of 250-year-old wood, and his black Stratocaster from the early days of Deep Purple that delivered cuts such as ‘Black Knight’.
