11 Most Expensive Guitars In the World

Published on June 19, 2015 at 6:50 am by George Durankiev in Lists

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If you’re a bad player, even the 11 most expensive guitars in the world won’t help you play better. However, you can hear some of the guitars on the list in some of the world’s 10 most popular songs of all time which may give you a hint at the type of prices you’d expect here. Of course, no production guitar you can find on the markets or even a boutique instrument can normally get that expensive so all the guitars you’ll see on this list have belonged to a certain somebody which makes their value skyrocket. If you’re already counting your savings and how much of them you can sacrifice without losing your home, don’t bother – all of them have been sold already.

The guitar itself is an instrument which has centuries of history and evolution behind it. It is an immensely popular instrument, having been an integral part of almost any sort of music that we know or have known in the past six or seven centuries in various forms. Initially guitar strings (or any instrument strings) were made of guts and plucked with a gigantic by modern standards plectrum (or pick for the more uninitiated ones). The instrument became popular because of its relative simplicity and ease and cost of production. Aside from that, a guitar is always easy and lightweight to carry and can produce a beautiful array of sounds and can cover a wide range of notes despite its size. Even so, from the full eight octaves widely used in musical theory, the guitar can cover three of them. Throughout history, guitars evolved into having various sizes and shapes, structural differences and techniques of playing which were confined to certain musical styles. However, as modern times approached with the progress of technology, electrical sound amplification became accessible and the electric guitar (of which you will see a lot on this list) was born.

Today, the guitar has evolved into an all-around suitable for everything instrument which is seen as a core element of many sorts of popular music. All of our contenders have been a part of the popular music of their time, so let’s take a look at them.

11. George Harrison’s Rickenbacker 1962 425

Price: $657 000

The Beatles’ own George Harrison used this legendary Rickenbacker while playing for the band’s first TV appearance and on several other occasions too. The guitar was sold to an anonymous buyer in 2014.