On loan to The Met The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
"Micawber" Telecaster
Fender
Keith Richards British
Not on view
Richards received this guitar from Eric Clapton on his twenty-seventh birthday in December 1970 and first used it to record Exile on Main Street, in 1971. During the session for that recording, Richards removed the low E string and tuned the five-string guitar in an open G chord (GDGBD), a technique that became part of his signature sound. He went on to use the guitar for most of his songs in open tunings. In the 1980s, Richards named the instrument “Micawber” after a character from Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield.
Technical Description:
Ash body, one-piece maple neck with walnut “skunk stripe”; 25½ in. scale length; yellowed butterscotch finish; bolt-on neck with black dot inlays (one missing at seventeenth fret); silver “spaghetti” Fender logo decal on headstock; pedal steel-style single coil pickup at bridge, Gibson PAF humbucking pickup at neck, three-way selector switch, volume and tone controls; Schecter brass bridge with five saddles, chrome barrel knobs and control surface, chrome Sperzel tuners; pickups, tuners, and bridge replaced
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