Instruments of Jeff Beck, one of rock’s greatest guitarists, up for auction

Musicians, collectors and fans have a chance to own a guitar god’s tools of the trade – instruments owned by the late Jeff Beck are going up for auction.

Christie’s announced on Friday that it will sell more than 130 items, including 90 guitars, from the collection of the Yardbirds and Jeff Beck Group guitarist, who died in January 2023 aged 78.

Valued at more than US$1.3 million, the collection includes an oxblood 1954 Gibson Les Paul that Beck bought in Memphis in 1972 and played for the rest of the decade.

The guitar, which featured on the cover of Beck’s Grammy-winning 1975 jazz-fusion album Blow by Blow, is expected to sell for between US$450,000 and US$640,000.

Amelia Walker, head of Private and Iconic Collections at Christie’s, called it “a really beautiful instrument, covered in grime and dust and signs of use”.

“I think it’s part of the appeal,” she said. “These are things that he used. They’ve got the indents of his fingernails on the fret boards. Some of them, the strings haven’t been changed for years. He played them hard. He didn’t see them as precious works of art, they were his tools to ply his trade with.”