“Originally, I think I gravitated towards Fender single-coils and Fender amps because I was chasing what Mono and Godspeed You! Black Emperor were doing,” says Clayton Stevens. “I wanted our band to have that jangly, in-your-face, Fender single-coil aggression. Plus, a lot of our post-hardcore contemporaries played Les Pauls into 5150s—which are cool in their own right—so it allowed us to stand out a little bit more.”

The last few years, onstage or in the studio, Stevens’ No. 1 guitar is this Nash S63 that features an alder body, rosewood neck, and a period-correct 3-ply pickguard. According to Lollar’s website, the stock setup for S63 pickup configurations using his pickups: “Consists of the Lollar Vintage Blonde series in the neck and middle positions, and the Lollar “Nash” strat in the bridge. The Nash style strat bridge is a very slight variation of the Lollar Special S series.”