John Mayer occupies a place of his own in the pantheon of 21st century popular music.
He’s a pop superstar who’s penned smash hits that’ve reigned supreme on supermarket playlists for two decades, but dig into what’s actually coming out of those always painfully blown-out speakers, and you’ll hear someone whose compositional and guitar skills shine as bright as his soulful vocals.
About those guitar skills. He’s an indisputable virtuoso who’s seamlessly jumped from propulsive, coffeehouse acoustic fare to washed jeans, early-aughts guitar-pop to folk, and even country. On the real guitar-heavy side, meanwhile, you can find his performances with the explosive, blues-rock-oriented John Mayer Trio, and his many expansive, Americana-tinged jams with the late Bob Weir in Dead & Company.
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But even those who don’t fancy literally any of the above stand up and take note of his gear choices.
Dissatisfied with the limitations of the then-60+-year-old Stratocaster, Mayer teamed up with Paul Reed Smith a decade ago to create what he saw as an elevated version of it. Polarizing upon its release, the resulting model, the PRS Silver Sky, was the second best-selling electric guitar on Reverb last year, having topped those charts in 2022 and 2023.
The Richter Scale was also piqued when the analog loyalist revealed last year that Neural DSP had – with his endorsement and collaboration – created a digital plugin that so faithfully nailed the intricacies of his analog tone that even he couldn’t tell the difference between them.
So, with all that said of his stature and the ink spilled in his wake, how well do you know Mr. Mayer? The music, and those gear choices that leave our little word abuzz? Test your knowledge in our quiz below.
