Gary Clark Jr. Rig

Gary Clark Jr. is the Austin guitarist who dragged Texas blues into hip-hop grit and arena volume, first on 2010’s Crossroads stage and then on 2012’s Blak and Blu. The guitar people picture is a cherry-red Korean Epiphone Casino — the 2007 “Red” with stock P-90s and a later Bigsby — slammed into a Fender Vibro-King that Texas player Alan Haynes turned him onto. Early boards were tiny: Analog Man Astro Tone fuzz, an Ibanez TS9 Tube Screamer, and a Fulltone Octafuzz, the stack behind “Bright Lights” and “When My Train Pulls In.”

Epiphone cut the Blak and Blu Casino with Gibson USA P-90s in 2015, and Gibson followed in 2017 with a triple-P-90 yellow Signature SG he still keeps in the studio. He never left the Vibro-King — now often a 2012 65-watt head into a Fender 2×10, with a Princeton Reverb for smaller rooms — but his number-one guitar since about 2020 is a Custom Shop ES-355, released in 2026 as the limited Gibson Custom Gary Clark Jr. ES-355. Live he leans on a Function f(x) Cannon Dual Fuzz, his Dunlop GCJ Cry Baby wah, a Universal Audio Starlight Echo Station, and a Function Parallax for phaser and tremolo.