David Gilmour, like his Pink Floyd predecessor, Syd Barrett, played a Telecaster initially, but soon became one of the first British rock guitar legends to favor the Fender Stratocaster and create a distinctive sound with the instrument. His parents bought the TV for David’s 21st birthday, and he played it for a year (including on the Saucerful of Secrets album) until an airline lost it.
Upon officially joining Pink Floyd, Gilmour purchased a custom Stratocaster (the first of many) from a Cambridge music store. During Pink Floyd’s early years, Gilmour played a Strat almost exclusively, taking full advantage of its wide tonal palette and vibrato bar in his style. He used a 24-fret Lewis electric guitar on rare occasions because of its extended range, as in the solo on “Money,” and continued to use a Tele sporadically in the repertoire. Gilmour strung his electric guitars with Gibson Sonomatic strings made of a custom lightweight top (using the standard E and B for the B and G) and a .010, .012, .016, .028, .038, calibrated heavy back set. and .050. He used a heavy gauge Herco pick.
David Gilmour’s first amp setup with Pink Floyd consisted of a 50-watt Selmer head with a 4 × 12 speaker cabinet. In 1970, he found his signature sound with a stack made of 100-watt Hiwatt heads with WEM 4 cabinets. × 12. The Hiwatt / WEM combination can be heard prominently in Meddle and Dark Side of the Moon. In the studio, he would sometimes add a Fender Twin Reverb combo amp with two 12-inch drivers to his lineup for certain parts, like on Dark Side of the Moon.
David Gilmour’s early Floyd effects consisted of a Binson Echorec tape delay (like Barrett, he used this device from his early days with the band), a Dallas-Arbiter Fuzzface fuzz box, a Uni-Vibe pedal, a Vox wah pedal- wah, a DeArmond volume pedal, and Leslie and Yamaha RA-200 rotary speakers. The latter were routed through the output sections of the Hiwatt heads and then into the WEM 4 × 12 cabinets. In 1972, their effects boxes were mounted in a custom cabinet, and their array of processors grew to include a second Binson. Echorec and a second Fuzzface, an MXR Phase 90, a Crybaby wah-wah, an Electro-Harmonix Electric Mistress flanger, Big Muff fuzz, an orange bass and treble amp, and a custom tone pedal.
Additionally, Gilmour used studio effects such as ADT (Automatic Double Tracking, a favorite studio processor first developed at Abbey Road Studios for the Beatles), Kepex for tremolo, various tape effects, studio echo chambers, and upside down guitar. . He also employed an EMS Synthi Hi-Fi guitar synthesizer (heard on “Time” on Dark Side of the Moon), and usually played a lap steel or Fender twin neck pedal steel guitar for the slide parts. He used various acoustic guitars on Floyd’s early tracks, later opting for the Martin D-18 and D-35 models in the 1970s, and depending on the song, he alternated between finger playing and picking.