We focus this week on the figure of a true ‘king of the record sales’ as far as this century goes, especially in his country of origin, the United States, which is mainly where they are still selling records at this stage of the game. Besides that commercial merit he has an added merit related to our wonderful world of the six strings, and that is going to allow us to talk about the 'B-Bender' system, or in his specific case, the 'G-Bender' - that many are unfamiliar with. In sum, we speak today of a man attached to his cowboy hat named Brad Paisley and his incredible collection of guitars.  

Among the many Telecasters that he has, almost none of them are Fender but rather they are made by his reliable luthier Bill Crook, and almost all of them have the aforementioned ‘G-Bender' system installed in them. What does this system allow Brad to do? Resemble his bendings on the G string with which a steel pedal could make.  How does he do it? He fastens his strap on the installed system at the height of the beginning of the neck and so when pulling down on his guitar he bends the third string like he does with the steel pedal levers. There lies one of the secrets you need to know if you want to sound like this new king of modern country.  

Another ‘well known secret’ about his equipment is that he had to radically modify it in the year 2010 because of the floods that year in Nashville, where he kept his most cherished treasures. It is not the first time we have spoken on Guitars Exchange about that disaster; we previously mentioned that Rich Robinson of the Black Crowes also lost some beauties at that time, but it seems that Brad Paisley took the worst hit and had to almost completely rebuild his touring equipment.  

He put it back together based on new custom models, almost all of them with a 'Paisley' finish (a la James Burton) made by Bill Crook, but also with new acquisitions such as a 1965 Fender Stratocaster repainted in Fiesta Red color and a Fender Telecaster 52. His idyll with Fender does not end with these guitars since on his tours we can see him using two Fender Deluxe Reverbs, one Blackface and another Silverface. Of course, these classic amplifiers also have a good handful of Dr Z heads and combos. Furthermore, he has his own Gibson signature J-45 acoustic guitar model.  

As for his pedals we can see him on tour using some authentic classics like the Ibanez Tubescreamer TS-808, the Boss DD-3, the Wampler Analog Echo and the Maxon Analog Delay.

These are some of the secrets of his sound; what we can not explain here is the secret of the success of a guy who already has 19 numbers ones on the American Billboard charts. Surely when his grandfather gave him his first guitar, a Silvertone Danelectro 1451, he could not have imagined how well he was investing that money...