Red Special gets popcharted

Those crazy infographic nerds at Pop Chart Lab have done it again. Back in May 2011 they released a rock ’n’ roll haircut poster where both Freddie and Brian’s hairdos make an appearance. And now they’ve introduced a poster (A Visual Compendium of Guitars) that illustrates 64 of the most famous guitars in rock history. To no one’s surprise, the Red Special can be seen surrounded by other greats from the industry.

Based on year of manufacture (1963), it gets wedged in between Stevie Ray Vaughn’s “Number One” Strat from 1962  and Johnny Cash’s acoustic Martin D-35 from 1964.

I’m somewhat surprised that the 0001 Strat which currently belongs to David Gilmour wasn’t included. Oh well, I guess they only had so many years to work with and there wasn’t room for another Stratocaster. Or maybe immortalizing the 0001 on this poster was too risky because it is up for debate as to its authenticity.

Seeing all of these guitar designs together, it’s interesting to note how radical the body shapes and designs got once Gene Simmons  broke away from a conventional solid body guitar mould in 1980 when he came out with his battle axe bass guitar. (I think he even got the term battle axe trademarked, didn’t he? I seem to recall reading something about it from the early ’80s.)

Prints of this poster are available on the Pop Chart Lab website and I see that they’ve also released a modified arrangement of the guitars for sale as a monochromatic t-shirt design, as seen here:

http://popchartlab.com/products/a-visual-compendium-of-guitars
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_0001_Strat

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