It’s maybe six or seven times louder than anything I’ve come across. It is so loud, man, it whips any pickup that I’ve ever come across. It’s the finest guitar I’ve ever owned, it’s the loudest guitar I’ve ever owned. “I used that guitar on every track on Who’s Next,” Townshend recalled in the same Guitar Player interview. Along with enhanced production technique from producer Glyn Johns that properly grounded both Keith Moon’s drums and John Entwistle’s bass for the first time, whatever the band were about to do was bound to be enormous. Walsh also threw in a Fender Bassman amplifier with the guitar, and that guitar-amp combination gave Townshend’s tone a new fullness that could bring The Who’s legendary power to new heights. “I went home and went into my studio and plugged it in, and it totally wrecked me out. “I opened the case and it was bright orange, and I thought, ‘Ugh! It’s horrible, I hate it.'” But it didn’t take long for Townshend to realise what he had. So instead, Walsh gifted Townshend a 1959 Gretsch 6120.Īccording to Townshend during his 1972 interview with Guitar Player magazine, the guitar’s ostentatious orange colour was a major turn off at first. Les Pauls hadn’t quite made it across the pond yet (hence why Page needed to get his from Walsh) and Walsh didn’t have another one to give away. But in 1970, Gibson changed the design of the SG, and Townshend was looking for a new, bigger sound. He had dropped the use of his signature Rickenbacker models of the mid-’60s and was mostly using a Gibson SG while performing. Townshend admired Walsh’s fat tone, which Townshend was struggling to get out of his guitars.