{"id":379268,"date":"2026-06-29T14:00:20","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T14:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/379268\/"},"modified":"2026-06-29T14:00:20","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T14:00:20","slug":"a-guide-to-joe-walsh-and-don-felders-hotel-california-gear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/379268\/","title":{"rendered":"A guide to Joe Walsh and Don Felder\u2019s Hotel California gear"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cJoe Walsh<\/a> and Don Felder<\/a> would show up for a session and unpack a minimum of 30 guitars and five or six amps apiece,\u201d Hotel California producer Bill Szymczyk says. \u201cIt was, \u2018Let\u2019s try this with that.\u2019 What I remember most, though, throughout Hotel California, was a whole lot of Gibson Les Paul<\/a> with a lot of Fender Telecaster<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

No one can be sure exactly how many \u2013 or which \u2013 Les Pauls make appearances on Hotel California, but we do know about one of them: Felder\u2019s famous 1959 Burst, which was painstakingly reproduced by Gibson in 2011.<\/p>\n

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As he told Guitarist around that time, Felder bought the original guitar from a traveling dealer who was famous for his superb stable of vintage axes.<\/p>\n

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\u201cHis name was Tony Dukes,\u201d he said, \u201cand every time we\u2019d go through Texas, Tony would show up. He was a horse trader, and he always had something in his truck you wanted. He would show up in a station wagon or a truck that was full of Les Pauls, Teles and Strats<\/a>, and I bought probably 20 pieces from him over the years.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt must have been about 1974 or something, right after our first big hit, One of These Nights, when I started making money. He came round, and I think I bought three or four pieces from him \u2013 the Les Paul<\/a>, a Tele, a Strat and some other stuff.\u201d And, as he told Guitar World in 2013, he plugged his LP into a Fender Tweed Deluxe \u2013 \u201cjust kind of cranked up, with just the guitar into the amp.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe acoustic guitar<\/a> in the intro to Hotel California is a Takamine 12-string<\/a> with a DeArmond pickup,\u201d Felder added. \u201cWe mic\u2019d the acoustic and put that in the center of the mix. Then we took the pickup\u2019s output and ran it through a [Maestro] Echoplex and a Leslie. We mic\u2019d that in stereo so it has this left-to-right kind of swirling, ethereal characteristic.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFor recording acoustic guitars, I usually used a Neumann KM84,\u201d Szymczyk says. \u201cDon had a pickup<\/a> on his guitar running to a pair of little Orange amps<\/a>, and we mic\u2019d them in stereo. The initial opening-guitar intro is an acoustic guitar in the middle and an amp on both sides, with a chorus that is flowing back and forth between the two amps.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cFelder and I always found that if we both used single-coil<\/a> or double-coil [guitars], there wasn\u2019t enough contrast to give the songs any personality,\u201d Walsh told Total Guitar in 2012. \u201cIt just turned into a guitar wall.\u201d That\u2019s why he famously played a Telecaster on Hotel California, which was perfectly paired with Felder\u2019s Les Paul.<\/p>\n

\u201cI played a Tele, through \u2013 I think \u2013 the Roland Cube, which I used a lot back then,\u201d Walsh added. It was most likely the same Roland Cube he and his Strat used on Life in the Fast Lane.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the Hotel California tour, Walsh also used a Fender Black Panel Deluxe Reverb, a Fender Tweed Deluxe and a Mesa\/Boogie<\/a> Mark I.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cJoe Walsh and Don Felder would show up for a session and unpack a minimum of 30 guitars…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":379269,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8],"class_list":["post-379268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/379269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}