Ed O'Brien's tour Stratocaster sells for $20,000 for Music Rising

Ed O'Brien's tour-played signature Fender Stratocaster sold for $20,000 on 11 December at Guitar Icons, a charity auction held live and online at Van Eaton Galleries in Los Angeles. It was Radiohead's gift to the sale, lot 18.

The Edge and the producer Bob Ezrin put the auction together for Music Rising, the charity they founded in 2005 to help musicians after Hurricane Katrina. The top price, $410,000, was for The Edge's own “I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For” Stratocaster.

The auction catalogue says O'Brien's guitar was built for him for Radiohead's last tour, from 2016 to 2018, and that he played it for nearly half the set. Fender announced his signature model in November 2017, saying he had road-tested it on that tour. The guitar shows wear from heavy use, comes with his hard-shell Fender case, and still has a piece of tape on the side of the headstock marked “2”.