Joanne Shaw Taylor briefly switched to Les Pauls – and it dramatically improved her guitar playing

Joanna Shaw Taylor has revealed that adding a Gibson Les Paul to her toolkit was key to improving her technique and pushing her sonic palette. As a dedicated Tele player, incorporating a Les Paul felt almost like a painter using a “different paintbrush”.

“I mean, I’m still predominantly a Tele player, but around 2012 I was doing my third album [Almost Always Never], and I felt like my guitar playing had got a bit stale,” she explains in the latest edition of Guitarist.

“So I went through a lot of practice, trying to reboot it, and I decided to switch guitars. I also switched guitar picks and moved to [Dunlop] Jazz IIIs, which are a lot smaller, just to try and tidy up my right-hand technique.

She continues, “I think it was one of those things where you spend every day on the same instrument and you tend to form lazy habits. Maybe I felt like a different paintbrush, or whatever, would make me think a bit more outside of my usual comfort zone.”

However, this doesn't mean she abandoned her go-to model, the Fender Telecaster. “I switched to a Les Paul for about a year and I think it did the trick; it did help tidy up a lot of my playing and helped me grow a bit as a player. But it was nice then to revert back to my signature tone and apply what I’d learned to the old workhorse.”

For her latest album, Heavy Soul, Taylor used a 2008 Custom Shop Les Paul, which she admits was a random purchase from Reverb. She also opted for her workhorse Junior, a ’66 Esquire.

“I found him [Junior] on Denmark Street when I was 15. I’d been playing for a couple of years, gigging, and was working in a guitar shop on weekends,” she said in a 2022 Total Guitar interview. “My nan and dad said they’d match whatever I made as a reward for working hard, and I managed to get together £1,200.

“With Esquires, there’s always a gap underneath the scratchplate where you could put a neck pickup, and I think the previous owner had attacked it with a knife and gouged it out doing a home job to put a humbucker in. So I got it slightly cheaper. I just love him.”

For more Joanne Shaw Taylor, plus career-spanning new interviews with Junior Marvin and Scott Graham, pick up issue 513 of Guitarist at Magazines Direct.