Fender Stratocaster or Gibson Les Paul? That’s the question many a rock guitarist has grappled with. And when I met Gary Moore in a London studio at the end of 1982, he had a new answer for me. Back during his time with his first band, Skid Row, Gary met Peter Green, and in a remarkable act of generosity, Peter passed to Gary his now famous Gibson Les Paul, the guitar Peter had used to such startling effect in Fleetwood Mac.

Gary continued to use that Les Paul, notably for a series of outings with Thin Lizzy and on his solo tour de force, the 1978 British hit single ‘Parisienne Walkways’. But change was in the air as we sat chatting during that ’82 interview. Gary leaned over, opened a case, and pulled out his new favourite axe to show me.

"But Gary, I said, it’s a Stratocaster! I thought you were married to your Les Paul..."

But Gary, I said, it’s a Stratocaster! I thought you were married to your Les Paul. “Well, yes,” he replied, smiling, “and the trouble is that too many people use a Strat and then they disguise it so much that it ends up sounding like a Gibson anyway.”

So why the shift of affections from your Les Paul to this Stratocaster? “I wanted to try to get a cross between the two, bringing out the quality of the Strat but making it dirty at the same time,” he explained. “Because a Strat has a definite punch to it that you can’t get off a Les Paul—it’s not just a top-end thing, it’s a definite physical punch that you can get. When you get that just right it’s a great sound, very clangy but with an edge to it.”

He was smiling again. “I mean it's not like The Shadows. It’s closer to some of the early Hendrix stuff—without the fuzz—when he'd do some stuff with his rhythm parts, a big, clangy, meaty guitar sound.” I asked how long he’d had the Strat—an early-’60s rosewood-board model with a milky-red refinish—and he told me he’d found it the previous year, 1981, on a shopping trip with Greg Lake to the Jon King Sounds shop in Kingston Upon Thames in south-west London.

Greg tried out the Strat first. “But he didn't like it, because it had a few scratches on it—he likes his guitars to be real immaculate,” Gary recalled, adding that he didn’t mind its condition, because he knew a potentially great Strat when he saw one.

Gary told Greg that getting such a Strat in immaculate condition was highly unlikely. “I said, ‘If you don't want it, I'll have it—very calmly, trying to control myself! And it's great, it's the best Strat I've ever had, the best Strat I've ever played, I think. I've had loads, but they've always been real wanky ones. This one’s special, like my Les Paul.”

High praise indeed. Apart from a period when he lost the Strat on tour and then later was lucky enough to have it returned, the guitar stayed a firm fave for a long time. It’s heard on several of Gary’s ’80s albums and became a must-have for live work, not least his astonishing take on Jimi’s ‘Red House’ at Fender’s Strat Pack 50th anniversary concert in 2004.

Gary Moore treated his guitars as tools, as a means to an end. “I like to have guitars that I can use for something,” he told me. “I don't want to have them lying around as investments and all that shit.”

I couldn’t help wondering if he felt his natural habitat was the live stage, Strat poised and Marshalls steaming. Did he feel as comfortable in a studio, like the one we were in? “Not really,” he said, frowning. “So dead, you know? No one’s going to give you a standing ovation if you do a good take.”

Tony Bacon is a British author and journalist who writes about guitars and guitarists. His latest book is Electric Blues! T-Bone Walker And The Guitar That Started It All. tonybacon.co.uk