Date: 10/08/2025
Mood: sick
Listening to: Sturmfahrt - Eisbrecher
Paul Landers guitar model list & timeline of usage
This page tracks Paul Landers' known guitars by era, model, color, stage use, tuning notes, modifications, and visual references as curated by me; a girl who likes colors. Because this fandom is in shambles nobody keeps proper track of guitars anymore and most things online are out of date. Your girl here is about to fix that.
Questions for me, your humble curator:
"What's the best Axis model to you?"
The red one. 10/10. Why? It's red. What do you take me for? A guy?
"Which Axis actually looked best with him though?"
Any silver ones. This colored one always contrasts very good against most of his outfits being dark.
"The best pickguard one?"
Maroon with white is really nice. This one looked the best when he had the white variation Sehnsucht outfit. I wish he wore the white one in more shows. That's also why I like the lighter color Mutter era outfits because it allowed this guitar to stand out again by contrast.
"Best Gibson?"
Logically, I love the Black Beauty in a general way of being appealing to me. But I don't think it'd fit him on stage quite right. His signature model is the correct choice and I'm glad he did it.
"Hot takes?"
None of the ESPs look good with him. Only exception is the white one is okay because he took all the knobs off. I can't stand those things. That's why. The Ibanez was a visual disaster. We do not talk about the Ibanez in this household. Forbidden.
"Why so many Axis models?"
Most likely? The volume position must have been extremely appealing to him. And the guitar is curved, which he gravitates to. So he seems to have tried it to work out for him.
"Why is that metal piece missing sometimes?"
He never uses it. It's a vibrato arm. Mainly lead guitarists use it. It is visually unsightly and there's no purpose to him. Richard uses it notably in Heirate mich's solo if you want a demonstration of the purpose.
"Is he really playing live, Bree? I need to know."
Yes. I know his mistakes and humanity. I know his improvisations. He is live to everything I've ever looked at and heard. I hear mistakes even in the In Amerika edit of all things. (Keine Lust, Links.) He has several issues in Live aus Berlin, actually.
Music Man Axis era: 1994–2005
1994 – March 1996: Gold Music Man Axis EX
March 1996 – August 1997: Silver Axis EX
This is his craziest guitar of all time. The hell did you do with this thing, Paul? I follow your black tape logic but why does this guitar have creases? What did you do? It's like he put a silver sticker layer on, or something. Why is it creased? How do you even manage this? I am utterly convinced there was no silver Axis yet and he just made up his own. And then later the 1998 one in proper silver shows up with a "To Paul" signature...
Let me interview this man. There's a story to tell. These are the guys who literally sent David Lynch a letter asking him to direct a video. I would not put it past him to have called up some Music Man guys and been like, "hey can I have a silver one? I have bought several before. please."
April 1997 – December 1997, April-May 1998: Red Anniversary Edition Axis
September – December 1997: black Axis
May 1998 – October 1998: Maroon Axis
May – October 1998: silver Axis
Late-October 1998 – June 1999: silver Axis
Late-October 1998 – July 2002: Maroon Axis
In early 2001 and I presume during 2000 (pictures are rare and usually extremely blurry or tiny), this model appeared with its original cream colored knob. From Mutter era starting onward during that spring, this knob was replaced with a black one. This photo shows a palm mute 👀👀👀👀
Both the silver and maroon received pickguard additions somewhere in the Family Values Tour. I narrowed it down to after 10/23 Missouri, and first sighted in bootleg format on New Haven's footage on 10/29. It may be earlier than 10/29 but I lack visual confirmations. The best video of this reveal is actually 10/30 at Uniondale.
2000 – July 2005: silver Axis EX
2001: Sandberg Plasmabass
November 2004 – July 2005: maroon Axis
Gibson & ESP era: 2004-present
November 2004 – July 2005: Gibson Les Paul Studio
November 2004 – July 2005: Ibanez AXS32
November 2004 – July 2005: Takamine EF341SC
2005: ESP Ltd EC-50
2009 - 2011: ESP Eclipse I CTM
The fandom has memory holed the special black ESP Eclipse and was a rare model for him. Images of this thing has me on the streets like a beggar, So I ended up asking people on Reverb to help. Here: one | two | three. He used it in Fruhling in Paris mostly.
2009 – 2011: ESP Eclipse I CTM
2009 – 2011: Gibson Les Paul Custom
Rarest photographed guitar from modern era. It's definitely a blink-and-you-miss it on stage. You can find it in Sonne on In Amerika if you squint hard. Oh yeah, and it's used in the Ich tu dir weh video.
2009 – forever: his Signature Gibson Les Paul
You can view it thoroughly here, and some promo images. He is the first German to ever receive a signature model from this company which is pretty surprising. I translated an interview about the model.
- a pick slot was considered, then dropped from the prototype. some MiG tour images show this.
- silver volume poti changed to red during 2016
- pick slot returned in 2016
- bridge pickup changed temporarily in 2017 to another model
2013, 2016-2017, 2019-2024: ESP Ltd EC-10
Extras
Gibson Les Paul Custom "Black Beauty" - gold
Basically the same as the first one like it, but now he's got one of those Black Beauty looking gold ones. Has only been seen anymore in the Tech21 interview and his Du hast clip from 2023. Before we got nuked in May with drama, we had a glorious 10 days with that video and peace.
