Gibson L6-S AC/DC owned High Voltage

Guitars from the Young clan are extremely rare on the market—if not to say non-existent. There are two reasons for this: on the one hand, AC/DC is a clan that you can’t get into unless you’ve been approved for years, and on the other hand the Young brothers weren’t collectors, so they didn’t own a crazy number of instruments. Each of their guitars that turns up on the market is therefore a fascinating exception, and among them this L6S is even more moving since it was the understudy to The Beast.

In 1975, AC/DC were in Sydney to record their first album, High Voltage. Just before the sessions began, Malcolm Young’s 1963 Gretsch Firebird—nicknamed The Beast—had an accident and was sent to the repair shop. You still need a guitar to record an album, So Malcolm did a tour of the local music stores. They agreed about the qualities of this L6S, a bizarre Gibson model that has never been very successful beyond an endorsement by Santana.

Their new acquisition was quickly transformed, or “Malcomised”. They ditched the bass pickup (the treble one is still the original Bill Lawrence), the Varitone, the pick guard, and cut out an additional panel to make it a double cutaway, like the Gretsch or one of Angus’s SGs (Angus also used the L6S as a backup guitar on stage). There are different versions of the story, but one thing is certain: this is the L6S that Malcolm used to record the track High Voltage, and maybe the whole album. All you have to do is plug it into a Plexi amp and you’ll immediately hear its sublime rumble.

In 1980, Malcolm gave the guitar to his nephew Stevie, further proof that the Youngs’ guitars generally remained in the family. But Stevie finally sold it in 1982 and the L6S did not resurface until few years back.

We got few pics of Angus, Malcolm and Stevie Young playing that exact same guitar.