It turns out one of the country’s most forward-thinking ad agencies also has innovative ideas when it comes to holiday perks.

A smashed guitar that belonged to the late Kurt Cobain has sold for $100,000. As reported by Yahoo Music, the smashed Fender Mustang ― which was used by Cobain on Nirvana’s first U.S. tour ― was purchased by an unidentified collector. The seller was a punk guitarist named Sluggo (a member of the band The Grannies and Hullabaloo), who traded Cobain a working guitar for the damaged instrument at a time when the Nirvana frontman was living hand-to-mouth.

Thanks to Kanye West’s 808s & Heartbreak and Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter III, this is the year Auto-Tune took over the charts. The robotic vocal effect is just the latest in a long line of dubious musical effects that have inexplicably come into fashion only to just as quickly turn into punch lines.

What do Slash, Richie Sambora and Billy Gibbons all have in common? Well, that’s easy enough … they all play Gibson Les Pauls. And what’s even cooler is that they’ve all played Gibson Les Pauls since the beginning of their respective careers.

Bob Marley’s Yamaha SG1000 was considered a prized catch for Christie’s when the auction house put the guitar on the block for sale this past November. Bids were expected to range between $30,000 and $40,000. Turns out, however, the guitar may not have belonged to Angus Reid, who submitted the guitar, but rather to Wailers bassist Aston Barrett.

JD & The Straight Shot ― with lead vocalist/guitarist Jim Dolan and guitarist/chief songwriter Bruce Koplow ― have crafted a new album, Right On Time, that includes guest appearances by two of the greatest musicians to ever touch a six-string.

We guitarists tend to think in boxes, where gear is concerned anyway: a Gibson Les Paul is a rock guitar, a Fender Telecaster is a country guitar, a Gibson ES-175 is a jazz guitar, and so on. Certainly many different guitars and amps have been designed to suit the needs of specific styles of music, but that hasn't stopped adventurous musicians from making their art on a vast range of odds and ends of equipment that might outwardly seem totally mismatched to the task at hand. Let's take a look at some incongruous rigs that have graced the music of guitar greats, and rocked the world in the process.

The birth of rock and roll looms large in every player’s mind. Whether you’re a punk or a metalhead, that holy conflagration of musical styles in the early to mid ’50s that launched a whole new direction for American culture remains ground zero for hot electric guitar. And rising Titan-like at the center of it all is the solidbody electric guitar, harbinger of this music of change.

American ingenuity finds many outlets, especially in the realm of luthiers and instrument modders. Ned Steinberger, trained as an industrial designer, started a revolution in the guitar market in 1980 with the introduction of his unique blend of precision engineering, radical materials, minimalist body designs and improved functionality — all aspects of his now-famous array of headless basses and guitars bearing his name.

Okay, Stevie Ray Vaughan’s tone was massive. There’s no myth there. But an entire industry has practically grown up around assisting players in replicating that monster of a sound, and I’d like to invest an installment of Myth Busters to look at what you can achieve in this realm, and what you can’t.