Since winning the Glastonbury Festival Emerging Talent Competition at 16, Declan McKenna has become one of the most interesting and popular young songwriters in the UK, and he’s also a bona fide guitar nut who can’t resist a weird or leftfield new instrument when it crosses his path.

That’s exactly what happened when we took Declan to Wunjo Guitars on London’s famous Denmark Street on Black Friday last year – after getting to grips with a few Teles and a pawn shop guitar from Japan, the What Happened to the Beach? guitarist came across a very weird acoustic that appealed to his penchant for weirdness.

The guitar in question was a Gretsch Rancher – a bizarre acoustic curio from the early 2010s that sported not just a Filter’Tron pickup in the body but a bona fide Bigsby tailpiece – on an acoustic guitar! It truly was love at first sight for confirmed guitar obsessive Declan, who couldn’t resist getting his credit card out and heading straight to the counter with his new prize, which he took straight on a plane to Paris for an upcoming session. As it was Black Friday, the good folks at Wunjo even gave him a nice discount too.

Declan’s brand new album, What Happened To The Beach? is out 9 February, you can check it out and presave it here.

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In this new Guitar.com Originals series, we sit down with talented artists and guitar-loving individuals with their most cherished and beloved instruments, to find out why these guitars are so significant, and how they have shaped their lives. Get up close and personal with the guitars that have guided the musical journey of some of the guitar world’s biggest names with My Guitars & Me.