Shawn Mendez is one of today’s musical artists with the most hits in trending billboard charts. Born on the 8th of August in 1996 in Toronto, he started writing songs at 13 years old. Let’s take a quick look at his background, then dive into Shawn Mendes’ Guitar and gear choices.
His first song was “Life of The Party“, which he posted on YouTube, and eventually became a hit song. He was named “Breakthrough Artist of the Year“ at the Juno Awards in 2015, the same year he released his first album “, Handwritten“.
He became the youngest artist to debut at number one on the Billboard 200. The album was also the first debut album by a Canadian artist to reach number one in the United States.
He won the “Choice Male Artist“ at the Teen Choice Awards, was nominated for the MTV Video Music Award for Best New Artist for his song “Stitches“, and was nominated for the “Best New Artist“ at the 58th Grammy Awards.
As you can see, Shawn Mendes has had a surprisingly successful debut as an upcoming guitar artist not only in his home town but all across the globe.
He is also a very talented musician, as he started playing the guitar when he was 13 when his father told him that if he learned how to play the guitar, they rented for a couple of weeks, he would buy him his own. Shawn did well on his promise, it seems.
Shawn Mendes Guitar and Gear – Bottom Line Up Top
Amongst Shawn Mendes’ guitar and gear we can find:
- Taylor acoustic guitars mainly, the 210, 410 and 812 ce. Though he has played other brands such as Martins
- A Baldwin Model 243 Piano
- Fender Custom Shop Relic Telecasters, one of them being his go-to guitar for on stage
- A beautiful D´Angelico Deluxe ´59.
- John Mayer signature guitars and Shawns own signature guitars, partnered with Musicman.
- Classic Vox AC30 and Fender Blues Deluxe Reissue amps.
Shawn Mendez’s Gear
Shawn Mendez plays Taylor acoustic guitars, Ernie ball electric basses, Audere amps and his signature model Dunlop picks. He used a Fender Blues Deluxe amp for recording the first two albums, but he is most partial to his acoustic Taylor guitars.
Taylor 210ce
The Taylor 210ce is a full–size Grand Auditorium with a cutaway. It has a solid Sitka spruce top and layered Sapele back and sides. The layered Sapele neck has a bound ebony fingerboard with a standard 1–11/16“ nut width.
The bridge is a traditional style with a compensated saddle. It has a Venetian cutaway and a Fishman Isys III pickup system. This Taylor guitar is a great choice for the player who wants a great feeling guitar with a full–size sound.
Taylor 410ce
This is a slightly higher quality guitar than the 210ce. It used to retail for around 2.300€, but it is currently discontinued. It has a very easy playing neck with a narrow 1-11/16-inch nut which makes barre chords much less of a hassle to play.
Its renaissance fretboard inlays and its white binding give it an all in all expensive and well made acoustic guitar, along with Taylor’s flagship ES2 pickup sound.
Taylor 812ce
This is a Grand concert guitar with cutaway, mahogany neck and fretboard, beautiful solid rosewood armrest and a Micarta Saddle. This guitar fits alongside very high-end Gibson acoustic guitars and has been played by top musicians in the industry.
Despite being prohibitively expensive (4000€), the new V-class bracing pattern is far superior to the X-Class bracing pattern, and its sound is said to mature even more in the first 2-3 years of usage.
Although we usually see Shawn playing the guitar, he is such an all-rounded musician that he is also familiar with piano and drums. On his SM3 world tour, he uses a:
Read also: How to Find the Best Concert Acoustic Guitars.
Baldwin Model 243 Acoustic Piano
Baldwin is one of the most famous piano brands in the world, and this model is the single most popular piano model they produce. It features a 45″ height that allows a larger soundboard. It has a giant sound projection, and thanks to its 19-ply pin-block system, its tuning remains very accurate, perfect for tours and such. This Baldwin model retails for as little as 1500€ or as much as 2.500€.
Electric Guitars
To finish his hit “I Know I Can Treat You Better”, we can see he picks up his Fender Custom Shop Relic guitar as he strides back to the stage.
Fender Custom Shop Relic Telecaster
As a custom shop guitar, it can be a plethora of different options, but it is probably the 63′ limited edition. Several best–selling guitars are available with the highly–popular relic treatment. Whether it’s a ’60s Strat, a ’50s Tele, a ’70s Les Paul or a ’90s PRS, the relic treatment is a great way to give your axe that well–worn and well–loved look and feel without destroying the vintage value.
The Fender Custom Shop Relic Telecaster has some cool 60’s-style features, like a 6-saddle bridge, a “3-bolt” neck, and a beautiful ash body with a relic finish. Its sublime ash body showcases hand-selected wood, a sign of superior quality. Meanwhile, the neck’s combination of ash and maple results in a tone that combines resonance and brilliance in perfect balance.
You’ll enjoy sparkling clarity and defined attack, as well as brilliant sustain, essential for a rich, enveloping sound. Vintage details on this guitar include a 1960’s Telecaster bridge with threaded steel saddles, vintage-style tuning pegs and a bone nut.
It also comes with a case so you can take it anywhere with peace of mind, as well as a fender strap. Once you try a Fender custom shop made guitar, you won’t settle for anything less.
The Ultimate Shawn Mendes Guitar – The D’Angelico Deluxe 59
This black finished guitar was spotted on Shawn’s Instagram some years ago. Even though it’s not the most common guitar he takes on stage, probably because of its weight and more jazzy sound, it is still an amazing axe to add to his collection. The new D’Angelico Excel 59 is a gem from a twist on the original concept designed by John D’Angelico in 1959.
The D’Angelico Excel 59 is a hollow-body guitar with a width of 16 inches (40 cm) and a depth of 1.75 inches (4.45 cm), accompanied by an ebony fretboard that offers a woody and transparent tone. For the electronics, it uses Custom Seymour Duncan Great Dane P90s pickups, expressly designed for this guitar, offering a pure and natural tone, from warm sounds to great classic rock tones.
Coupled with vintage aesthetic details like the 3-position selector with Chickenhead knob, Cupcake knobs and Grover Imperial tuners, the Excel 59 feels timeless. In addition, this exclusive Black Dog finish also features the D’Angelico Shield B-70 tremolo to add different textures to the sound.
Suhr Classic S SSS Vintage Model
In this BBC One live show where he covers Drake’s Fake Love, he plays an unusual Suhr triple sing coil pickup guitar in a beautiful black and white, with a rosewood fretboard and Vintage 60’s pickups, with a special no-hum system that eliminates that hum that single coils usually produce. Alder body and maple neck with a 60 C shape neck makes it ever so comfortable.
It has a very crisp sound while still retaining an excellent low end. The locking tuners have a good and easy system for swapping broken strings. I was unaware of Suhr guitars until I saw them explode recently online!
Shawn Mendes Foundation Musicmaster
Like other companies recently, Fender is no stranger to the enormous potential for the guitar market, that the hook of some young pop/rock music stars have, who can contribute to keeping this instrument popular among the new generations.
On this occasion Fender has once again collaborated with Shawn Mendes (in 2018 the Custom Shop already made him the Telecaster relic that he usually uses live).
This new Shawn Mendes Foundation Musicmaster is based on the classic short-scale model that Fender released in 1955 for students and was a variation of the Duo-Sonic, and features an Alder body decorated with floral motifs on both the front and back, with a juiced pickguard with herringbone pattern.
Maple neck and fingerboard with 24″ scale, “C” profile, 22 medium jumbo frets, and a 9.5″ radius. The binding plate is engraved with the Shawn Mendes Foundation logo. The bridge is fixed Strat type with curved steel saddles and strings through the body.
The electronics have the same H-S configuration as the Telecaster, but here with a Player Series Alnico 2 Humbucking neck and a Tex-Mex Single-Coil Strat bridge. The former’s coils can be split via a Push/Pull switch on the tone potentiometer.
Shawn Mendes is known for his commitment to various charitable causes for which he raises money, such as building schools in Ghana, helping those affected by the earthquake in Mexico, or environmental protection activities.
And with this guitar Fender also supports the charitable organization founded by the musician, the Shawn Mendes Foundation, dedicated to youth-related causes in areas such as children’s healthcare, sustainability, mental health, human rights, education and anti-bullying. It is a medium level, or even entry-level guitar, that goes for around 800€ and is comparable to Mexico made Fender guitars.
Amplifiers
Very much in sync with his sound, and also considering one of his idols is John Mayer, the two most common amplifiers we have seen him play with either live or in studio settings are the Fender Blues Deluxe Reissue and the ubiquitous Voc AC30:
Fender Blues Deluxe Reissue
If you’re familiar with the Fender Deluxe from the 1950s, you can see how this 21st-century update is inspired by the original, with its creamy tweed jacket and fairly solid construction, making it feel like a reliable combo amp to take on the road.
Plus, the 40 watts of power, driven by two 6L6 power tubes through a 12″ Eminence Special Design speaker, it is more than capable of being loud enough on stage. Slight improvements have been made to bring it up to date, like improved circuitry leading to better overall sound quality and more reliability.
However, it’s not overly refined – it still retains the classic charm that this amp has always displayed. It really delivers that all-American sound these amps are known for. There’s plenty of headroom for those pristine Fender cleans, and boy, are they clear, though it’s just as easy to dial in some bluesy growls. Meanwhile, the built-in reverb is decent, though not particularly deep.
Vox AC30 C2
You don’t need to be an expert in blues or even amps in general to know the prestige that goes along with the name AC30. This ubiquitous amp has been seen on the world’s most famous stages, used by everyone from The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and Rory Gallagher.
The AC30C2 is one of the most recent iterations of this VOX legend in all tubes and is described as “the most versatile AC30 design in VOX history“. In terms of performance, the AC30C2 excels at replicating that classic 1960s British Invasion tone – if that’s what you’re looking for, this is the amp that delivers it unequivocally.
The cleans are bright, smooth and precise, while it’s easy to dial in a sweet vintage blues tone, with an easy-to-achieve natural overdrive that really sings. With the classic VOX rasp, this amp is also at home with classic rock.
The channels of this amp give you incredible versatility, with the normal channel providing a rich, fat timbre, while the top boost channel offers an edgier, more aggressive sound. Even at 30 watts, it is a noisy amp and extremely sensitive to playing dynamics. The effects are equally commendable, with a powerful reverb and an impressive atmospheric tremolo.
FAQs
Question: What was Shawn Mendes’s first-ever guitar?
Answer: His first-ever acoustic guitar was a Fender CD 60, a super cheap guitar that goes for just above 100€.
Question: How did Shawn Mendes Learn How to Play the Guitar?
Answer: It may seem surprising, but he was self-taught and learned through videos he found on Youtube around 2010. He started jamming around on guitar when he was 13 years old, mainly to support his singing.
Question: How Did Shawn Leap to Fame?
Answer: He became known in mid-2013 when he began uploading covers of other songs on Vine, receiving millions of views thanks to the six-second clips of renditions of many popular songs. In September of that same year, Shawn started a tour with other Vine users called MAGCON Tour. He was officially discovered by Andrew Gertler, and signed with Island Records following him being flown out to NYC.
Question: Is Shawn Mendes Dating Fellow Musician Camilo Cabello?
Answer: Yes, but in November 2021, Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello ended their relationship after two years together. The couple, who began their relationship in 2019 following their passionate duet in Señorita, announced their breakup in a statement posted on their respective social networks
Question: How Much is Shawn Medes Worth?
Answer: As of 2022 Shawn Mendes is worth 40 million dollars.
Question: What is Shawn Mendes’s Biggest Feat?
Answer: His biggest success is probably having had four number one hits before his 20th birthday. No other artist has done this to date.
Shawn Mendes Guitar and Gear – Summary
Though not all of his collection, these are some of the most noticeable. John Mayer also gifted him a SSS John Mayer signature Fender Stratocaster with a note that said: “enjoy”. He has also uses a Gibson Acoustic Hummingbird, and a PRS Silver Sky. And according to various social media outlets, his first-ever acoustic guitar was a Fender CD 60 Acoustic.
If you’re curious, he uses Logic Pro x (the same as me, and other musicians like Phinneas and Billie Eilish), Dunlop Tortex Standard 0,50. pickups (perfect for strumming acoustic guitar) and the Boss RC Loop Station for some solo performances.
Be it as it may, and even if Shawn Mendes is not your favourite artist, he knows his way around a guitar. He is a very well rounded musician. You would do well as to keep track and imitate his gear if you are an absolute
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