Peter Capaldi has shared the story of the oddball Yamaha electric guitar that he famously played in several episodes of cult sci-fi show Doctor Who – before it mysteriously went missing.
He reimagined the two-hearted, time-traveling alien as not only a Time Lord, but as a Riff Lord as well. Indeed, his Doctor was a guitarist – and that much became clear during The Magician’s Apprentice, when Capaldi stood atop a tank with an oddball Yamaha.
It was a quirky six-string choice befitting an equally quirky character, and in a new post on social media, Capaldi has shared the backstory of the guitar – which, unsurprisingly, has a quirky story all of its own.
Alongside a picture of himself trying the guitar out at Hanks Vintage guitar shop in London in 2014, Capaldi remembered, “I’d suggested that it might be fun if Dr Who played the electric guitar. I imagined he could plug it into the Tardis console and play very loudly and badly like a teenager.
“The most fun we had was finding his guitar. On 17 Dec 2014, director Daniel O’Hara, producer Derek Ritchie and myself hit Tin Pan Alley, Denmark Street, where once songwriters beavered away in Dickensian rooms pounding out what they hoped would be hits.”
Capaldi first wanted a Telecaster for the job, but since they rarely come equipped with whammy bars – an essential spec for a Doctor Who guitar, it was concluded – it was quickly struck off the list. The hunt went on, until they came across an obscure Yamaha.
“Eventually in Hanks we came across this beauty,” he continues. “It has a whammy bar, mock pearl scratch plate, and funny switches, all of which conspire to give it a junk shop aura. It is, for the guitar geeks out there a Yamaha SVG300 guitar.
“I liked it because it looks like someone has had a Fender Stratocaster described to them and then gone off and built their own version. Perfect. And it had a tremolo arm. I loved it.”
Capaldi took the SVG300 to set and used it in the opening sequence for The Magician’s Apprentice – the first episode of the show’s ninth season, which aired in September 2015.
True to his plans, he would go on to play it across seasons nine and 10, with the guitar and Capaldi’s chops featuring in episodes such as Before The Flood, The Bootstrap Paradox, Hell Bent and The Zygon Invasion.
However, once filming stopped, the SVG300 went missing. And Capaldi, still to this day, has no idea where it is.
“I used it for two seasons of Dr Who and then, it disappeared,” he concludes. “I don’t know where it went. Vanished in time and space.”
Capaldi’s ties to the guitar were once explored in a BBC interview, in which the actor quips, “[The Doctor] probably helped Jimi Hendrix figure out how to work with feedback and built a valve amp. Jimi probably showed him a few licks.”
The Doctor’s fictional connection to Hendrix has been explored in the past. Back in 2021, Capaldi said he conceived an episode where the Doctor invented the wah pedal and presented it to Hendrix.
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