If you've seen 2021 Eurovision Song Contest winners Måneskin perform, you've probably seen their electric guitar player, Thomas Raggi, wielding a relic'd Custom Shop '63 Fender Stratocaster with a heavily-aged Red Sparkle finish.
It's a cool guitar, one that certainly matches the Italian quartet's retro, visually loud image (and, of course, their spunky music). It's not, however, Raggi's favorite guitar, as it turns out.
In a new interview with Guitar World, Raggi revealed that his number one six-string isn't that Custom Shop beauty – it's a Squier.
Raggi certainly enjoys the Red Sparkle model, but, he pointed out to GW, "To be honest, my main guitar is a Squier, not a Strat.
"It’s one of the older ones from Japan," he explained. "I used to play only Fender Strats. To me, a Stratocaster is like a complete instrument. I love how you can play funk and rock and metal with a Strat. It’s a very comfortable instrument, too, so that’s pretty great."
There aren't a ton of recent examples of Raggi playing the Squier Strat model, but you can see him use it at around the 9:10 mark of the This Is Måneskin documentary below.
In the Guitar World chat, Raggi also discussed some of his formative guitar influences, particularly his fellow Strat aficionado, John Frusciante, who Raggi says "gave me a lot of ideas in [terms of] how I would handle my own job as the sole guitarist in a band."
"I paid a lot of attention to the way he could play rhythm and lead with such feel and creativity," Raggi explained. "He’s just sick."
To read the full interview with Raggi – in which he and Måneskin's bass guitar player, Victoria De Angelis, discuss the band's meteoric rise, reveal some of their other main influences, and more – pick up the latest issue of the mag via Magazines Direct.
