Session guitar pro explains why he played a used $99 Squier Strat from Guitar Center on a chart-topping album

Tom Strahle is truly a top-tier session guitarist, with an IMDB credit page – featuring his work in TV, film, and video games – that's about as long as a Proust novel.  

Strahle certainly has all the tools he needs for any job – including a Fender American Standard Stratocaster with noiseless pickups that he says is his main electric guitar for live performances. 

When he was called in to lend some six-string spice to Justin Bieber's E.T.A., however, Strahle passed over his trusty American Standard in favor of a different Strat – a $99 Squier from Guitar Center.

“I was just looking for something that had a spanky, almost nasal-y [sound] – like a guitar that [has] a head cold,“ Strahle explained to Paul Davids in a recent interview.

OK, sure, but Strahle must have modified the hell out of the Squier from its Guitar Center condition, right? 

“It's all stock except that I took the volume knob off,“ Strahle demonstrates in the video above. “What you're hearing [on E.T.A.] are the strings that came with it – they were five years old.“

Despite the humble origins of the guitar it was played on, Bieber and his team – who had asked for something with “gospel/R&B vibes“ – loved Strahle's playing, using much more of what the guitarist submitted than he expected on the final track, which would later appear on Bieber's chart-topping 2020 LP, Changes.

Strahle, of course, isn't the only guitarist to use a Squier for a much-heard song.

To name just one example, Thomas Raggi – guitarist for the Eurovision-conquering Italian rock band Måneskin – told Guitar World last year that his “main guitar“ was still a Squier, despite the fact that he also owns a Custom Shop '63 Strat with a heavily-aged Red Sparkle finish.

Mike Rutherford, meanwhile, used $200 Squier Bullet Strats onstage during the final Genesis tour.

There are plenty of examples of players using cheap gear elsewhere, too: earlier this year, a guitarist played a $40 Harley Benton Strat copy every night of a 113-date arena tour.

You can read about yet more cheap gear aficionados in our guide to 19 pro guitarists who play cheap guitars.