Robert Fripp

King Crimson's founder and only constant member, and the player who made rigour sound like violence. Across the band's first run his rig barely changed: a three-pickup Gibson Les Paul Custom bought on Shaftesbury Avenue in the late sixties, a Hiwatt DR103 with the normal and brilliant channels jumpered so a famously clean amp sat on the edge of a snarl, a germanium fuzz he would name as his own preference, and for years little else -- he has said a cheap volume pedal was the finest he ever found, and that for a while it was the only effect he used live. The tone that came out of it is dark and hornlike rather than bright and aggressive, built on the neck pickup with the tone rolled back, and it made 1974's Red one of the most-cited guitar records of its decade. He has played in New Standard Tuning since the mid-eighties and runs a Fractal-based rig today.