Wow, this is pretty cool. You can buy Paul Westerberg’s guitar for only $160!

The Star Tribune has the story:

Boston-based six-string manufacturer First Act — whose $159 instruments caught Westerberg’s eye in a Wal-Mart a couple years ago — recently recruited the former Replacements frontman to design his own guitar for retail.

Featuring a slim body and “punk-rock plaid” pattern on its pick guard, the PW580 is already on sale at Amazon.com and will soon be available in Wal-Mart stores. Retail price: $159.

Westerberg wanted “…something not too heavy, that I could play quietly or full volume. It has a single pick-up, and it sort of snarls. It’s lean, clean, and mean, and it doesn’t have that big, overdriven, fuzzy sound. You can get that with an amp, but the guitar itself doesn’t put it out, and that’s what I was looking for. There’s a definite old-school thing—it belongs in a garage. It probably sounds best in a garage playing surf music or something like that.”

According to First Act: “The story goes that Westerberg was on tour somewhere in the middle of America, and he stopped into a mass retailer to buy shaving cream, and bought one of our crimson ME501 electric guitars on impulse, right off the shelf. He debuted the guitar onstage that night, and quickly brought it into heavy onstage rotation for the rest of the tour.”

Check out its specs. Has anybody out there actually heard a First Act guitar in action, or played one? How do they sound? Because this is a pretty cool thing. Although I’m not quite sure about that “punk rock plaid” pickguard…

Via the rope.