As the old saying goes, “Necessity is the mother of invention,” and that’s exactly what happened for Fender and Ed O’Brien.

The Radiohead guitarist has played a Stratocaster since he first picked up a Squier model in 1986, and his main instrument since 1996 was actually an Eric Clapton Strat. So, it was pretty typical to see O’Brien with a Stratocaster in his hands while on stage.

But when his band began to trend away from their typical rock sound towards more electronic music with the album Kid A in 2000, O’Brien found himself at a crossroads with his six-stringed friend.

“Guitars were sort-of being damned and keyboards were being bought and played,” O’Brien noted. “I thought, ‘What am I going to do here? How can I use a guitar but make it not necessarily sound like a traditional guitar?’”