Sometimes I wonder if it happened at all. Did I really see Pink Floyd play together as a foursome with Roger Waters, for the first time since their final live performance of The Wall on June 17, 1981? I know I saw it on TV as it happened. I soon had an audio recording from an FM broadcast. I then had homemade DVDs that circulated amongst collectors, and then the extraordinary Live 8 DVD set. Regardless of the documented evidence of this performance, I still feel as if we all witnessed the ultimate Floydian Dream.

David Gilmour used a variety of guitar equipment to recreate four Pink Floyd classic songs. An overview of the equipment follows.

Gilmour started the first song, "Breathe", using one of his Jedsen lap steel slide guitars that he purchased in 1968 in Seattle, Washington. Before the first verse, Gilmour switched to a black Fender Stratocaster. If anyone was wondering, this is the same guitar that Gilmour started using during the 1974 British Winter Tour. It was used on every Pink Floyd album session and live performance from 1974 to 1983. It was last played on stage during the tour to support his second solo album, About Face, in 1984. This guitar is a 1970 model. It's had a variety of necks over the years but its most recent customization is a 1957 re-issue neck. This makes sense since his fingers have been used to playing the Candy Apple Red 1957 re-issue Strat since it was purchased in 1984.

His guitar ran through a Pete Cornish custom all-tube effects pedalboard. This board was created before Gilmour's performances at the Royal Festival Hall in 2001-2002. For Live 8, the board included a Demeter Compulator as a compressor, an Electro-Harmonix Big Muff, Pete Cornish SS-2 and G-2 distortion pedals, a B.K. Butler Chandler Tube Driver, a Pete Cornish Custom Stereo Chorus that was based on a Boss CE-2 Chorus pedal and a Pete Cornish T.E.S. (Tape Echo Simulator, essentially a digital delay that is capable of simulating an analog device).

This board was supplemented by additions that included a 6-band tube equalizer and footswitches to control acoustic or electric guitar inputs and an MXR digital delay that Gilmour has been using since the Animals tour in 1977. His electric and acoustic signals ran through Evidence Audio Lyric HG cables.

For amplification, he used a pair of 1974 Hiwatt heads that guitar technician Phil Taylor purchased when he was hired to work for Gilmour that year. These Hiwatts have also been used on every Pink Floyd tour since 1974. The Hiwatts were plugged into two speaker cabinets. One was a WEM 4 x 12-inch speaker cabinet with Fane Crescendo speakers and the other was a Marshall 4 x 12-inch speaker cabinet with Celestion speakers.

During this first song, Gilmour used a Uni-Vibe, an old effect that was created to simulate the sound of a rotating speaker cabinet. For "Breathe Reprise," he ran a distortion pedal along with the Uni-Vibe. Second guitarist, Tim Renwick, played a light blue Fender Stratocaster with a tortoise shell pickguard. When Gilmour switched from the lap steel slide guitar to his black Strat, Renwick played the remaining slide guitar parts on his Strat.

The next song was "Money." Gilmour used the Pete Cornish G-2 from his pedalboard as his main distortion for this song.

"Wish You Were Here" followed, and Gilmour used a Gibson J-200 acoustic guitar. The "J" in the model number stands for 'jumbo', as this is a very large guitar. This guitar was used for live performances of this song during the 1994 tour. At the start of the song, Tim Renwick played a 12-string guitar then switched to a bass in time for the second verse of the song. Roger Waters played an Eric Clapton signature C.F. Martin acoustic guitar.

Pink Floyd closed their performance with "Comfortably Numb." The solos again made use of the Pete Cornish G-2 distortion effect from Pete Cornish's pedalboard.