It was during this period that Peter Frampton acquired his famed "Phenix" guitar, the black 1954 Les Paul Custom which became his signature instrument and his favourite guitar for the next decade. Humble Pie was playing a run of shows at the Fillmore West in San Francisco in early December 1970, and during the first show Frampton was plagued by sound problems with his then-current guitar, a semi-acoustic Gibson 335, which was prone to unwanted feedback at higher volumes. After the show he was approached by fan and musician Mark Mariana, who loaned him a modified 1954 Gibson Les Paul, and by the end of the second show Frampton had become so enamoured of the guitar that he offered to buy it on the spot, but Mariana refused payment. Frampton played it almost exclusively for the next ten years. It was featured on the cover of "Frampton Comes Alive" and was thought to have been destroyed in 1980 when a plane carrying Frampton's stage equipment crashed in Venezuela during a South American tour, killing the crew, but with the guitar in fact surviving the accident with some minor damage. It was eventually returned to Frampton in 2011.