Steve Vai,Joe Satriani,Paul Gilbert: ultimate Ibanez signature artist trio



For Vai and Satriani, their signature models have evolved, but haven't gone through as much of a change as Paul Gilbert's model. As he explains, "About 10 years ago, I was talking to a really good friend of mine at Ibanez and said, 'Yeah, I've been thinking up some ideas for a new guitar.' And he said, 'Paul, if you could just do one thing for us, just stick with an existing body style. Don't make it in the shape of an elephant or something. Go to the catalog, take something we already make – anything else you can do.' Of course, this immediately set my irreverent mind to work and I took an Ibanez Iceman, which has always been one of my favorite, cool-looking, pointy guitars, and I put it in Photoshop and flipped it upside down. At the time I was sort of having a rediscovery of some of my childhood guitar heroes and one of them was Frank Marino. I went to see Frank Marino and he had an SG with three single-coils in it. I'd never even used single-coils before, so I got together with DiMarzio and they helped me find the single-coil of my dreams. Frank Marino had also angled the pickup backward, sort of like the left-handed Hendrix guitar. I thought maybe there's something to that. So I did that in Photoshop and I thought those would look kind of cool if they went with it. I don't know if it'll sound any good, but it looks cool."


Vai adds, "Isn't that the important thing?" Paul laughs, "Half the battle right there. So it turned out to sound great. Really, almost by accident I came up with a guitar I just really, really love. So, in addition to the PGM, they've been able to evolve into the opposite of the Iceman, the Fireman – a pun in the title, which pleases me no end. And so that is my newest model. I'm digging this one. I've been playing it for almost 10 years now."  full article  http://gc.guitarcenter.com/interview/vai-satriani-gilbert/

Comments