“Whoever makes me the best one, that’s who I’ll work with”: Steve Vai says no guitar company delivered anything “remotely close” to what he wanted at first – “not even Ibanez”
Steve Vai has revisited the origin story of his long partnership with Ibanez – and the years before it, when no guitar maker, including Ibanez themselves, could build a six-string that met his needs.
Speaking on the Metal Sticks podcast with Iron Maiden’s Nicko McBrain, Vai explains how iconic guitar templates like the Stratocaster and Les Paul felt “very limiting” to him even as a teenager in the ‘70s.
READ MORE: “We’re kinda frozen at 14 years old”: Steve Vai explains why he and Joe Satriani are still so enthusiastic about playing guitar
“I was a teenager in the ‘70s, and I loved Strats and Les Pauls, but there was something about them that was very limiting,” says the guitarist. “I loved Strats because they had a whammy bar, but they weren’t – I know I’ll get in trouble for this – but they weren’t heavy metal instruments to me. The single coil pickups never really seemed to deliver the rock tone that I wanted. So, Les Pauls were great, they had the rock tone, but they didn’t have a whammy bar, and I didn’t like the way they sat.”
Working with Frank Zappa later on and watching the late legend treat guitars as modifiable machines also changed his perspective on the instrument.
“Once I started working for Zappa, I noticed that he was very irreverent about guitars,” says Vai. “He would drill into them. He would put different pickups. He had a Jimi Hendrix Strat that Jimmy burned, and the first thing he did was rip the pickups out, and put all these electronics in. So, I realised then that you don’t have to be limited.”
Inspired, Vai headed to a small guitar shop and began sketching out what will eventually evolve into the JEM.
“It was really just an innocent kind of desires, like, ‘Can you make me a guitar? I want 24 frets, which was different for Strat-style guitars at that time; nobody had them. And I wanted the cutaway so my hand could fit. I could never understand why these guitars, like Strats and Les Pauls, have these little cutaways and you can’t get to the high frets.”
He continues, “And then I wanted the pickup configuration a particular way that was actually unique at the time. And the whammy bar, I wanted to be able to pull way, way, way up. And no guitars could do that. So, I just took a look at the tailpiece, and I realised, well, it’s not going up because this wood is in the way. So I banged out the wood. And next thing you know, that was the beginning of real floating tremolos.”
As for Ibanez, Vai reveals that the relationship didn’t begin with him pitching the company; if anything, it was the opposite.
“At the time, I was touring with Dave [Lee Roth], and I needed quality instruments,” he says. “I only had four of these made, and all the guitar companies at the time, were obviously interested in having you play their guitars. And I said, ‘Well, I play this one. Whoever makes me the best one, that’s who I’ll work with.’”
“And nobody delivered even remotely close to what I wanted. Not even Ibanez, until finally, I said, ‘No, this is what I want, make this,’ and they made that guitar, and that became the JEM, and Ibanez were the only ones that could really pull it off, and they did it beautifully. And we’ve had this amazing relationship for close to 40 years.”
The post “Whoever makes me the best one, that’s who I’ll work with”: Steve Vai says no guitar company delivered anything “remotely close” to what he wanted at first – “not even Ibanez” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
