“I’m just going to throw that thing in the fire”: Shinedown guitarist admits his relic’d PRS Silver Sky inspired so much “drama” that he wanted to get rid of it
When Shinedown’s Zach Myers gave his John Mayer PRS Silver Sky signature a hot pink paint job and a relic’d finish, it was treated like an act of sacrilege. While Myers loved the final product, inspired by Mayer’s beaten-up BLK1 Strat, the backlash initially made him resent his custom project.
In a new interview with MusicRadar, Myers admits that he once considered destroying the guitar by throwing it into a blaze of onstage pyro. “I was like, ‘One night I’m just going to throw that thing in the fire and let it burn to death because I’ve had [so much] drama around this guitar,’” he reveals
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Though Myers isn’t too sure who got wound up over his custom Silver Sky, Myers notes that Paul Reed Smith himself didn’t seem mad about it. “He didn’t say anything!” he explains. “He notoriously doesn’t like relics – it’s well documented, his hatred of relics. Yet it’s fine. Hey, I would never relic a flame-top guitar – I just felt the Silver Sky lent itself to that kind of cool thing.”
In the past, Myers has hinted that some of the backlash seemed to come from other members of the PRS team. This could potentially be because the company was gearing up to release Mayer’s signature in Roxy Pink in 2021, after Myers had already debuted his pink John Mayer Silver Sky onstage.
Speaking to Premier Guitar in 2022, Myers explained that he received “an upset phone call” after the company heard of the guitar. “I don’t know if it was [Mayer] that was upset – I’ll just say someone was upset that I had my own white guitar painted pink,” the guitarist explained.
“They were like, ‘Well, what if other artists want a pink guitar and you have one?’” he recalled. “If John wants to get mad, I basically just copied the BLK1. That’s really all I did! It’s exactly the same… If you’re a Mayer fan, you can probably tell.”
Myer’s tech, Drew Foppe, has publicly supported Myer’s custom Silver Sky in the past. “For people who don’t quite understand what a tribute relic job looks like, and just want to talk trash about what kind of wear and tear a guitar should or shouldn’t have… you’re missing the entire point in the first place,” he wrote.
His post shows Mayer’s BLK1 Fender Strat alongside the ‘infamous’ relic’d PRS Silver Sky. “I get some people don’t like relic guitars,” he wrote. “But to talk trash on a really, really good relic job is just ridiculous!”
“This is a TRIBUTE to the original, not just a random heavy relic job,” he continued “Some of you people have lost your dang minds to speak on something you know nothing about!”
Nowadays, Myers can look beyond the hate, explaining that his custom Silver Sky is one of his favourite axes. “It’s still one of my coolest looking guitars,” he tells MusicRadar.
The Shinedown guitarist is set to release a new signature guitar of his own very soon. He’s even played a prototype onstage at recent shows – but it’s not too dissimilar to his last signature. Rather ironically, the new release is just a paint job.
“Really, it’s pretty much the same thing as the last one – but it’s a different colour,” he says. “I believe we might have done something different with the pickups. It’s basically a different colour variation of the Myers Blue, of the last version of the Myers. It’s a cool colour, matching headstock. It’s very pretty.”
The post “I’m just going to throw that thing in the fire”: Shinedown guitarist admits his relic’d PRS Silver Sky inspired so much “drama” that he wanted to get rid of it appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
