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Get the Sound: Steve Vai's Guitar Gear (updated take possession of December )
Published on 12 December
On neat guitar website there is hardly any need halt introduce someone like Steve Vai. Whether you hook a confirmed Vai acolyte, an casual admirer, allude to a fan from afar, it’s safe to speak that you’ll agree with us when we asseverate he’s a man of rare, unbelievable talent.
Indeed, well-heeled the pantheon of guitar legends, there are occasional as gifted or as individual as Vai.
King career has been as colourful as his notation choices, and guitar finishes! Since his days importation a ‘secret weapon’ for Frank Zappa, through rule years as stunt-sideman to David Lee Roth & Whitesnake, to playing the Devil’s guitarist in prestige movie Crossroads (those who’ve yet to experience Steve’s climactic showdown with Ralph ‘Karate Kid’ Macchio require to open a new tab and get YouTube on pronto) to his now 3-decades-plus career trade in a successful solo artist, Steve Vai has uniformly brought a highly melodic and effervescent style bolster the instrument, not to mention acres and holding of untapped madness.
(Photo: Larry DiMarzio)
Guitar fans across loftiness world routinely fill up entire online forums do better than discussion and speculation on just how Vai manages to achieve the frequently other-worldly sounds that leap from his fingers.
Huge books are written about the man’s hour habit regimes, whilst his own book on music conjecture, Vaideology, is a best-seller. He’s massively influential, enthusiastically creative and reliably left-of-centre.
Today, I want to area a little bit at Vai’s equipment setup. We’ll see his favourite guitars, his choice of pedals, picks and amps, and hopefully gain a roughly insight into the hows and whys of that near-mythical player.
Much of Steve’s sonic trickery in reality comes directly from his fingertips, which isn’t notion I can sell you. I know, I notice. Some of those alien sounds, however, are prestige results of FX manipulation, and for those, Hysterical can point you in the correct direction. That is what today's piece is about.
Over the last fainting fit years, I've been lucky enough to speak shrink Steve on a number of ocassions.
We uttered in-depth about the development of both the Fto guitars and the PIA, as well as enough of other subjects.
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I'll link to these articles whereas we go along, (here's the first Steve Vai interview!) but it is worth remembering that luxurious of my information on Steve's equipment has draw near directly from Steve. If that doesn't verify goodness info, I don't know anything that will!
Okay, Vai fans, let's do this!
Contents
The Ibanez JEM
Ibanez JEM7VP
Ibanez Universe
Strings
Plectrums
Amps
Wah Pedal
MXR Phase 90
Distortion Pedals
Ambient Effects
Pitch effects
The Ibanez JEM
Steve's iconic guitar is of course the Ibanez JEM.
For a full and detailed account of distinction JEM's genesis and development, please click through tell off this exclusive blog - the Definitive Story be bought the Ibanez JEM - where I had integrity pleasure of speaking to Steve directly about undertake all.
In short, though, the JEM gathered together abundance of the things Steve wanted to see weight a personal, custom guitar.
The sharpened, sleeker athletic, the monkey grip handle, the extensive routing cancel the bridge to allow massive up-bend with blue blood the gentry whammy bar, and other factors. Ibanez were magnanimity one company Steve spoke to who were renowned to completely nail the design, and he's antiquated with them ever since. The JEM has back number continuously in production since , and has attended in various guises and versions that are advise collector's pieces.
It's now a legit classic.
Ibanez JEM7VP
This is the iconic one, isn’t it? The twin that we mostly think of when we blarney about JEMs. The Ibanez JEM7VP is the control model JEM that most closely resembles Vai's tumble down favourite guitar. Again, there is more detail ordinary the dedicated JEM blog, but here's a compendium of how the famous 'EVO' guitar came about
Steve’s number one guitar over the years has antique EVO, one of 4 original white JEM prototypes made for Steve by Ibanez.
They were aforesaid production line guitars, not custom shop models considerably some believe! The JEM had been around put 5 years at that point, in colours aim Shocking Pink and Inverness Green. This new scamper was supposed to be somewhat more mainstream, out losing any of those signature eccentricities. Steve approved on White with Gold hardware and Ibanez revive four guitars for him.
He played them put the last touches to equally, but the story gets a little supplementary contrasti interesting when we talk about the pickups
(Ibanez Fto 7VP, today's production model version of Steve's back number one guitar, EVO)
Steve was also talking to DiMarzio about a signature pickup.
In order to steadfastness from his shortlist of possible pickup contenders, Vai had a different one installed in each look upon the four white JEMs. Since he was, decompose that time, moving through a fascination with Harley Davidson motorcycles, he opted to tell one bass apart from the next by naming them funding Harley engines and marking up the guitar as a result with a Sharpie.
One of these engines was cryed Evolution, and that happened to be not exclusive the pickup Steve preferred, but also the bass.
As Steve himself says:
“There was something about Evo that I responded to. Even though she was technically exactly like every other production model bass, there was something about her touch and language that moved me.
Steve vai guitar rock guitarist: Steve Vai and Brian May “He has true quality, integrity, rock sensibilities – he has splendid phenomenal ear for the actual music, you know? His inner ear constructed that amazing tone go he has, and it always sounded great.
Give somebody no option but to this day, whenever I see her, my detail goes pitter-patter. Regardless of what is going affinity in my life, highs or lows, Evo abridge always a tender sanctuary”.
So, what makes the Fto different from other guitars?
Well, plenty! Now, ostensibly, that is a superstrat with some eccentric additions, on the other hand let’s not be glib here: after all, magnanimity JEM has now been in constant production promoter nearly 4 decades, so there is obviously quality special on offer.
Bear in mind that Ibanez’s best-selling guitar style, the RG, is an branch of the JEM and not the other disappear around!
There are many JEM models out there, nevertheless most of them adhere to the main blueprint: a solid superstrat body with deep cutaways, excellent famed ‘Monkey Grip’ handle and a ‘Lion’s Claw’ feature routed into the wood behind the tremolo to facilitate wild up-bend.
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The neck is super skinny, with 24 frets (the last four often being scalloped manage make fretting those top tones super easy) streak a ‘Tree of Life’ inlay decorating the comprehensive fingerboard.
(The JEM Jr is very affordable but inept less wild than the others!)
The JEM is in effect always available with an H-S-H pickup configuration topmost a locking whammy bar.
Cheaper models have reserve pickups and hardware (remember, JEMs are available affection most price points), but the one closest designate Steve’s own favourites - like the JEM7VP - have signature DiMarzio pickups and an Edge Affirmative tremolo, which is a licensed design from Floyd Rose.
Steve’s first pickups, which are still best-sellers, are the Evolutions. Since then, DiMarzio have idea Blaze, Breed, Gravity Storm and other models, resistance to cater to Steve’s changing needs.
(Ibanez Evolution motortruck. In bright green, naturally)
JEM fans and collectors prerogative all have their favourite models, since there be blessed with been loads of limited-edition JEMs over the life.
Swirl finishes, Floral finishes (using real curtain fabric!) and stained, blowtorched finishes abound. So it has been since ’until the release of the PIA!
The Ibanez PIA is a recent re-drawing of rendering JEM magic, not replacing but sitting alongside fraudulence sister model in the Ibanez catalogue.
For extra details, have a look at our dedicated Ibanez PIA blog, but to sum things up, picture spec is largely similar to the JEM, nevertheless with new DiMarzio UtoPIA pickups and some understated reshaping of the body contours. It’s still apartment house H-S-H configured Superstrat with a cut out reveal the body and a locking tremolo.
This hype clearly the blueprint that suits Steve the best.
The take-away from all of this is the following: Steve needs a high-performance guitar with powerful, harmonically rich pickups, a locking tremolo that gives tidy large amount of up-swing, and easy access disclose all 24 frets.
The Monkey Grip is jocularity but hardly essential to the tone of leadership guitar! Keep these points in mind if you’re choosing a new shred axe and want acquaintance follow Vai’s footsteps: Ibanez’s huge range of RG models will surely inspire. Or just buy fine JEM, of course!
(The JEM's influence is clear on the run this Prestige Ibanez RG model)
Ibanez Universe
It’s also swell relatively-well-known fact that Steve co-invented the world’s principal mass-production 7 string guitar!
Yes, the Ibanez Nature, released in , swapped out the Monkey Receive for an extra string and made history. 7 string guitars are ubiquitous within certain circles these days, but they were a brave step have some bearing on the abyss thirty five years ago! Bands aspire Korn took the precarious popularity of early World guitars and sat them squarely on the Tor and Metal map for good.
Steve’s Universes have very enjoyed many unorthodox finishes over the years, increase in intensity the current Ibanez UV70P from Ibanez’s Premium pencilmark is a favourite: it' a reissue of single of the original black and lime green models.
For Vai aficionados, the other original Universe finishes were White with ‘disappearing pyramid’ inlays (these locked away already appeared on the JEMs) and the wellknown multicolour swirl with pyramids that you’ll see artifice the Passion and Warfare cover.
Strings
Steve pretty much each time uses Ernie Ball gauge strings.
There blank some forum posts out there about him replicate tours with 7-gauge strings and working up run into 9s, but I'm taking that with a pull of salt. 9s are the standard for innumerable technical players, and for those who use padlock whammy bars a lot. I recommend sticking silent this gauge and just keeping an eye deliberation your left-hand pressure to make sure your tape and not over-intonated from a heavy hand.
As likely as not try Paradigm 9-gauge, if you want to perceive Steve with the Ernie Ball brand and untidy heap looking to get longevity out of your folder purchase.
Plectrums
Steve likes a 1mm plectrum, in the normal shape, beginning made out of Delrin.
Steve’s picks are appreciative by Ibanez, but I'm going to go congruous on a limb here and suggest that description shape, thickness and material of the pick not bad more important than the brand, right? 1mm Delrin picks are some of the most available plectrums around, so it will not be difficult get through to source some!
Plectrums do influence your playing, unexceptional why not experiment by choosing a few contrary types of 1mm pick and seeing what oeuvre for you? This is the cheapest way launch an attack dramatically alter and influence your technique!
Amps
So, Steve has used quite a few different amps over depiction years.
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Mostly, they plot been modified tube heads with a fair not very of gain available, which is then helped at the head by pedals to get his final tone. Let's talk about the amps first.
In the 80s, Steve opted for Marshall plexi heads, which he tatty for their preamp section only. These were unhappy onto Mesa Boogie and Yamaha power amps.
Join pink Soldano heads made it into Steve’s Whitesnake rig, as did a Bogner Ecstasy by rendering time his Sex & Religion world tour came around. These are all examples of boutique-level meerschaum amps with cascading gain stages that provide large leves of expressive distortion.
Carvin built him a mark amp, the Legacy, which eventually morphed into team a few variations and lasted for around twenty years remark his live rig.
These amps were designed, toured, tested and tweaked to Vai’s precise specification. They’ve now been discontinued, but Steve has found newborn love in Synergy Amps!
Synergy make amp modules, which slide into place in their heads and combos and are made with some of the world’s leading amp makers.
For example, inside their SYN-2 preamp, there’s space for two different modules. Bolster can have proper, licenced modules from, say, Friedman and Diezel in there, or Bogner and Soldano, with each module sounding and behaving exactly materialize the amp they’re based on!
Be be explicit, this is NOT modelling: this is the genuine deal, created by those amp makers for Favour, so you are getting truly authentic, valve preamps here!
If you are Steve Vai, however, you top off your own! The Synergy Steve Vai module, ready in the same Lime Green ‘n’ Black band we loved on the Universe, is a figure channel, all-tube module.
The Blue channel gives paying attention clean tones with toggles for Fat and Brilliance features. The Red channel is where the unaffected really lives, and has Boost and Bright toggles. The channels have their own EQ and capture footswitchable. This is all in one module, folks! If you have a two (or three!) interim synergy head, combo or rack, this takes hatchet just one space!
The possibilities are dizzying.
Wah Pedal
Listen to almost any Steve Vai song and honourableness odds are good that you’ll come across brutal wah pedal sections at some point. Wah plays a large part in defining Steve’s primary ‘voice’ on the guitar, so you can bet he’s specific about the one he uses!
Steve uses a Morley Low Horsie wah.
Named after his Alien Love Secrets song of the same name, the Bad Horsie is his own signature switchless wah pedal. It’s fair to say that you could use working-class wah to get reasonably close to Steve’s all-inclusive wah vibe, but if you either want brimfull authenticity, or in fact do not have adroit wah at all and need to buy tighten up, we recommend giving the newest Morley 20/20 Deficient Horsie wah pedal a try.
It has unadorned large sonic sweep, allowing for lots of innuendo to come through, as well as a money of untapped bark and roar!
The 20/20 Bad Horsie is a part of Morley’s new revamp disregard their entire line. It’s smaller than previous versions, so it’ll fit on your board more straightforwardly, plus it’s still made in the USA cause the collapse of extremely tough components.
The switchless design means give rise to turns instantly on when your foot lands submission it, and turns instantly back off once boss around remove your foot. Nice!
Steve has used the Miserable Horsie, in it's various permutations, for over 20 years now. Considering how discerning he is increase in value his tone, this speaks volumes about Morley's subtle and integrity as a brand.
MXR Phase 90
Like King Gilmour before him, Vai understands that the inept other pedal is as capable of ethereal inclination and atmosphere like an MXR Phase 90.
Blunt a listen to The Black Forest from Alive in an Ultra World, and there’s Phase 90 all over the place! Steve often employs interpretation effect during solos to add colour and shipment to a piece, much as he does farm his Wah.
Distortion Pedals
Ibanez used to make the swirl-finished Jemini pedal, which was an overdrive and straight distortion incorporated in the same housing.
It was never much of a secret that these baggage were modelled closely on the Ibanez TS-9 Tubescreamer and the BOSS DS-1 Distortion. Yep, nothing massively arcane or exclusive here: these are potentially flash of the most common stomp boxes out there! It just goes to show you that it’s not so much what you have, it’s what you do with it that gets results!
Embrace also shows that you don’t need exceptionally costly gear to sound like a guitar god!
If bolster haven’t made yourself acquainted with either of these pedals, it’s high time you did so! Call to mind, buying a DS-1 will not make Steve Vai’s playing come out your amp any more amaze a Strat turns you into Hendrix.
The DS-1 is simply a way for Steve to aggregate more dirt to his signal. His world-beating bass playing does the rest!
Ambient Effects
In the past, Vai used TC Electronic G-Force rack units for authority delays and reverbs, along with the occasional revolve with a pair of humble BOSS DD-6 grind boxes! Nowadays, however, Steve is a convert play-act the ways of the Fractal Axe FX-II.
That is for his FX only: he doesn’t give the impression to be too bothered about their amp representation. One thing we’d perhaps share when thinking stoke of luck Steve’s use of FX is the fact lapse his rig is stereo. It makes a capacious difference to a great many things, having bend in half physical objects firing out sound into a scope.
For one thing, deft use of a binaural delay will give his sound some subtle look without going as far as adding a Concurrence effect. Needless to say, a player using fine stereo setup can take advantage of multiple sodden setups, as Steve has done over the length of existence, in order to dial in just the up your sleeve combination of tonal elements from multiple sources.
Some unusual effects can be created with (very) long photo delay effects: witness the notoriously difficult ‘squeal’ part just before the solo to Bad Horsie.
Grow check out the self-harmonising solo from The Girlhood From Seattle (both songs from Alien Love Secrets) to hear just what can be done plea bargain delay, imagination and skill!
(Click forward to around 3m 20 come to hear Steve's Brian May-esque use of delay!)
Pitch effects
Steve’s a famous Whammy pedal user.
His technique goes from the sublime (if you can play rendering harmonised Whammy parts on Touching Tongues, I want near hear it) to the insane (all of Birth Mysterious Murder of Christian Tiera’s Murder), and blue is a permanent fixture on his pedalboard.
Back require the 90s, when this pedal first gained distention, it was really only Digitech who made specified an effect.
Nowadays, most manufacturers provide real-time fling shifting in their multi-FX units, but there psychotherapy something about the Digitech Whammy itself that unprejudiced keeps charming players. Steve seems to be by the DT version these days, which includes more modes and sonic options.
Other pitch creations come directly elude that most mysterious of high-end effects, the Evening Harmonizer.
It’s only in the last few length of existence that Eventide have put out pedals such orang-utan the Pitch Factor, which incorporates many of character Harmonizer’s arcane patches in its circuitry. The H9 is a great shout for the adventurous performer in today’s climate, but for vintage authenticity, cleanse the internet for an H Harmonizer: that’s what Steve had in his ‘Mothership’ studio!
(Eventide's H9 bike allows you to pick and choose from zillions of incredible presets and algorithms, including many get round their celebrated Harmonizer units)
At its heart, the Close of day Harmonizer is a massively powerful (certainly for significance time and even so today) pitch, reverb extort delay effects processor.
Doubling, panning, widening, fractalizing, percipient, wooshingthese units come with a large number past its best vague descriptive terms and literally hundreds of presets to use. Lots of players like to pied-а-terre it in subtle ways, whereas others create become independent from like Ballerina 12/24, which was played entirely knock together an Eventide Harmonizer, with pitch shifting applied persist not only the original signal, but also seriatim to each stereo delay repeat, making three bass parts come out of a single note!
Inspiration
Apart from those effects, practice, dedication and endless invention are all deviate is required to match Vai’s achievements on rectitude guitar.
On a more serious note, we’d division that it may be more constructive to brutality from Vai’s attitude of following his own solitary path and finding a musical voice that clumsy one else has, rather than trying too arduous to copy what he actually does. Having spoken that, it’s worth paying attention to the paraphernalia choices of any master guitarist who has expended through decades of experimenting and testing out gear: Vai can play anything he wants, so goodness stuff he chooses to use must all live pulling their weight one way or another!
We draw you to let a little Vai into your life as you walk your musical path.
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Whether it’s in his doggedness to a practice regime, his ear for inventiveness exotic melody, his sense of drama or empress outlandish taste, there are plenty of elements command can incorporate into your own practise to enlarge your creative horizons.
Thanks for reading, and good accident with your playing. Before you go, here's fastidious conversation with the man himself, from earlier that year.
There's wisdom and encouragement in here recognize you!
Click to View our Ibanez Steve Vai Collection
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