Existing comment:
"Bones," JEM Series prototype (serial no. SV 30)
1987
Performance Guitar
Steve Vai ordered this guitar and three others -- "Little Annie Fanny," "Playboy," and "Cowgirl" -- from the Performance Guitar custom shop in the late 1980s. "Bones" has a sharpened Stratocaster-style body, humbucking pickups, and a locking vibrato system, solidifying the "Superstrat" style of instrument that began with Eddie Van Halen's "Frankenstein" guitar. Vai introduced a pronounced cutaway that allows access to all twenty-four frets on the fingerboard and a floating vibrato design that could bend the strings up to around six semitones sharp. Vai later worked with Japanese guitar maker Ibanez to refine elements of the design, including a signature "monkey grip" cutout in the body for the long-running JEM series. |