Backstage Secrets recently caught up with guitar legend Steve Vai for a round of gear and guitar talk. Following is an excerpt from the chat.

Backstage Secrets: Why did you go to Ibanez in the first place when you wanted to create the JEM?

Vai: "When I was a kid I loved Strats and Les Pauls, but they both had aspects to them that were difficult for me. I loved Strats and they had a whammy bar… and I knew I had to have a whammy bar! But they only had 22 frets and I just didn’t like the sound of those single coil pickups, they weren’t rock and roll enough for me. Les Pauls, I couldn’t really play. I liked the way they looked, but I couldn’t sit with them and they only had 22 frets, too. With none of these guitars could you reach up and play in the high register and I could never understand why these guys would make these guitars with the frets but no access to them. So it was really just an innocent desire back in 83/84 that I wanted to create my own guitar. At the time, I’d just finished my first David Lee Roth tour. I really wanted 24 frets and it was hard to find 24 frets back then. The Jacksons had them but I wasn’t keen on how they looked. So I went to this little guitar shop in Hollywood and I had this guy make me this guitar. I outlined the body, I liked the Strat shape, but wanted something a little… ‘sexier’. Strats always looked a little pedestrian to me. And just look at it! It’s sexy!"

*Steve proceeds to pull out a Seafoam coloured JEM*

"This is my original one, and I made it 24 frets and double cutaway so I can just easily play up here. It’s scalloped and feels great to play. But the pickup configuration was something I was concerned with too, because back then I loved the sound of the humbuckers but when you’re in that middle position with the strats, you get that 2 single coil sound and that was really impactive to me. So what I ended up doing was coming up with this pickup configuration with a 5 position switch that splits the coil in this position, so you get two single coils with that hot tubey/stratty sound. And it’s perfect! I have no desire for anything else, it’s everything I need. There’s no other guitar that feels nearly as comfortable. I did other things too, like this cutaway - it was the first floating tremolo system that was on the JEM, truly floating! And this silly handle… just because I can."

Backstage Secrets: Have you ever taken any ridiculous designs to Ibanez? Ideas they’ve just looked at and thought… nah.

Vai: "No, they always make whatever I want. They even push me to be even crazier! But you’d be surprised how some of the big things are easy and some of the little things are hard. For instance, I designed this guitar with Ibanez that I’m going to use on my next record. For this next record what I’m thinking of is all the songs are going to be trio based. There’s going to be three records. The first one is all very clean tones, the second is more my normal distorted tone and the third one is just this incredibly heavy, tuned-down, hard, heavy-heavy-heavy… just as heavy as I can get. Because that’s what I like! But I designed this guitar and right now they’re just calling it the Steampunk guitar and you’re not going to believe it! It’s just crazy!"

Go to this location for the complete interview.

Vai has confirmed shows in Mexico and South America for his Passion And Warfare 25th Anniversary World Tour. Dates are as follows; go to this location for ticket information.

May
25 - San Juan, Puerto Rico - Centro de Bellas Artes Lusi A. Ferre   
27 - Mexico City, Mexico - Pabellon Cuervo    
30 - Lima, Peru - Maria Angola    

June
1 - Brasilia, Brazil - Clube do Congresso    
2 - Belo Horizonte, Brazil - Music Hall   
3 - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - Imperator Centro Cultural João Nogueira   
4 - Sao Paulo, Brazil - Tom Brazil  
6 - Porto Algere, Brazil  - Auditório Araujo Viana   
7 - Curitiba, Brazil - Opera de Arame    
9 - Santiago, Chile - Teatro Cariola    
11 - Córdoba, Argentina - Plaza de la Musica  
13 - Rosario, Argentina  - Teatro El Circulo    
15 - Buenos Aires, Argentina - Estadio Luna Park