Steve Vai's Green Special

This was a custom order for Steve Vai as a gift for the one and only Steve Vai. I was asked by Brian's tech, Pete Malandrone to build this guitar. To gather spec, I was to deal directly to Steve, and we went through it in very fine detail. In fact, this guitar is a complete Steve Vai re-design of Brian's original guitar. 
The neck had to be much slimmer, so we elected to make a neck much closer to the Ibanez Jem he was used to, but still giving it a touch of RS 'heft'. It also had to have a 25.5" scale, no problem with that, but it did throw up one major problem. Once the design had been drawn, it was obvious that the body just looked far too small with this scale length. The original RS has a 24" scale. So the only way around this was to completely re-design the RS. Once done, it was far better balanced, not only cosmetically but on a strap too. Steve specified a mahogany neck with a birds-eye Maple fingerboard and simple dot inlays...I managed to gently steer him towards Yin-Yang inlays. On a one-off instrument like this, it really deserved something special...and Steve didn't want the famous 'Tree of life' inlay. He also chose a quilted maple veneer to finish the body.
The pick-guard, tremolo cover and truss rod cover were hand engraved by my good friend Greg Goodwillie. We have worked together on a few projects now and his skill is jaw dropping! The electronics were basically to be like Brian's guitar, but I added a series/parallel switch and a built in treble booster from Knight Audio Technologies. These are push button switches rather than the slider switches on the original.
The finish was to be between purple and green. Steve took a while to decide which he wanted, and finally settled on green.
Matt at Yonderbosk built the pickups, and just for fun we call them 'Vai-Sonics' rather than 'Tri-Sonics' as originally used.
Specification
  • Blockboard body with Oak core, veneered in 5A quilted Maple then bound in Ivoroid binding.
  • Mahogany neck with Birds-eye Maple fingerboard fitted with jumbo Jescar gold fretwire. The spaces between the last five frets have been scalloped.
  • Yin Yang inlays cut from tahitian black pearl, white mother-of-pearl and 9ct gold dots.
  • Aluminium scratch plate, tremolo cover and truss rod cover, hand engraved then black anodised.
  • Pickup rings are black anodised aluminium.
  • 24ct gold plated hardware kit from Cyber shop.
  • Push button switches fitted with gold/red anodised aluminium buttons.
  • Built in treble booster by Knight Audio technologies.
  • Sperzel locking machine heads fitted with Ivoroid 'tulip' buttons.
  • KAT superpot volume and Bourns tone pot.
  • Polished brass nut.