From triple-neck heart-shaped electrics to the psychedelic swirls of his trademark JEMs, Steve Vai is known for his ostentatious assortment of guitars, and now the shred guru has gone the extra mile and catalogued hundreds of instruments for your viewing pleasure.
Over at Vai.com (opens in new tab), you can admire the entire collection of 300-plus instruments, which naturally spans a huge number of Ibanez prototypes and one-offs, as well as all kinds of oddities besides, including various multi-neck designs, fan-made instruments and signature models from Vai’s shred contemporaries Joe Satriani, John Petrucci and Yngwie Malmsteen.
Each guitar is assigned its own nickname and comes accompanied by background information and, in some cases, fascinating trivia.
For example, did you know the Universe prototype used to record For The Love Of God was given to Prince back in 1996? No, neither did we.
Although the majority of the guitars are in Vai’s possession, he does ask that users help him to find any missing and stolen instruments.
The virtuoso clearly has a strong bond with each of his guitars; while discussing the evolution of the Ibanez JEM, he told us, “Guitar players develop emotional attachments to an instrument. And then they create an identity for the instrument in their own head. And I’m very guilty of that.”
