Steve Vai is a virtuoso guitarist, visionary composer, and consummate producer who sculpts musical sound with infinite creativity and technical mastery. At age 12, he started taking guitar lessons from Joe Satriani. At 18, he began his professional musical career transcribing for, and then playing with, the legendary Frank Zappa. More than three decades, 15-million in album sales, and three GRAMMY Awards later, Vai has proven himself, in his own right, one of music's true originals.
Vai's signature instrument, the Ibanez JEM guitar, was originally designed in 1985 with first-of-its-kind features including the floating tremolo and the monkey grip. The JEM is now one of the longest running, most successful signature series guitars in history.
A meranti body adds a certain level of warmth and sustain to the tone of the instrument. It features Vai's signature monkey grip handle and a lion's claw rout behind the tremolo system.
The Wizard III Maple neck is only 19mm at the 1st fret, built for speed and technically adept players, this neck will happily accommodate the more fleet-fingered guitarist. The fretboard is made from Jatoba and features the Tree of Life Inlay. The Wizard neck is paired with a Double Locking tremolo bridge for great tuning stability.
Equipped with Quantum pickups in a H-S-H configuration and a 5-way selector switch this pickup configuration is versatile enough for a wide range of musical styles, but will offer you the output needed for playing more gain heavy musical styles.
Features
- Body: Meranti
- Neck: Wizard III Maple neck
- Fretboard: Jatoba w/Tree of Life inlay
- Jumbo frets
- Double Locking tremolo bridge
- Neck pickup: Quantum (H)
- Middle pickup: Quantum (S)
- Bridge pickup: Quantum (H) bridge pickup
- Cosmo black hardware