ouch, yeah let's reopen old wounds...
roughly 1989-1990ish - Through a lengthy story involving a NAMM show, a large Australian distributor, a bag of blow... two of five early Ibanez prototypes made for Steve Vai made their way to Australia. One made it to my local music store. I picked it up and hated it. Too thin, kinda weird. The following day there was a torrential downpour and I sought refuge in aforementioned music store. I decided to try it again just for shitsngiggles. Suddenly I loved it. Paid for it with money I didn't have. It soon became like an appendage to me.
Making maters worse, this was the time when "Ultrasonic" pickups were available. If you missed it, some factory in Europe retooled and made these amazing passive pickups that were as quiet and flat response as actives. Even were potted like actives. The stock pickups were a bit lame, but once I installed the Ultrasonics, it gained a wonderful full response, and no noise on stage or in studio. Awesome pickups. If I recall, only in production for like 3 years.
Thing was, it was so thin and a bitch on the road. Had to set up truss rod every time we moved more than 100ks to a gig.
So in 1992 when a career in Asia beckoned, I knew I had to find a good home for it. Coming from a cold dry mountain climate in Australia to hot and humid tropical Singapore would probably have f$cked up good and proper.
I have photos (in a drawer in Thailand now) but I should post them in a few weeks when I get back.
I heard later Vai didn't like the design of the prototype and wanted to go a different direction - which became the Jem series. Around the same time, Frank Gambale started to sport an Ibanez signature model - a yellow version of the prototype I owned.
A light weight, tiny, comfortable and superfast ultrathin (but unstable) and flat neck and for reasons I never could understand, sounded bigger than it had a right to (with the right pickups).
If the story sounds incredible, read on...
My mate Michael Mamontov (one of the worlds best unknown guitarists and student of Frank Gambale back before Frank made the now famous pilgrimage to GIT) loved my guitar so much he took it to a luthier to copy it. And copy it with a micrometer he did. So when he tried to install the Ibanez locking nut, he found it was like 1/16th or 1/8th too narrow for the neck nut width. He called the Ibanez distributor who came back a week later with the reply:
"We don't make locking nuts that wide. we only ever spun 5 of them for prototypes for Steve Vai"
I heard that it passed hands around the music community in Canberra Australia for a while, but no idea where it could be now.
In hindsight, I wish I could have come to an arrangement for it to remain with someone I could get it back from. Sigh.
