Steve Vai – The Story of Light

"For the most part, the record that I just finished is called The Story of Light, of the guitars I used usually this is the guitar I use - probably sixty percent of the time. This is Evo, which is a Jem and most people know the story of the Jem. I have a connection to it. You know, you infuse a guitar with a personality and it's based with the secrets you tell it and the DNA from your sweat and blood, and just the relationship you have with it. I know it's a very plain looking guitar but it has a lot of emotional investment in it. So it develops a personality. I mean it's just wire and wood, but you give it this personality and this is the guitar for me. It's not even the easiest guitar to play but it sounds great. It's unison. The frequencies of the wood in the body and the neck are the same, and usually that's hard to find, but that makes the notes sing a certain way. I use this a lot. I use it heavily in the album. She goes everywhere with me. I actually sleep with her sometimes. She has both an input jack and a whammy bar." says Steve Vai about his Ibanez JEM-EVO Steve Vai Electric Guitar.

"With this guitar I broke out the seven string for a bunch of tracks on this record, which I haven't done in a while. This is the one I like the most. It's the burnt seven-string. This is really a dipped guitar. There are some of them around. Ibanez made a bunch of them, and I just took a blow torch and I just burnt it up and then scraped it up, and I got this. It just has a nice tone and a nice feel. You know you go back and forth, I had trouble going back and forth from the six and seven string but now it's much easier. I use this guitar on Weeping China Doll, Valorum, and the Story of Light," explains Steve Vai about his Ibanez Universe Burned Seven-String Electric Guitar.

"These Pultec Eqs are very old, very sought after and sre probably around $7-8,000 each. When I got them years ago they were cheaper," says Steve Vai about the Pultec Program Equalizer EQP-1A which he uses in his studio equipment setup.

Steve Vai's studio rig contains an Eventide H3000S UltraHarmonizer.

We spotted a Eventide H3000-D/SX UltraHarmonizer in Steve Vai's studio rig.

An Eventide DSP4000 UltraHarmonizer is used by Steve Vai in his studio setup.

"These are really cool analog choruses because plugin choruses just don't make it for me," says Steve Vai about the TC Electronic 1210 Spatial Expander Stereo & Chorus/Flanger which he uses in his studio rig.

"These are really great compressors," says Steve Vai about the Teletronix LA-2A Leveling Amplifier which he uses in his studio setup.

An AMS DMX 15-80S Digital Delay is used by Steve Vai in his studio rig.

"These are great AMS reverbs and harmonizers. These are very old. They have a sound that you just can't get anywhere else. They have a snare, a kind of nonlinear snare sound that so many people like to use. Everyone tries to mimic it, but this is the device for it," says Steve Vai about the AMS RMX16 Digital Reverberation System which he uses in his studio rig.

"These compressors here, they're always coming on the market and you need to keep an eye for them. I kind of sometimes trade gear for them. My engineers are always looking for this kind of stuff for me," says Steve Vai about the Universal Audio 1176 LN Compressor which he uses in his studio.

"I started to have custom gear built because then it functions the way you really want it to. Steve Furlong from Inward Connections builds this stuff. This is probably one of the cleanest stereo mastering equalizers I've ever used, and I've used this on everything when I mix," says Steve Vai about the Inward Connections DEQ-1 Mastering Equalizer which he uses in his studio rig.

"Steve Furlong also built me the Vac Rac tube limiter which in itself is hard - tube limiters have a particular analog sound so they're pretty different than like brick walls and limiters. I really prefer the sound of that stuff," says Steve Vai about the Inward Connections Vac Rac Series TSL-3 Tube Limiters which is used in his studio.

"These are like summing mixers that he hand-builf for me. So when you come out of ProTools or your digital workstation you get this very clean kind of separation of tracks that then you can bust down to stereo," says Steve Vai about the Inward Connections Mix690 Summing Mixer, a system that he uses in his studio rig.

"This is really a wonderful piece, this Radial. It's because it's a spliter box. So many times I've tried to find splitter boxes that don't load down the signal or change the quality of the amplifier signals. This is th best I've found so far," explains Steve Vai about the Radial Engineering JD7 Injector Guitar Signal Distribution System which he uses in his studio rig.

"These are also called lunch pails because you can just take these various 500 series that people make and just kind of stuff them in here," says Steve Vai about the API 500V 10-slot Lunch Pail.

"These are mic pres API, they're called 500 Series because of their size. These are also called lunch pails because you can just take these various 500 series that people make and just kind of stuff them in here," says Steve Vai about the Shadow Hills Industries Mono GAMA 500 Series Mic Pres.

"These are mic pres API, they're called 500 Series because of their size," says Steve Vai about the API 325/312 Mic Preamplifier.

"This is where I work, this is my computer and I use ProTools and I load everything into here and record," says Steve Vai about the Avid Pro Tools 11 software which he uses in his studio.