"This was a guitar that I actually had made for the Experience Hendrix tour. I had two of them. I hand painted this. The thing about it is it was a tip-of-the hat to Jimmy because he had painted his Monterey guitar and it was very psychadelic - 60s psychadelic. So I thought, 'what can I do that's kind of like 2000 psychadelic.' And I took Sharpies and I just painted this trying to make my version of contemporary psychadelic would be. My son put his hand on there (in the back) and I got lyrics and all this. I was so proud of it and I showed it to my wife. She said 'it looks like a 12 year-old girl painted it,' and I said 'oh no.' Then I went and told her 'screw you, haha.' That's the cherry blossom guitar. Now, Jems have the scallop on the top. I like that because you get up here, and these frets, it's pretty hard to grab the string when they're that small. Now in trying to achieve a sound similar to Hendrix, I was doing this Hendrix tour, and well you can't really get that sound because it was all in his fingers, but anyway I wanted that single coil sound so I had them make me these single-coil pickups which are very traditional to Stratocasters. Usually I like rosewood boards. The maple mix has a little more of a warmth to it, and they don't bite as much, but you don't need that when you're using a single-coil pickup because they're so bright,' explains Steve Vai about his Ibanez Strat-Style Solid Body W/ Custom Paint "Cherry Blossom" Electric Guitar.