Roope Latvala
Roope Latvala's Guitars
A very beat down CS Rhoads introduced in a Finnish music magazine 'Rumba'. Very similar to his main axe from '87 custom shop, just with a single coil neck pickup, tone control and a pickup switch, 24 frets instead of 22, scalloped last four frets and a sanded down neck.
Includes Jackson JE-1000 active electronics that provides 12 dB boost that drives any amp to distortion. He says that the tone control is basically redundant (since he played a lot of RR's with only bridge pickup and single volume control).
He also mentions in the notes of the picture that his first guitar with Floyd Rose floating bridge was a Kramer Baretta and he's been a Floyd guy ever since.
He points out that at the time of the article, he was playing in Eb standard tuning, which was what his band Stone played in (must have been around '90 or '91 since Stone switched to that tuning for 'Colours' album and kept it on Emotional Playgrounds album). The strings he used were a set of .12-.54.
The serial number is very hard to see in the photo to identify the guitar exactly from Jackson Custom Shop logs (Jackson Guitar Palace website has some logs inlcuding Roope's sold RR2073 and the one made in the same order for Jiri Jalkanen, RR2074 the white beveled Rhoads with the same specs, that he later sold to Alexi Laiho), but there's no certainty of this one. Latvala said on a video he's been playing this one for 15 years already.
This guitar can be seen on the video from a Finnish guitar clinic in Lahti in 2001, where Latvala and Laiho play some Sinergy and Stone, Children of Bodom and Ozzy Osbourne songs and promote the RR/LL "signature" custom order run to Jackson by Musamaailma. 51 guitars were made only for Finnish market and had vaguely similar specs than the infamours custom shop black and yellow RR's of Latvala and Laiho.
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This video from EMGBackstage is an interview with Roope Latvala's guitar tech Antti Harma. Antti starts out the tour of Roope's rig with his ESP Signature Guitar, the ESP RS-II.
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"This is probably my most legendary axe. I played this for about 15 years, mainly all the time. It's got a lot of feeling. As you see, it's pretty worn out."
(The quote actually refers to the other black and yellow RR with 24 frets and a neck pickup, very similar looking though. This one had no single coil and only 22 frets and was sold to a Dice of Fate guitarist from Finland.)
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"Same, Jackson Custom Shop, late 80s. Truly a heavy metal guitar...as you see, nice tiger thing [pointing to back of flamed maple neck]. 24 number of frets and tilt neck."
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" ESP Custom, made for myself. It has the old Jackson specs, I guess."
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Guitarist Roope Latvala is associated with a 1987 Jackson RR Custom White guitar, as detailed on his archived website. This guitar features an alder body with a Randy Rhoads offset V-shape, a Jackson J-50-BC pickup in the bridge position, a single volume control, and chrome Original Floyd Rose hardware. It boasts a neck-thru maple design with a 25.5" scale, white plastic binding on the neck and headstock, Jackson reverse sharktooth inlays, and an ebony fingerboard with 24 jumbo frets.
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Roope Latvala shows the camera his guitar collection. Among them is his "Black Metal Guitar" as he calls it. The model is actually a Charvel Model 1.
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In this video of Children of Bodom's guitarist Roope Latvala's guitar collection, he displays a B.C. Rich USA Warlock.
"B.C. Rich...I respect the body, it's really nice. It's the only guitar that the pawn shops have taken from me! This is also a neck-thru, everything made in US. It's got a Les Paul scale so that's why I haven't been using it too much, it's got kind of a girly touch." - Roope Latvala
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In this video of Children of Bodom guitarist, Roope Latvala, he shows us one of his first guitars. This model is a Yamaha c40 Classical Guitar.
"Classical...the only one. I got this when I was 13 years old. Still plays good. Don't have the nails, I haven't been practicing much classical lately, but I do have one." - Roope Latvala
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"It says over here [on back of headstock] 'ESP'. It's ESP wood. It's my only guitar that is able to create some clean sound [laughs]."
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