Hahahah I loosen the locking pads all the time without taking them off to tune a Floyd guitar. I only take the pads off when changing strings. I have this stupid OCD thing where I need the fine tuners to be dead center if I pick it up and see they’re off, so I’ll just loosen the pads and tune it at the headstock.
This is a pretty cool story that started off seemingly going nowhere, only for a 180 to pop up towards the end, leaving a bit of a cliffhanger!
I’m anxious for this book to come out and for once, my nerding-out on gear may have actually paid off in that I was able to give Jeorenn and Mikey some history on EVO that’ll be going into the book. (Non-Vai/JEM fans can stop here cuz this going to get hardcore nerdy)
The JEM7V production models all came with ebony fingerboards until they started making them with rosewood boards in the 00’s. Someone asked Vai why at one point and he simply said he couldn’t tell the difference between rosewood and ebony. EVO has had multiple necks on it over the years and after seeing closeup shots of the neck that was smashed in Australia in ‘97, I realized it had a rosewood board, so I got a hunch that EVO has only ever had rosewood boards and never had an ebony one, despite the production models all having ebony.
I’ve been friends with Roger Bell, Vai’s former tech, for quite a while via FB so I hit him up to see how much he remembered from his Vai days. Turns out he remembers quite a bit and actually still owns the very first neck EVO came with, along with the Pogo JEM (Ibanez sent Vai 5 JEM7V’s when they were working on the Evolution pickups, Pogo and EVO were 2 of those 5) that Vai gave him at the end of the Sex And Religion tour. EVO’s very first neck warped so he had to change it, I’ve got pics of the original neck….with a rosewood board. It then got the neck that was seen on all the promo shots of Vai from ‘93-‘97 (black Ibanez logo without the word JEM written on the headstock), this was the neck that got smashed in Australia and was swapped out for a black headstock/pink vine inlay neck that Vai had on it for a few years, then swapped it out for a few others until settling on the one that’s currently on it.
Conclusion being, EVO has never had an ebony fingerboard. The choice to use ebony was an aesthetic choice made by Ibanez and the switch to rosewood was done to match what Vai was actually using the entire time.
Someone started discussing it in a JEM FB group and Jeorenn and Mikey joined in, where I unloaded all the pics and confirmation from Roger. I don’t mind if I don’t get any credit for it because it was just a fun rabbit hole for me to go down, but it’ll be pretty cool to see how it works it’s way into the book they’re working on.
www.jemsite.com
www.vai.com
