What ever happened to the Floyd Rose sporting, multi humbucker equipped, skinny necked, widdly widdly eighties Vai/Satriani type guitars? Of late Ibanez and Jackson seem to be the only ones still carrying the torch for the formula one cars of the guitar world. Nowadays it seems we have returned to vintage everything with a side order of relic and quirk….is quirk a word?
I can see why people got piddled off with Floyds…sorry Steve…you have all the hassle of having to carry around a tool kit to change a string, you have a complex chunk of metal as large as a small fridge balanced on the equivalent of two Stanley knife blades over a hole in your guitar body so large mist forms around it’s rim like a jungle sink hole! Yes it stays in tune while you do impressions of defective space invader machines and swanny whistles…….the trouble is that any well set up Strat bridge with a roller nut and locking machine heads will do nearly as well without the downside.
Yet all in all I rather mourn the fall from grace of the Monkey Grip and the wanky wallpaper finishes….the cheap Perspex pyramid position markers and ghastly dayglo pickup covers. There is a new seriousness in music that eschews frippery and humour….a new breed of rock and metal bands that would never dream of calling an album OU812, Eat ‘em and Smile or Slippery When Wet!
So I want a ‘widdly beast'….if only for old times sake…to wipe away fears of recession with remembrances of poodle rock and eighties excess. To play in the bedroom while pretending I could still get away with snakeskin PVC jeans……I want an Ibanez Jem 77 Floral with a Wizard neck and ‘tree of life’ inlays….Of course for gigging I’ll still use my Strat….or whatever other six string mistress I’m flirting with at the time….but I want a bit of guilty pleasure….a bit of Super Strat on the side!
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