“I set about them with a wood burner”: Pat Metheny reveals he asks Ibanez to send him “cheap” versions of his own signature guitar – to turn them into artworks

A world-class guitarist rarely asks a brand for cheap versions of his own signature model… just to turn them into sculptural artworks. However, that's exactly what Pat Metheny enjoys doing in his free time – the little he has between launching a record label, Uniquity Music, and releasing a new album, Side-Eye III+, that is.

“I get Ibanez to send me these cheap, $400 PM35s, the budget version of my signature model, and tell them not to put any finish on them,” the guitarist recently told Prog. “Then I set about them with a wood burner in various ways.”

As for whether Ibanez knows about this (ahem) side quest, Metheny responds, “They know how weird I actually am, so it probably wouldn’t surprise them. I paint too; I do a lot of odd stuff. But I have no interest in sharing my artistic output with anyone.”

Sculptural art aside, Metheny also has another job title on his resume – being a D'Addario “string tester.”

“We do a great deal of testing with our artists,” CEO Jim D'Addario disclosed last year. “I’m not going to say that some are ‘better’ at it, but they’re more valuable testers because they actually take a more objective and scientific approach to evaluating what you’re asking them to test.”

Turns out the jazz virtuoso, who has repped the brand since 1982, is one such tester, because, as he astutely puts it, he takes great pride in investigating the “possibilities of strings and what they can be.”