“Sneaky hidden Sustainiac!” Joe Satriani is playing an EVH Striped Series Eruption guitar on the Best of All Worlds tour – but it’s had some surprise mods
Last month, Satch was spotted rehearsing with his new bandmates – Sammy Hagar, Michael Anthony and Jason Bonham – playing an EVH guitar.
It prompted the question whether Satriani would swap his Ibanez signature guitar for something more befitting the Van Halen material the Best of All Worlds group is planning to play.
With Hagar and Roth-era songs set to feature on the tour setlist, a guitar switch to further harness the Van Halen tone is a no-brainer.
Now, Satch has shared a snap on social media that confirms he will play an EVH guitar alongside his Ibanez models, but take a closer look: that EVH Striped Series model he’s holding is absolutely wild.
Why? Well, look at the mods. Satch has transformed Van Halen’s humble one-humbucker workhorse into a state-of-the-art example of modern guitar electronics, equipping it with a neck Sustainiac pickup and a raft of new switches and buttons.
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There are three new toggle switches on the modded model, which will likely serve as On/Off, Mode, and pickup selector functions. It looks like there’s also a new button to contend with. A kill switch, perhaps? Or another parameter to control a tone function?
Whatever the case, it's certainly grabbed attention: Dweezil Zappa, the king of crazy guitars, commented, “Sneaky hidden sustainiac!”
The radical guitar begs the question: what exactly does Satch plan to use the Sustainiac for? Well, it’s more than likely he will be using it to aid him as he shreds through the Van Halen tracks.
Eddie Van Halen himself was known to have dabbled with the Fernandes Sustainer pickup, especially on later Van Halen tours. Having said that, it was always his Peavey Wolfgang models – rather than his Frankenstein – that came fitted with such an appointment.
The video above, for example, shows him using the pickup to tap through an improvised interlude solo.
Given Satch will be tasked with tackling multiple Van Halen eras, it’s understandable he’d want one guitar that could do it all, rather than opting for a handful of additional models that would require more guitar switching.
This way, the Best of All Worlds crew can get creative with the setlist, and bounce from one VH era to the next without Satch having to pick up a separately spec’d guitar.
(Image credit: Debra L Rothenberg/FilmMagic/Getty Images)
Not only that, Satch is a big personal fan of the Sustainiac – a few of his Ibanez signature models have them fitted – and since the group will also be performing some material from Chickentfoot (his own supergroup with Hagar and Anthony), a sustainer-fitted instrument makes sense.
It's yet more evidence of how seriously Satch is taking this gig. Indeed, he's paying closing attention to dialling in a faithful EVH sound.
“My rig doesn't work because my live rig is designed so that I can play above the 12th fret on the first strings and still have everything sound fat,” he once told Guitar World. “I realized there's no way to play the Van Halen stuff on my rig; it's a different animal.”
The Best of All Worlds tour kicks off on July 13. Visit Sammy Hagar's website for more information.
Matt is a Senior Staff Writer, writing for Guitar World, Guitarist and Total Guitar. He has a Masters in the guitar, a degree in history, and has spent the last 16 years playing everything from blues and jazz to indie and pop. When he’s not combining his passion for writing and music during his day job, Matt records for a number of UK-based bands and songwriters as a session musician.
