11 Years Together

I speak, of course, about my Yamaha AES820. (What else were you thinking?)

Steve Mazur of Our Lady Peace, one of my favorite Alt Rock acts of all time, uses this exact model, and Frank Gambale based his signature model off this beauty of a guitar. It features two DiMarzio custom pickups, a three-way pickup selector with a 3-position rotary coil split (humbucking/single coil/"high cut" variation which sounds like the pickups are hotter and have a treble boost) for a total of 9 possible pickup tones. It has a flatter neck radius, a slimmer neck profile, and closer fret spacing (because of its shorter scale) which helps me play long, complicated lead lines more smoothly.

This guitar saw me through several stages of my life as as guitarist

• Early 2001: The beginning of my shredder wood-shedding days. I was learning tunes from X-Japan, Yngwie Malmsteen and Paul Gilbert on this guitar. I also starting serving in the children's worship ministry around this time (applying the term "making a joyful noise" a little too literally).
• 2002: By this time I was a regular mainstay for the children's church, and made regular noise with jam mates from all over, in school, and at church. Phrygian, harmonic minor, and pentatonic were my favorite scales, and over-the-top distortion was my favorite tone.
• 2003: I didn't bring this with me when I first went to Australia, and brought only my acoustic guitar. I think it was beneficial too, as I discovered the acoustic music of John Mayer, Jason Mraz and Jars of Clay, and eventually developed my acoustic style based on them. It was mostly in its case until I returned back for vacation to play at the youth camp and for a Christmas production which incorporated elements of both the heavy and the light, of Dream Theater and John Mayer.
• 2004-2007: Having been recruited into Hope Sydney Christian Church, I became an electric guitarist and served nearly every week due to a lack of musicians. This was instrumental in building up my skills in band dynamics--we needed to be able to come down on Sunday morning, set up, practice, memorize our arrangements, and pull them off for service 2 hours later.

Yes, this guitar was a big part of my musical life. Do you have pieces of gear that also represent pieces of your history?

Posted in: Contemplation,Guitars