Joe Satriani has listed a bunch of pre-loved gear on Bananas at Large, with one-of-a-kind electric guitars, a variety of tube amps, and pedals available.
A Fender Custom Shop Telecaster has been listed alongside a trio of amps and a smattering of stompboxes, but no item is more enticing than the one-of-one Crystal Planet version of his Ibanez signature guitar.
The prototype kickstarted Satriani’s Y2K edition of his signature. It was designed and built by Juniji Hotta in the Ibanez Custom Shop in 1999 to coincide with the release of Satch’s Crystal Planet LP, with ultra-transparency the name of the game.
Heck, even the bobbins of its twin humbuckers are see-through – but such an ambitious concept, Satriani admits to Bananas, posed plenty of problems when it came to production.
“We had to make decisions with stuff that normally you would hide,” he says, referring to its electrical innards. “Then the weight is really substantial. It feels like a ’73 Les Paul, but when I saw it I couldn’t believe how cool it was.
“I love the clear knobs, you never see pickups like that, and I have to point out that there are earplugs that are squished into the corner (of the pickups) here,” he adds, enthusiastically. Thankfully, the earplugs aren’t used, but they served a crucial role in Satch’s late ‘90s live rig.
“Now, this has to do with the way I used to set up the guitars and the amps, I’d be using a a Boss DS-1 into a Marshall 6100,” the guitarist explains. “That’s a ton of low-end and a ton of gain, and very often these pickups would pick up on those frequencies and they start vibrating.
“Waxing wasn’t enough, so we would stuff foam or earplugs in there to stop them from vibrating. It allowed me to keep the gain up and still play melodies that sounded sweet. So, the earplugs are still in there.”
Speaking of the guitar to celebrate the album’s anniversary in 2021, Satriani said the transparent six-string was “a good example of how, as artists, you have to blindly move forward with crazy ideas”.
The guitar did get a very limited-edition Prestige series run, but this model is the only Custom Shop, hand-made Crystal Planet prototype axe to be found.
The acrylic guitar is cut to Satriani’s unique Ibanez JS body shape, and loaded with a one-piece maple neck and rosewood fingerboard, as well as DiMarzio FRED (bridge) and DiMarzio PAF Pro (neck) pickups.
Neo-chrome hardware includes a Lo-Pro Edge double locking trem and Gotoh SG381 tuners. It’s said to still be in mint condition, and considering its uniqueness and rarity, is priced at $10,000.
Elsewhere, a Fender Custom Shop Telecaster Custom, built in 2016 and saddled with an SSH pickup configuration and sporting a relic’d finish, is priced at $5,499.99, while his 1965 sunburst Precision bass costs $5,995.00.
Featured amps include two 100-watt EVH 5150III heads in Black Stealth and Black/Gold finishes, and his signature Marshall head, the JVM410HJS.
For players wanting a piece of Joe Satriani’s gear collection without breaking the bank, a pre-owned Jim Dunlop John Petrucci wah pedal ($149.99) and an Ibanez TK999 Tube King overdrive pedal ($179.99), represent the cheapest listings.
Visit Bananas at Large to check out the listing in full.
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