By age 10 and 11, I was doing a lot of cover gigs - we'd cover Rush, the Rolling Stones, Ramones, Pink Floyd, the Cars, Billy Joel...  I needed a better guitar. This was my first good guitar - an Ibanez Artist AR50BK.  Bought it on my 11th birthday, September 25th, 1980.

(pic taken Aug 14th, 1981)

I was into guitarists like Ace Frehley and Angus Young.  Then I turned 12 and had heard Eddie Van Halen for the first time.  It was the first time I heard anything that required a vibrato bar - that was the only thing missing from this guitar.  I'd compensate by using the headstock tuners - for the deep bends in Eruption, I'd detune the low-E string and then tune it back up...  that wasn't cutting it, I needed a vibrato bar.

I found something called a 'Bowen Handle' (photo above), it was a vibrato bar that could replace a standard tailpiece.  I installed it on but it wasn't very effective. (This led to me getting my next guitar, a Fender Stratocaster...)

I put a Floyd Rose vibrato bar on there, around '88.  I chipped off the paint and sanded down the body to the bare wood.  I then took a half-inch wood chisel and started scraping shapes into the body.  I took whatever happened during the time I was scraping the body and carved it into the wood.  Watching Star Trek, hanging with girlfriends, giving someone the Awol album (my old band's album...) I was working on the 'Pensive Expenguin' guitar around this time and carved a penguin into the body.  I was doing some painting and carved an artist's face into the body.  I cut off armpit hair and used it for the facial hair on the artist's face, coated in polyurethane.

An analysis of the art:  The long-haired guy on the top left was a self-portrait.  The babies represented vulnerable parts of yourself.  The angel baby was next to the self-portrait to connect the peace and comfort I felt when I was by myself.  Also nearby were the penguin (representing building guitars, something that gave me a positive purpose), and Spock (representing watching old Star Trek's - something that entertained me as opposed to being the one who entertains others...)  The angel baby was centered between the smiling self-portrait and the emotionless Spock, with guitar-stuff above to keep me balanced.

Directly under the guitar-strings was the other part of me - the baby in the guillotine.  The one who entertained, and had felt judged and punished.  Two ways to go from there - to the right, where there were a bunch of fingerprints representing the true identity, the real you.  Or to the left - the devil baby.  Why a baby?  Humility.  I was 18 and in the baby stages of finding who I was, trying not to be scarred by obstacles.