On my first French tour in February '97, the people at Vigier guitars came to a show and gave me a guitar to try.  I did the show with the guitar and it played wonderfully.  When I returned to France in May, I met with the founder, Patrice Vigier, we had dinner and threw ideas around.  I told him how I had always built my own guitars, it was an artistic expression I didn't want to give up - we talked about making a unique Vigier guitar to replace my current Swiss Cheese guitar as my main guitar.  We signed an endorsement agreement and began planning the Bumblefoot guitar.

Vigier gave me an Excalibur guitar to take home.  The first thing I did with this guitar was record the solos to the song 'Brooklyn Steakhouse' on the 'Hands' album.  When I was recording the first version of 'Uncool' in 1999, I bought a Roland guitar synth and installed the pickup onto this guitar, and used it on the Uncool tours in 2001.