OK, so I had the LesPaul rip-off and the Ibanez Artist, but nothing I could play Van Halen on. This was the early 80's and not a lot of guitar companies were putting out guitars with vibrato bars on them available at local guitar shops, so for my 13th birthday I got a '57 Fender Stratocaster re-issue. (photo taken Oct 30th, 1982) I was psyched. It was a beautiful guitar. But the pickups squealed and had no sustain, and every time I touched the vibrato bar, the guitar would go out of tune. The fretboard was glossy and curved, and...

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 was my first electric guitar, after I was playing for 2 years in 1978.  It was an imitation Les Paul, by a company called 'Pace' - I've never seen anything else by the company.  It was the least expensive electric guitar at the music store I was taking guitar lessons at. (photo taken 1978) The guitar went through many changes - I had this shiny "prism tape" that made colorful reflections - I cut out the shape of the pickguard, forward and reverse, and made a pickguard and reverse-pickguard shape with the tape on the guitar.Years later I cut away the wood...

When I first started taking guitar lessons, I was told by the music store that it was mandatory to play acoustic guitar for two years before graduating to an electric.  So I had a small-scale nylon-string acoustic, and eventually got a full-size acoustic... pic taken 1977(7 years old)