Ernie Ball Music Man x John Petrucci: 20th Anniversary Signature Collection

[Music] my thinking in many ways is very i guess practical the things i think of you know why is this over here why can't this be moved over here why is this thing sharp and not rounded and what if the frets were this size or what if i can access these frets easier i think those things that go through my mind are very common they're kind of common questions that a lot of players i talk to who play my guitars they say oh man i'm so glad you did that like i it used to drive me crazy when the volume control was so close to the pickup or i could finally reach those higher frets or i love the fact that this control is up here it's right in the right spot it's a great feeling it makes me feel that i'm sharing my thoughts as a designer as a player with other people i can't believe it was 20 years ago that i first started talking to everybody at earning ball music man and met those guys and have been with them for 20 years it's like insane when i think about it but i do remember really clearly what was going on at that time i just had all these sort of design ideas and things that i wanted to do and at the time a dear friend of mine mark snyder who was my guitar tech had mentioned he's like well you want to play like the greatest guitar ever you got to play music man i saw john the first time in japan he was at a booth next to me he had this huge following it was kind of amazing and i just heard about him but i didn't get to meet him a couple years later i got a phone call from steve blucher at di marzio saying that he was interested in ernie ball music man i made the first call which was call sterling ball we hit it off right away and some of the things that he said and we talked about in that first phone call they're still true today his commitment of making tools for artists and and i can really tell how passionate he was about guitar about music about his company about his family it just we just [Music] clicked [Music] okay so that was a collection of reps off of our latest cd train of thought and once again i'm using one of my music man guitars to tune down to see this is actually one of the very first prototypes that we did and actually the positioning isn't set yet of all the controls but you can see how we started with 24 frets the double cut away the three-way sort of toggle as opposed to a five-way i actually ended up using these prototypes on dream theater scenes from a memory tour and live scenes in new york which is a dvd that we did at roseland ballroom in new york city you can see me playing this guitar and another one as well from those sort of initial design brainstorming sessions that i had with sterling with dudley we started to develop more of the finer details on what i was looking for the first time that i met john was during the namm show and he had his guitar with him and so that's when i had an opportunity to see it and take some measurements off of it and have discussion with him about what was important to him about the guitar i always thought it was weird with guitars where switches were not in the right place i always wanted things to be ergonomic so there's an arc that your arm naturally follows when you play if you're going to hit a switch here hit a switch here reach for a control so i remember doing something with holding a pencil and kind of doing this arc and drawing the the natural arc that your arm followed if you were playing and then you went to reach for a switch where would that actually be what we'd do is we'd go into dudley's office which was a shop workshop and we'd take more wood off until we got it right sterling had this incredible idea that had never been done before most guitars have a a bevel here that kind of gives you a little resting point for your arm which is nice and comfortable but what if that was actually concave and was more like a a slot for your arm that you really could dig in that started the scoop that we did on the first jp6 we wanted to be able to smear something on the guitar so that we could figure out exactly where it was his arm was comfortable sitting on the guitar where should the scoop be how big should it be where should the center of the circle be etc so uh we got this sort of hand lotion he's like put this lotion on your forearm where your arm would rest on the guitar john played it a little bit and we could kind of see oh well that's exactly where his arm sits right in the middle of that and that ended up being the center of the half circle that we use so between the pencil doing the arc of the controls and the lotion doing that we we kind of worked out some of the geometry of of the instrument that we ended up incorporating into the jp6 one of the features that we worked on a lot was the neck shape he wanted the neck to be very thin they were able to with such accuracy reproduce that exact neck carb in all the guitars that came out of the factory at that point so those decisions that we made just carried through to every instrument that went in production to the point where if i was in any city in the world and i pulled one of my guitars off the wall i could use that at a gig that night no problem very true of all of the artist instruments that we've done at music man it's built for the specific player with every detail being exactly what they want and that's what we produce by the time we were done we addressed so many issues of ergonomics comfort design that i had been wanting to do for years and that these guys just didn't stop until they got it exactly right hi this is john petrucci here in la backstage on the g3 2007 tour and i'd like to take a couple minutes to talk about the latest and greatest version of my guitar the signature model this is the john petrucci bfr f1 hi this is john petrucci from dream theater and today i'm here to talk about my 10th anniversary jpx music band guitar hey everybody this is john petrucci and i'm here to talk about my brand new signature music man jp13 guitar it is the next guitar in the evolution of my line of signature guitars with music man along with his technical progress the guitar had to keep pace with that you're dealing with one of the most creative precise fast just fluid guitar player and our guitar has got to work for him the opaque finish the ebony fretboard the larger frets the all black hardware the five-way switch the chambering the larger body and the symmetrical body shape meaning the hips and the horns all of the the changes and experimenting that i've done with the different models in the jp line all came out of being in a situation usually a live situation wanting to try something having this idea there were many conversations you know now you're getting into the details that went on for several years until we slowly but surely kind of honed in through this process of trial and error on the things that really really worked for me every time we make a decision that is something that i really love and have tested out in the studio on tour on many stages for many months then we stick with that decision and that becomes ingrained in the design of the guitar even though these bolt-on guitars were so incredible and we were crossing off this list of different things that we experimented with what if we did this what if we did that there was one more level of where i wanted to take it [Music] hey what's up this is john petrucci and i'm here to talk about my brand new signature music man guitar called the majesty here it is it comes in a six and seven string version it is by far the most innovative and forward-thinking signature guitar in my line with music man so at this point i had been with ernie ball music man for over 10 years 12 years or so i remember being in europe on a tour bus and calling sterling and pitching my idea for what at the time i called the stallion when he called to talk to me about the majesty he had an idea for a very powerful fast guitar called the stallion that was the code name all through it and i remember talking to sterling i don't know what he was doing on the other end of the line but uh you know he he took it all in when i gave him all the ideas that i had and he was like let's get to work on it we had to kind of figure out how a fast running horse would translate into a super technical high performance guitar he was looking for the power grace and beauty of a running stallion you know all of that took some interpretation but i definitely understood where he was coming from and what he was looking for so i had this sort of idea i had a dream about it i wrote all this stuff down i wanted to take the guitar to the next level so that would mean first and foremost doing a neck through version of the guitar which we hadn't done yet while the anniversary guitars were coming out in the background i was being introduced to a young engineer at the time named drew montel and drew had played a huge part in developing the design of the majesty john's always pushing the envelope he wants another tool or a different tool or he's trying to do something and perhaps sometimes a feature on his guitar might hinder that one of the things i was concerned a lot about was access to really getting the guitar out of your way i wanted it to almost feel invisible as you're playing you can reach any note you have no nothing stopping you from doing what you wanted to do creatively or as a performer and so the shape was something that that was really really important and drew got to work on that i remember him sending me 3d versions of it and drawings and going there and looking at things looking at different designs and the name of the guitar um actually comes from dream theater's original name we were called majesty and we had this logo that we still use a symbol that's called the majesty symbol and that ended up being used on the guitar and then the other thing about the look of the guitar i am a big fan of bmw cars and i went to a showroom one day and they had this white m6 black rims carbon fiber top i was like i want that to be the look of the guitar so it went from being a stallion and a horse aesthetic to a majesty with a car aesthetic he wanted the carbon fiber in this shield and the thing is great john we can do that we put carbon fiber and it was like we put a wet blanket on the guitar it was horrible okay we sent it to him he got i said so what do you think he goes horrible for all the effort we'd put into it and how big of a piece we were actually going to put on the face of it we decided hey can i try to do some alternatives so we get the look of the carbon fiber but we get the sound of the wood that we want and drew goes well look i think we've got to do is we've got to make wood look like graphite so can you do that he goes if you'll buy me an engraving machine i can do it we drew up what looked like carbon fiber and then we ended up laser etching the wood and and with a process of laser etching and staining and painting we were able to make it look like a carbon fiber shield on maple take a look next time you see one of the early ones it looks just like carbon fiber but it's actually hard rock maple that's been etched and then stained to match the level of artistic commitment that those guys have i mean there's there's they don't they're not easily stumped they'll figure out a way to do things all right so this is the first majesty prototype we built but we quickly realized that the access to these upper frets it's still better than it was with some of the other models but it wasn't enough we have a jp11 neck on here and it's a bolt-on and so you see we have all this drawing we're trying to figure out okay well if he doesn't have access if we carve any more of this neck pocket away the neck's going to fall off the instrument so we realize that in there we had to do a through neck version this is the second prototype that we made the through neck version of see the stallion right there it's all dusty it's been in our vault for a while this is yet another stallion you can see we are starting to get the shield shape here it's a set neck but this is part of the neck everything you see that's red is actually an inlay it sets into this body that's all silver and so this is the first one we did the shield on i wanted to get rid of all of the hardware on the surface of the body i i mean when you're throwing your knuckle right at a switch it's not very comfortable to have a huge sharp washer and nut right by it so we started embedding all the electronics from the back side so there's not going to be any nuts and washers and stuff on the face of the guitar an anniversary is an opportunity to show the people where you are today but hopefully where you started from it's like looking at a photo album picking up the majesty whether i'm by myself creating music whether i'm with the guys in in a live setting and jamming i'm always inspired whatever i'm trying to do on the guitar the guitar is letting me do it to the best of my ability it's been wonderful to have the opportunity to work with john just because he's so passionate about the whole business of playing music about his guitar and he isn't content to just make one guitar that's his guitar for all time it has very much been kind of a think tank of you know how do we make what john wants and how do we come up with an idea to make something that's going to blow them away every time we discovered something or addressed a problem or experimented or asked a question we got closer and closer and closer to just making the perfect instrument with every single issue being addressed we both had a shared goal we both wanted to create new and innovative guitars i can't even express how proud i am of the success of my line of guitars with learning ball music man it blows my mind i think the coolest thing about that is that we've done it on our own terms you know that commitment and that first conversation that i had with sterling about creating guitars that came from an authentic place that satisfied the design desires that i have as a player and that they help to realize and making that always be the the place where that comes from and the focus and then that turning into these instruments that literally are enjoyed all around the world making a decision to pick up that phone and call sterling and starting my relationship with the ernie ball music man family was one of the best decisions of my professional and personal life that i've ever made and it's something that i look back you know 20 years now and just all i can do is smile when i think about that it's pretty incredible

Channel: Ernie Ball

Views: 165,455

Keywords: JP, John Petrucci 20th Anniversary, signature guitar, EBMM, Music Man, JP Music Man, Majesty, Majesty guitar, JP guitar, Majesty 20th, JP 20th, John Petrucci 20th, ernie ball, guitar, guitar documentary, guitar film, John Petrucci film, music documentary, dream theater, dream theater film, prog rock, documentary, music film, rock film, rock documentary, guitar player, guitarist, signature guitarist

Id: 3Hxjk6fok4U

Length: 18min 42sec (1122 seconds)

Published: Tue May 18 2021