vai - flexible tone

newi123

Have this on now. His guitar sound is awesome. What happened?

Funkfingers

Flex-Able was laboured over under low-budget, analogue tape recording circumstances, in between other work. It has the relaxed vibe of a home demo - mostly because that is what it was.

The board Vai obsessives will know when the switch was made to digital multi-track recording. This will have had some effect on the recorded sound. Then, there was the change from modified Fender and Charvel guitars to the Ibanez JEM and Universe. 

The young Vai had a reputation to build. The older Vai has a reputation to maintain. Different headspace, I guess.

JDE

I am not particularly fond of his modern recorded tone, but live it is amazing. Recently revisited Fire Garden, and I never really listen to this sort of music anymore, but god damn there are some 10/10 tones on that album. It's one of the few records I can think of that has some of the most amazing and some of the most dogshit electric guitar sounds ever. It also has some *awful* acoustic tones. Outrageous playing though, of course. Solo on Little Aligator is pure ace. 


Flexable always seemed a bit of a Zappa novelty record. Maybe I need to listen to it some more.

Fortheloveofguitar

Flexible era was a carvin x100b 

Sex and Religion was mostly a Soldano SLO100

Bogner XTC mainly on the fire garden album 

All great tones 

Cabicular

Fortheloveofguitar said:

Flexible era was a carvin x100b 

Sex and Religion was mostly a Soldano SLO100

Bogner XTC mainly on the fire garden album 

All great tones 

That Taurus track on Fire Garden is one of my favourite things ever