Steve Vai is selling two of his Ibanez to raise money for two charities, and both are currently listed on Reverb. Interestingly, the guitars were part of his in partnership with Julien’s, but they’ve since been returned to him so he can sell them again and raise even more money for good causes. “I originally sold these guitars in a Julien's auction some years ago to a good friend, Mark Burnstein,” Vai details via an Instagram post.
“Mark started a charity organization in the name of his departed son, the Alexandar David Burnstein Memorial Fund for Musical Performance. “[He] donated my old guitars back to me to put up for auction to raise funds for this charity, and also Extraordinary Families, a leading non-profit foster family adoption organization that serves greater Los Angeles.” The two guitars available to the highest bidder are both JEM models; Vai's signature signature guitar, .
The first is a JEM LACS Braxis – a 2014-built prototype that Vai had ordered in a bid to experiment with a fatter neck profile and a compound radius fretboard. The neck is unfinished, and no volute can be found at the back of the headstock – a feature typically found on Vai's LACS builds. It also features jumbo EVO gold fret wire and an Ibanez Backstop trem-setter.
Further still, a push/pull volume control was added to allow the guitarist to engage a high pass filter on the taper of the volume control. The guitar sees Vai deviating from his usual DiMarzio Evolution pickups, wi.
