Steve Vai Interview at Winter NAMM 2019 

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I remember the first time I met Vai. He was on his bus after a show and I was waiting at the door...patiently. I happened to glance inside and saw him sitting on the couch watching The Simpsons to unwind. I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Finally got to talk to him and he was so nice and humble. We spent most of the time talking about The Simpsons.

Every year Steve looks more and more like a middle school art teacher. Love you Steve,

No matter how many times you watch him play, there's always something to his playing. Nice one!

It doesn’t matter what amp he’s using, no one, no one sounds like Steve Vai! This man has a guitar language that is all his own and instantly recognizable!

Steve Vai, a scholar and a gentleman.

Are you flippin kidding me?? In a sound room with Vai!!!

Another stellar interview

My favorite innovative guitar player. Rock on Steve. All the best. E

been listening to him since i was 2, my dad got a lot of Steve Vai's live performance CDs, since that i started to like the way he play guitar. and now im 18.

Ahhhhhhh! Steve Vai! If I had been in Mitch's shoes, I would've totally botched it. Mitch does very well with big time interviews.

ive known steve for 35 years he is a great guitarist we all know that , but hes also a great person to know.i love sweetwater

This..... This is beautiful

Ty! Great info

It´s amazing to see that doesn´t matter what amp Steve uses, always sounds always like himself, and when He starts playing seems to enjoy a lot and cannot stop!!!!!

HE IS JUST SO DAMN GOOD.

the Magic sound of the master ! thank you

Steve kicks out tasty playing as always. Synergy is also such a great tool for anyone. Watching him use it is inspiring

Thank you.

I would have shat myself interviewing him privately like that :O Great interview!!

This is the future of guitar amps. Having 4,5,6 different amps through my pedals in that unit vs having to haul out all those amps there’s no competition.

i will never get enough of watching Steve Vai playing or just talking, he is the best !!!!!

It is true...a lot of the sound also comes from the power amp. Of course. But I love Mitch interviewing. So much class. And Steve is really a pleasure as well - both personally and musically. Great guys.

Aside from his amazing playing, he’s a class, class act. I have several friends and family who met him and on point he’s nothing but a gentleman, very humble.

Man!! Nice to see and hear how bloody relevant Steve Vai just is, even on this age of youtube-stars and digital modeling, everything the man played and said was on the money.

Vai and friedman both found the cure for aging in the mid 90s i swear.

discovered synergy checking out amps at sweetwater and fell in love with them then i see steve is diggin them holy moly

I'm sure: SV always sounds like SV - no matter what amp he uses.....

Mitch Gallagher is the best music gear interviewer ever.

Majesty.

I've never been much of a fan of Vai's music (or any guitarists in the shredder world), but I love to hear him talk! And Rich is a great interviewer (see his Robben Ford interview at Sweetwater - a gem).

Those synergy preamps are so cool! Like the Randall MTS series! Best thing to ever happen to a guitar amp!

Vai is amazing. Greatest electric guitarist of all time.

He's still using his Legacy Drive pedal which is sitting on top of the rack. That's his main tone.

Wow just wow 😮

Always great to get new gear,

"You always play a little different based on what you are listening to"... Great concept!

steve vai awesome

Wow , Great Vid.

Legend!

First! For Steve Vai vid, no less... thanks for the great stuff

I've thought about taking my axe fx 2 out for shows but honestly this seems awesome. I'm used to a real amp and I mainly use the axe fx for recording. I love living in the future.

Studio perfect!

Probably the only guitarist who demo's gears with sound. Vai you the man

Sounds incredible! Church of Vai :)

Interviewers must love talking with Steve Vai, you only have to ask him one question and he will proceed to talk for 6 hours, easy money

Vai!

Wow, Judge Judy has some serious chops!

Listen....if it’s good enough for Vai and he’s excited about it....then it’s good enough for a guitar hack like me ;)

Steve Vai is so cool

With all due respect to Steve Vai, the tone of a guitar amp is in the output tubes it's output transformer and the speaker(s) used. That's what makes an amp a guitar amp or a bass amp. The output transformer determines the frequency response of the output tubes regardless of what type they are. If you put a cheap output transformer in a Fender amp, it would sound like crap no matter what preamp and output tubes it has. The audio output transformers job is to match the plate impedance of the power tubes to an 8 ohm speaker. It is the heart of an amps sound.

I just got the T/DLX, and I DO get that *pop* when I switch channels.

Synergy Amps are amazing. Someday, I will have a Synergy Rig. Glad to see Steve Vai is into them.

steve seems to really like the ac 30, thats cool, i just started playing thru plug ins and i thought i would like the engle but i really liked the vox sim

I stood on a stage 2-3 feet away from Steve filming him for the Carvin Legacy Drive launch. The man never ceases to amaze me! This Synergy system is UNREAL. 10 amps in a rack? That's the stuff right there.

Kinda what Randall had going back in 2006 with their interchanggable preamps. I loved those, had them all at my disposal for a while. I hope this Synergy one takes off better! Vai sounded cool trough some of those pres, but surely he will soon understand that he needs a JEM with P-90 pickups and whatnot now that he has other amps to choose from than the Legacy, lol!

The clean channel on that sounds like a DI on a mixing board not at all like a clean guitar amp

absaloootely!!

Monster ❤

the best of world!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Steve is sounding really great here with his new rig, when I used to jam with friends it was just a couple of pedals through a amp, when Steve's talks gear I find it all too complicated, lol

Great interview! ..Watching Steve play, I think to myself.. “Self! ... I can move my fingers Just like that!!” .. I then pick up a guitar, turn on an amp, and... Oh MY Do I Suck! :0) .... Steve’s such a great person, brilliant guitarist. Had to look-up these modules - very cool!

nice guy that Steve

Good job, Rich.

Bob Bradshaw did it 30 years ago with soldano and after with Suhr, cilatrone

Power amp doesn't affect the tone? Who's he kiddin? EL34 sounds like 6V6 etc?

Nice sir

04:44 love Vai when he riff like that, awesome

Vai: This one right here is completely different... and he proceeds to play exactly the same sound he was playing.

Bless his heart. Bless all these guitar players who demo their equipment at every NAMM show. I say bless their hearts because they all sound the exact same while they claim it's new for 2109!!

I would have liked to hear Vai using the Soldano SLO Pre-Amp.

I've been listening closely to Vai for more than 35 years, play the guitar myself, and have the highest respect for his music and look forward to most everything he does -- I'm a superfan; but I confess my desire that for a fruitful change, he might at least experiment in dialing back the technology, and play (and compose) some guitar music once again using little more than a Strat (or a Jem ok), X100B, and minimal effects. Not likely to happen I suppose. But to my ears it could be a nice change.

I wish Vai would revist the Bogner sound from the 96'-97 days.

part of the problem is he did most of the demo on the middle single coil or neck coil pickup. usually for his leads/heavy rhythms he's on the bridge pickup.

Wow!!! Where does it end?? I feel like I am just getting started being a gear guy. Every time I turn around there is the next best thing.

6:56 Randall already did this years ago. Lets hear it without drowning in delay.

Hes holding on to that legacy thing. It doesn't evan compare. Haha. Great sounds. Im working on putting a fly rig around these things.

Unless you are one of the top 100 guitarists in the world, you can get all of these sounds and more out of a system like Guitar Rig. For amatuer guitar players like me, and probably most of you, latency and all that is pretty much unnoticeable if you have it connected properly. Having said that, Steve Vai is just an incredible player. Love the segment

That funk stuff is what Steve's solo was like for three plus minutes at his first show with Alcatrazz in 1984

Wrong, the amp section of tube amps has a huge influence in sound.

Guy's in a league of his own

I want to write something snarky about tube amps that I've heard about and this system maybe doesn't have, because I don't want to understand the real life gain of this incredible system.

Would love to hear Steve and Dave Weckl play some type of fusion thing together. Or anything for that matter. The two greatest together.

all the amps your rock could need.... I'd say want but we always want another :)

Look for my Sister Laura at the 2020 Namm. She is with Traveler guitar!

Why is Steve downplaying the influence of a tube power section on an amp's sound?

Who would have THUNCK! Legend!!!!

well this is just a more regular as he plays some wicked guitar riff lol nice interview !

Back to the 80s baby....rack gear rocks!

Didn't Randall amps have a module based amp like this in the 15-20 years ago?

Before anyone I ever heard used racks 1979? I bought 2 Roland orange orange cube 40s, a sony six channel stereo mixer.Phantom power only and what Roland called a dream machine. It really was. It was a rack mount digital stereo delay. It was a totally programmable looper.15 years before the pedal . My point was this When I brought my rack on stage I was almost laughed out off the stage I'd give anything to have a recording of at least one of the tunes we did that nighI. I plugged my strat lnto the mixer ( top rack) that sound went to the next level, The rack mount srereo delay. The sound came out of the delay spit. intitial sound panned right to a cube 40 and the delay sound panned left to the othe cube 40. Out of the two power amps the initiial, sound came out behind me. ( an on stage "voice of the theater cab with an a 15 Inch alec Lansing and a big metal horn with crossover . Te delay sound came out from the far end of the room facing the sage but a least 50 ft away because that;s where I put the other Voice of the theater).I sounded like I was playing red rocks or the super bowl lol At least my band stopped laughing and sent me some very respectful thumbs up To this day I stil use the same Idea. But .. depending on venue, I scale my eqipment to fit . Everyone got a rack now a days and I only two cube 60's they preloaded with that dream machine and have a just the type and right amt of effects for me Instead of VOC cabs I use super or deluxe as the pwer amps. People still look at me strange I guess because I am lol Il I beleive the farther you can get the delay away from the initial sound the better. Do you do that Mr Vai? Does your sound guy do it? i hope tis made sense

This video was very interesting because even with all the sounds he has now at his feet to play with i bet he stays with that loop he kept talking about for the Legacy sound. He might experiment some with the other sounds like his first album he played around but he is definitely going to keep the Legacy over all of them. I don't understand why he would make a sound like the Legacy to get away from it with all of those modules there had to be a way to keep his signature sound. The truth alot of peole banked on him using the Orange MK III but too many other players using it now he has a shorter list to contend with and he will make the Legacy its own trademark now that he can show he can use it on anything made to get the Legacy sound.. We don't build a dream to leave it behind in the end ..

George lynch and Randall came out with these modules years ago...

Hmmm... I actually liked the sound of the Legacy the best! #carvin

I don't get it! He's talking about DIGITAL but uses a digital unit like the Axe Fx in the Loop which adds automatically AD/DA latency. Exactly the same as he would use the Axe only. So why is this an argument?

Didn't Randall already do this like 15years ago

As if any amp would sound crappy through steves playing

Steve Vaiiiiiiiiiii!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘

I’m new to guitar. What chord is he playing at 4:41?

I use Relays for my Switch Mods, and they are Silent !