Re: Older friend's rigs you remember as a kid.
To the OP, GREAT idea for a thread! Fun thinking back to the early days, when I would literally play until I had to use bandaids on my fingertips to continue (read about Yngwie doing that).
It's easy to remember my mentors. My primary mentor was a good friend had a JCM 800 2203 with Marshal 1960 and a Gibson SG Special with 1959 Les Paul Reissue pickups. The setup was righteous.
I've played the more modern "budget" SGs since then, but none have ever impressed me as much. He must have had a winner. And he also had a white Gibson Explorer (Dirty Fingers pickups), shades of Hetfield, who was still my hero at that time (Justice era). He also introduced me to the world of non-mainstream/obscure metal and traditional NWOBHM. Prior to that, all I knew was Van Halen and such.
Another was a more casual friend who had a super sweet PRS Custom 22 Black Cherry and the mighty Mesa Boogie MkIV half stack, when both of those were hot new items instead of being institutions as they are today. He had monstrous tone!
And I recall another friend who had a Desert Yellow Ibanez JEM and ADA MP-1 rack mount, and other state of the art shredgear including ART effects and others (can't remember all of them). Then, as now, I was always fascinated by various delays and hot-rodded tones. I was just a broke 15 year old, so all of this gear was well out of reach for a couple years. I really enjoy that feeling of the world of guitar playing seeming limitless then, when everyone was pushing the envelope. He also introduced me to shred and modern metal culture. There was a bit of a heavy metal "uniform" back then, which I never fully had. It was your choice of either shredded jeans/leather jacket, and/or leather pants and denim jacket and long hair. Unless you were a glam poofster, of course. Then you could just wear women's workout gear and have long feathered hair and eyeliner. :lol: I never had really long hair (not more than '80s Adrian Smith at the extreme) or the full proper uniform/
costume, but I was serious about playing, which was all that mattered to me. It's a shame I wasn't a bit older in the '80s, actually, because I liked that culture MUCH better than the Grunge '90s that followed. I wasn't advanced enough to play in a band with gigs until the early '90s, by which time the music I loved/love had been banished for a time.
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Long before YouTube Shred Kids (TM) were a dime a million, it was rare to see a normal looking ~13 year old whiz kid walk in and shred his arse off, but I remember seeing one doing just that with a beautiful Blue Floral Pattern Ibanez JEM w/maple fretboard through the latest, greatest rack gear at the time, and a Soldano. I had already been playing for a couple of years by then and thought of myself as fairly "good" since I was picking it up fast, but he gave me some much needed perspective and inspiration!
