About 15 years ago I was in a buddy's shop. His shop did all the work for guitar center. It was a slow day & it was he, one tech and me. The phone rang and it was the Guitar Center in Carle Place(Long Island where Steve grew up). They needed Steve's Jem setup. He had come home to spend some time with is folks and needed some work done on two guitars. Well both of the guys were very busy working on stuff, so I volunteered to go get the guitars and bring them to the shop. the only instruction they got was to set the action as low as possible. I brought both guitars back to the shop and the guys immediately started working on them. One was his famous white Jem with EVO inscribed behind the whammy. the other one was a 7 string. When they were all done my buddy handed me the Jem and asked me to play it and see what I thought. I had my Strat with me & believe me I was looking forward to playing it even though I am more of a blues player. I plugged it into a Tweed bassman and the guitar really sounded like crap by comparison to my Strat. But in defense of this guitar I was playing it straight into a bassman not through an assortment of signal processing like Steve would have used. Once we made a few more adjustments we headed back to guitar center. Steve wasn't there so the manager was going to call him. The Guitar Center was closing so the guitars got locked in the store, but Steve did show up and we did get to meet him, but he couldn't get the guitars because the alarm had already been set and the manager could not reset it or something, so he would have to come back in the morning to get his guitars. He seemed like a really cool guy and really down to earth. he was pleasurable to talk with and was sincere in his questions/answers that we bounced back and fourth. It was a pretty cool day all in all. the thing that I remember most is how crappy that guitar sounded through the bassman... just goes to show you how important effects are to a shredder!
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