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Floral JEM pattern question

3K views 18 replies 11 participants last post by  hiesenberg 
#1 ·
Hello,

In the case for my '88 777DY I found the original pamphlet that came with the guitar. The front has Vai holding a LNG and some planets floating around him. The jacket he's wearing appears to be the fabric which would later be used on the 77FP's. Am I seeing things?

I was always led to believe that the fabric was from a pair of curtains in Vai's parents house ( I think I got this info from jemsite)

Anyone clear this up?
 
#10 ·
Hmmm, well I guess so! There are several different actual patterns of 77fp's, of course, and some apparently have more "vines" while some have more "flowers". In any event, it then becomes kind of a "chicken and the egg" argument, and I would suspect that Vai had a piece of clothing made from the same material, possibly to wear specifically while playing that guitar. Tell me that doesn't sound like something he would do. :lol:
 
#15 ·
Some information from my time in searching for the fabric used:

He does have a jacket (shown in the Angel Landing poster posted above) made of the same black with colored-floral-design material as was used for the 77FP's, however the material used on the guitars and the jackets is not EXACTLY the same as the original fabric his parents' curtains were made of... the ACTUAL fabric has a white background and the flowers appear much more opaque than in the black version used for the guitars. If you look hard enough you can actually find a picture of him wearing the same style jacket but it is made of the actual white floral fabric from the original curtains...

If I can find the white jacket picture again, I will post it up here.

Cheers,

Tim
 
#16 ·
Tim - no - the jacket with the white background you are thinking of is featured in the "High Priest of Guitar" photos in the Guitar World issue in the 80s. That jacket also has a girl's face in profile as one of the lapels on the jacket.

The jacket in the Angel landing shot is the same fabric as on the Floral Jem.

The fabric didn't actually originate at Steve's parent's house. It used to be the curtains and acoustic panelling in the Mothership. We recently uncovered a few of these curtains at the Mothership, and these were sent to Ibanez who may or may not have used them to make a guitar. We don't know. They are probably at the custom shop some place.

Steve also has a guitar case completely covered in the floral pattern fabric, and from this you can see that Ibanez generally used a certain area of the fabric pattern for the Jem bodies, but other areas of the fabric wasn't used as much.

Hope this helps.

Mikey
vai.com
 
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