| Ernie Ball/Music Man John
Petrucci Prototype serial # G12101 |
| John Petrucci has for years been a driving force
in the Progressive Rock guitar field. After Mr. Petrucci ended his
relationship with Ibanez, he joined the Ernie Ball/Music Man family of
artists. A series of 6 and 7-string Ernie Ball Petrucci prototypes were
produced prior to the final production version. A few of these prototype
guitars were used by Mr. Petrucci to record Dream Theater's "Scenes From A
Memory" CD and follow-up Live CD and DVD, "Metropolis 2000 - Scenes From
New York". The Petrucci prototype guitar displayed here, serial # G12101
was one of those guitars. Below are some images that display the guitar and note some of the obvious (and not so obvious) differences between the prototype and production Petrucci model along with a scanned image of the auction details at which this guitar was acquired. This unitque guitar is also one of the first units with DuPont "Chromalusion" paint which allows it to change shading depending on the light and viewing angle. Ernie Ball calls this color "Black Fire" and it goes from a deep wine red, to dark copper, to a light rust. It's also extremely rare because "Black Fire" is not offered as an option on the production model. I've also added a link to the Ernie Ball site that shows short clips of the prototyping process as Mr. Petrucci uses this guitar to iron out details to be used in the production version. |
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| Click on the image to enlarge |
| Click on the Ernie Ball/Music Man logo to visit the Ernie Ball web page and view some of their images of Mr. Petrucci using this guitar during the R&D for the production model. Links to short video clips are at the bottom of the page. |
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| Headstock with no Petrucci signature |
| General body overview with differences noted. |
| Rear cavity detail. Note the piezo control module mounted in the electronics cavity. |
| Angle view showing the shallow arm contour. This was replaced by a steeply angled contour on the production model. You can hear Mr. Petrucci and the EB team discuss this contour in the Ernie Ball clips on their page (see the link on the right). |
| Close-up of piezo bridge and original "top hat" control knobs. The production model knobs were changed to a type designed to Mr. Petrucci's specifications. The production knobs do not have "volume" and "tone" printed on them. |
| Scanned image of original auction on ebay, May 29, 2002 |
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| Click on the links to the right to view text of correspondences with Ernie Ball Staff |
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