From Neural DSP Plugins to a 7-String Sitar: Inside the Ultimate Studio Rig of Satriani and Vai

All of the electric guitar tones heard on The Sea of Emotion—the very first collaborative studio album from Joe Satriani and Steve Vai—are wholly thrilling yet reassuringly familiar.

There is an unmistakable quality to how both of these virtuosos address the instrument, with their guitar tones remaining distinct yet wonderfully complementary. Within just a couple of notes, any listener knows exactly who is playing what.

However, in a new interview with Guitarist magazine, Steve Vai admits that all is not as traditional as it seems: when engineering their tones, he leaned heavily on guitar plugins. In fact, both of them did.

Steve Vai credits Joe Satriani for the idea—or perhaps blames him—since Steve Vai was decidedly against using software until he heard what Joe Satriani achieved on his 2022 release, The Elephants of Mars.

“After I heard Joe’s album, The Elephants Of Mars, he told me he’d used plugins, and I was stunned,” admits Steve Vai. “Because I had a very snobbish attitude: ‘Oh, you have to have microphones.’ So I started fooling around with SansAmp and realized how easy it is.”

Joe Satriani was already well-versed in this “no amps, no mics” recording workflow. His rig featured a full suite of software and plugins from SansAmp, IK Multimedia Tonex, Brainworx, and Neural DSP. The Neural DSP suites especially impressed Steve Vai, though he is not decommissioning his traditional physical rigs just yet.

“Now, it’s mostly the Neural DSP stuff that I use,” says Steve Vai. “There were a couple of passages where I still used a combination of my Carvin Legacy 3 amp and my Synergy module.”

Still, no one is going to completely cure Steve Vai of his passion for miking up guitar cabinets:

“I would mic things ad nauseam,” says Steve Vai. “I’d have two stereo cabs, three microphones on the front of each, one in the back, then four feet away. And then sets of stereo AKG 414 room mics. And it’s nice… but it’s a lot of setup, a lot of work.”

The duo also unveiled some of the iconic guitars used to track the record. Joe Satriani reached for his signature Ibanez JS models—including the legendary Chrome Boy, its gold counterpart, a Paisley finish prototype, and a nylon-string Taylor acoustic.

Steve Vai relied on his trusted lineup of Ibanez PIA and Ibanez JEM guitars, bringing out familiar museum-worthy instruments like Evo, Flo III, and friends.

For long-time fans of Joe Satriani and Steve Vai, it will come as no surprise that sitars feature on the record as well.

“Steve and I are always putting sitars on our albums,” says Joe Satriani. Only this time, they took a radical step forward: a custom 7-string sitar built specifically for them by Sterling Ball.