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.