Standard six-string guitars have never had much appeal for Manowar guitarist Michael Angelo Batio. Long before shredders like John Petrucci and Korn’s James “Munky” Shaffer and Brian “Head” Welch adopted seven-string guitars in the 1990s, Batio was using them to play his high-octane neoclassical rock.
“I had some of the very first seven-string guitars in rock music,” Batio tells Guitar Player. “I know Steve Vai says he did have one for the Whitesnake album [1989’s Slip of the Tongue], but I actually had one before he did, though mine had a high A string,” he notes, rather than a low B string.
But a seven-string guitar was nothing compared with the four-necked Quad guitar that the shredding wizard concocted around the same time. Batio, who at the time was performing with his glam-speed-metal band Nitro, created the boundary-pushing, custom-made quadruple-neck guitar, which comprised two seven-string guitars on top and two six-string guitars on the bottom.
The development of the Quad guitar evolved from Batio’s earlier conception of his twin-necked V-shaped guitar, with its 115-degree-angled necks, which at the time was quite revolutionary. The idea for his double-neck guitar had come about after Batio witnessed a saxophonist playing two saxes simultaneously. Batio’s V-shaped design would later inspire fellow contemporary shredder Steve Vai in developing his famed triple-neck, heart-shaped electric guitar.
Two years later, the David Lee Roth video for ‘Just Like Paradise’ debuts on television. And there’s Steve with this triple-neck heart guitar!”
— Michael Angelo Batio
“I was at a Poison concert in 1986 and Steve, out of all the people in the audience, comes up to me for no apparent reason wanting to talk to me about this guitar that he’s got an idea for,” recalls Batio. “I had a Polaroid in my wallet, I took it out and said, ‘You mean like this, Steve?’ And he’s like, ‘Oh, my God.’
“Two years later, the David Lee Roth video for ‘Just Like Paradise’ debuts on television. And there’s Steve with this triple-neck heart guitar!”
Batio felt slighted by Vai, as they had only recently run into each other while in an L.A. recording studio. The two had a conversation during which Vai made no mention of his heart-shaped guitar.
“Jim [Gillette, Nitro singer] and I were in one of the big studios in L.A. looking at some equipment that we wanted to rent,” he says. “And Steve is there. I go, ‘Hey, Steve, what’s going on?’ And we just talked, but he didn’t say anything to me about his heart guitar, which was weird, considering that I knew him and that I already had the double guitar.”
Shortly after the music video for “Just Like Paradise” aired, Batio received a call from his record label asking him to come into its offices for an urgent meeting.
“So the president of our label goes, ‘Michael Angelo, what’s this? You’ve got two necks. Steve Vai’s got three. What can you do?’ And I go, ‘Four!’ And they’re like, ‘Can you do this?’ And I said, ‘Yes, I can.’”
The guitar-neck war was officially on. But there was one more thing the label wanted.
They wanted me to challenge him to a duel, but I wasn’t interested, as I genuinely respect Steve. It’s the music business, not the music game.”
— Michael Angelo Batio
“They wanted me to challenge him to a duel,” Batio says, “but I wasn’t interested, as I genuinely respect Steve. It’s the music business, not the music game. Steve was only trying to do what he could do with David Lee Roth, so I respect and understand that.”
After the meeting, Batio went home and began mapping out ideas for a four-neck guitar. Having already successfully devised the V-shaped double neck, he formulated a design in which two V-shaped double necks would be joined to form an X-shaped guitar. With the layout in hand, he approached his good friend Wayne Charvel, who at the time was working for Gibson Guitars.
“Wayne Charvel was one of the greatest guitar builders in the world, so he could realize the potential of my vision on guitar,” Batio says. “People were very surprised at the engineering of the Quad, as it was completely different from anything else.
“And the way it fitted together was pretty unique, too. The guitars on the Quad guitar are kind of like a rifle, meaning smaller, rectangular bodies for each of the guitars. Each guitar on the Quad is its own separate guitar. The back plates dictate the shape, and also the degree of the neck angles. It can look like an X-wing: two in line on each side, and even one, two or three instead of using all four guitars. And from that, the Quad guitar was born!”
The guitar can be seen in Nitro’s video for “Freight Train.” But as fate would have it, Batio only had the famed instrument in his hands for a brief stretch of time before it was stolen on the second night of Nitro’s 1989 tour.
It happened while we were in El Paso, Texas. As it was the second show of the tour, I never really got to play it.”
— Michael Angelo Batio
“It happened while we were in El Paso, Texas,” he says. “We had really good label and tour support, so we had a tour bus, another truck, and I had brought along my Quad guitar. And that’s where it got stolen. As it was the second show of the tour, I never really got to play it. The Quad guitar was in two cases. Two of the guitars were in one case, while the two were in another, and they stole both.”
It was only years later, in 2004, that one half of the guitar miraculously resurfaced while Batio was in England undertaking a seminar for Dean Guitars.
“One of the guys that worked at Dean over there said to me, ‘Michael, I’ve been on the Jackson forum and this guy is bragging that he bought the two top parts of your Quad guitar,’” Batio recalls. “This guy was a collector of Charvel guitars. So I had Dean contact the guy in the U.K., as he was in London. When contacted, the guy claimed that he didn’t know that it was my guitar, yet we had the record of the online chat, but I didn’t say anything about it. He said that he had bought it for £1,500, which was dirt cheap to me, so I bought it back at the same price.”
“It came back in really poor condition, and I only got two of the back plates, along with the two top seven-string guitars. We never located the bottom ones. I’ve searched all over planet Earth. I’m well known enough that people would know it was my guitar, especially anybody that knew anything about guitars, but we haven’t been able to find it.”
Batio has since rebuilt a replica of the Quad guitar using the same technology but with six strings on each neck. As for the original, he looks on the bright side.
“The good thing is that double-guitar part is now housed in a museum in France. I only ever played the Quad guitar at that first show and once in a video, and only did two photo sessions with it. And that’s all I ever did.”
