I was fortunate enough to attend Vai Academy 2015 in Vail,CO the first week of Aug. Vail is only a 2 hour drive for me and I could not pass it up.
 
If you are a fan of Steve Vai, Eric Johnson or Sonny Landreth check out these photos.
 
https://www.flickr.com/ph...ets/72157657039236420/
 
The attendee photos with Steve start about 1/3 of the way in page 2 so the interesting ones are before that.
Steve and his band played 3 or 4 songs each night plus a few more with Eric or Sonny after which anyone who wanted could jam with them.
 
There are some pics of a cherry custom Jem which Takashi Hosono of the Ibanez custom shop built for Steve (I got to play it). I spent probably 3 hours with Tom Nordegg (Steve's guitar tech) and wow what a history lesson that was.  
I had lunch with Steve's band (Jeremy Colson, Dave Weiner, Phil Bynoe) and heard some great touring stories. They are all excellent musicians and great regular guys.
 
If you get a chance to attend one of the future Academies, I highly recommend it.
 
 

Very cool Michael and talk about a memorable experience. I'm a big fan of G3 and would've loved to attend this.....I saw Steve Vai back in 99 in a small club and it was fantastic, up, close, & personal.....a true master at his craft. Thanks for posting this. :)

Mesh,
Yes it was quite an experience.
I was unexpectedly blown away by Eric Johnson. I was not a tremendous EJ fan before...there was something about his sound I could not get behind. I liked it better sitting in front of his rig.
I was having a smoke outside on the first morning and this familiar looking guy comes up to me and starts talking and it took me a bit to realize it was EJ. Completely down to earth with no pretense whatsoever.  He gave I think 4 hour long classes...very interesting. In the last one he asked attendees to come up and play. He jammed along and gave pointers afterwards.
Some of the stuff he improvised was amazing. All this in spite of the fact he had the flu. I think the altitude got to him too because he looked a little on the gray side.
 
This is off post but I just read your equip specs. I just finished ordering my next studio PC right before I saw your post. Very close to yours performance-wise but I went with Haswell-E for the 6 cores. I am way overdue for a upgrade. I went for an I7 3520K with G.Skill 32GB and a Corsair H110 cooler.
I almost got an AsRock but went with the Asus X99. I hope I can OC to 4.5Ghz. The Haswell chips are not as consistent for OC'ing as your Ivy Bridge so it is a crap shoot. Pretty sure I can get 4.3Ghz even with a weak chip. I guess I will find out in a few days.
How is Win 10 working for you with Sonar on your rig?
I am sticking with 8.1 for a while but intend to get the free Win 10 upgrade.
Cheers

yea, just saw 'guitar town' at copper mountain a couple of weeks back....
johnson, landreth and vai there, 
it was a great show!
 
 

microapp
Mesh,
Yes it was quite an experience.
I was unexpectedly blown away by Eric Johnson. I was not a tremendous EJ fan before...there was something about his sound I could not get behind. I liked it better sitting in front of his rig.
I was having a smoke outside on the first morning and this familiar looking guy comes up to me and starts talking and it took me a bit to realize it was EJ. Completely down to earth with no pretense whatsoever.  He gave I think 4 hour long classes...very interesting. In the last one he asked attendees to come up and play. He jammed along and gave pointers afterwards.
Some of the stuff he improvised was amazing. All this in spite of the fact he had the flu. I think the altitude got to him too because he looked a little on the gray side.
 
This is off post but I just read your equip specs. I just finished ordering my next studio PC right before I saw your post. Very close to yours performance-wise but I went with Haswell-E for the 6 cores. I am way overdue for a upgrade. I went for an I7 3520K with G.Skill 32GB and a Corsair H110 cooler.
I almost got an AsRock but went with the Asus X99. I hope I can OC to 4.5Ghz. The Haswell chips are not as consistent for OC'ing as your Ivy Bridge so it is a crap shoot. Pretty sure I can get 4.3Ghz even with a weak chip. I guess I will find out in a few days.
How is Win 10 working for you with Sonar on your rig?
I am sticking with 8.1 for a while but intend to get the free Win 10 upgrade.
Cheers

Same here, I also respected EJ a great deal, but never quite became a big fan (I'm more of a Satriani fan :)). I did however enjoy G3's version of Red House (in my book, the best version of it) and EJ just fit in really well. Yeah, I also think that makes a HUGE difference when these guys whom are world famous, and are still down to earth.......it's so much easier for us 'laymen' to relate to. :)
 
I'm really happy with my build (now 2 years old) as it has been very responsive and stable......I'm still at awe when I sit in front of it (I was used to an old 4GB/32 bit Vista machine) and this thing is just awesome. I'm a real noob at Oc'ing and that's the reason I got my AsRock board......in the BIO's/software it has built in profiles by Nick Shih (held/holds the world record OC'in at 7.93GHz.) which makes it extremely simple to OC by picking the GHz I want. All the finer details OC'ing are automatically done by the profile settings (of course common sense needs to be used to avoid blowing up your system...lol).
 
Regarding Win 10, I'm very happy with it (so far). It seems more 'snappier' and more pleasant in usage. It was as easy as it could be in upgrading from Win 8.1. Just make sure you have solid driver support for all your hardware and you should be good to go. I'd also recommend using Customize Settings (during the upgrade process) and avoid Express Settings (to avoid a lot of these privacy issues).
 
Anyway, I'm sure you'll  be very, very happy with your new rig (Congrats!!)....and hopefully will last you a long time. Are you planning gaming as well on this machine (OC'ing)?
  

Mesh,
I am not much of a gamer. In fact I have the simplest (no-fan) ATI graphics card I could find that supports 3 monitors. My new build will be strictly a studio PC.
I hear you about OC'ing. I got the Asus MB because they have a special OC socket which supposedly reduces the voltage drop to the CPU socket as well as a good OC bios.
I have built quite a few PCs (none quite as expensive as this one) and I dread the moment of truth when you press the power button. So far (fingers crossed) they have all worked.
Michael

batsbrew,
I intended to go to the Copper Mtn gig too, but did not make it. My friend bailed out at the last minute and I had car problems driving back from Vail. Glad you enjoyed it. Steve never disappoints.
Michael
 
 

well, the funny thing is,
eric johnson did the ACOUSTIC set on saturday,
and played half the set on piano!!
 
LOL
 
but it was cool
 
landreth was the most bad @ss of the bunch

batsbrew,
Yeah, I saw that EJ was performing on Sat and that weighed on my decision to not go to Copper on Sunday. Didn't even know he played piano.
Another reason I did not go is that when I went to Vail for the Academy on Sunday about 2PM a week prior, traffic was stopped on I-70 East from Idaho Springs to past the tunnel. That is at least 40 miles. No other way for me to get back home (SW of Boulder).
 
I sat in on Landreth's first class at the Academy. He is not my style so I opted for EJ's classes after that but jeez, Landreth demonstrated stuff I did not even know was possible on guitar. He showed how to play minor chords using a slide with open (major) tuning. He did it by fretting the minor 3rd with a finger behind the slide . By fretting behind the the slide, the slide no longer touched the string so the string sounded as fretted. Did the same thing in front of the slide for aug chords.Of course, you could not do this with a shred setup. IIRC he had a Tele with 11's and action set pretty high.
I was sitting like 6 ft away from him in total amazement at some of the stuff he did.
He played some kick-a** Zydeco tunes too. I hope he did that at Copper too.
Michael
 

Wow! How cool is that!?!?