Tender Surrender guitar tone
Steve Vai · Steve Vai
Alien Love Secrets (1995)
dynamic instrumental ballad: glassy clean intro to singing high-gain lead, gain swept with the guitar volume knob
The rig Steve Vai used
Researched from interviews, production write-ups and gear histories — not guessed.
Guitar
Steve Vai; the Ibanez JEM7VWH “EVO,” DiMarzio pickup selection, and stored guitar-volume moves are retained as era-consistent recreation choices, not established details of the released take.
Amplifier
Bogner Ecstasy 100A retained as a weak seller-attributed recreation. The existing legacy 100B settings create a real unresolved identity conflict; exact recording amplifier, channel allocation, and number of amps are unknown.
Cabinet
Bogner 4x12 (Celestion Vintage 30)
Microphone
Recreation: Shure SM57 close microphone on a Bogner-style 4x12. Exact recording cabinet, speaker, microphone, count, distance, and angle are unknown.
Signal chain
The order the original sound was built in. The exact settings get dialled for your own amp or modeller when you generate the tone.
Get this tone on your rig
Pick your amp or modeller and we’ll build Tender Surrender for it — with a preset file you can load, not a list of knob positions.
Why we think this is right
Vai’s official catalog establishes the 1995 release, and official adjacent-era gear pages show access to an Ecstasy and some rack families without binding them to “Tender Surrender.” A seller specifically attributes a 100A to the track, but that provenance is not participant-authenticated. Morley dates the retail Bad Horsie to 1996, so a 1995 released take cannot be assigned that retail pedal without prototype evidence. The JEM, 100A, rack units, cabinet, microphone, section schedule, and numerical values below are retained only as explicit reconstruction; the legacy 100B settings remain an unresolved conflict.
Sources
- https://reverb.com/item/78821977-bogner-ecstasy-100a-rare
- https://forum.fractalaudio.com/threads/bogner-ecstasy-steve-vai-die-to-live-alien-love-secrets-tone.191944/
- https://tonestakr.com/guitarists/steve-vai/songs/tender-surrender/
- https://www.morleyproducts.com/bad-horsie/
- https://equipboard.com/items/morley-vai-1-steve-vai-bad-horsie-wah