Paul Gilbert—incredible guitarist, affable gearhead, and formerly one of the biggest heads of hair in all of hair metal (evidence below)—was once the proud owner of a hot pink Ibanez Ice-Stroyer. An Ice-Stroyer, you might be thinking, what is that?
Well, back in 1987 Gilbert was in Racer X, looking for a flashy guitar to match his looks. "I wanted Def Leppard hair so bad that I got some, I grew some. But that's the first step. After you have Def Leppard hair, you need a Def Leppard guitar," he said in a previous video about the guitar.
He commissioned a pink Destroyer from Ibanez, thinking that would fit the bill. Instead—assuming he wanted access to the highest reaches of the neck—Ibanez only built him one top half a Destroyer. For the bottom half, the builders cut the lower horn away far back from the neck into the recognizable shape of its Iceman guitars. Half Iceman, half Destroyer, it would then become known as the Ice-Stroyer.
With Paul's signature scrawled on its matching headstock, the guitar became one of the main instruments in his music-making life. It's featured on the cover of Racer X's 1988 live album, Extreme Volume Live, and he continued to play the guitar with his next group, Mr. Big.
In 2020, Paul sold the guitar himself on Reverb to help raise money for Juan Alderete, his friend and former Racer X bandmate, as Juan was recovering from a bike accident.
The guitar has now popped back up for sale by Nashville's Rumble Seat Music, a Reverb shop that always has incredible gear available. And for a guitar with such looks and such a nice backstory, it's our Find of the Week.
Visit the full listing to learn more.