The goal of all signature models at Ernie Ball Music Man is an instrument that perfectly fits an artist’s form, playing style and personal tastes. James Valentine and our award-winning engineers took that mission one step further with our most recent artist collaboration: they created a guitar with diverse design features and unmatched sonic flexibility, allowing anyone to create a signature sound.

The result is our Valentine guitar, which won “Best in Show” at the 2016 NAMM convention.

“The Ernie Ball family really worked with me on creating, from scratch, what was in my head for the perfect guitar. I had two main goals: design a guitar I could play throughout an entire set and make something completely new that still looked classic. I know we succeeded on both counts.” – James Valentine

Coming very soon! #valentineguitar @ernieball

A photo posted by @jamesbvalentine on May 13, 2016 at 3:53pm PDT

 

The Valentine features a slab ash body, two Ernie Ball Music Man designed pickups with 3-way custom wired lever switch, coil tap, modern hardtail bridge with vintage bent steel saddles, 25.5-inch scale, tinted ultra-light satin polyurethane finish neck with 10-inch radius roasted figured with maple fingerboard, 22 stainless steel frets, oversized 4-over- 2 headstock and compensated nut, designed for superior tuning stability.

The guitar also boasts an innovative tapered design that narrows the body of the guitar towards the top of the player, lightening the guitar without sacrificing tone and also improves playability by hugging the player more closely.

Watch James talk about the design process and demo the guitar in the video below. See more pictures and find a dealer for pre-ordering beginning 6/1: http://musc.mn/1TDbWAq