Well, regardless of their playing ability (I'm not a DF fan myself), I think it'd be cool if they made a Herman Li 24 fret S signature model. Ibanez does seem to be expressing more interest in the S series recently so we might as well keep our fingers crossed.
I'd never heard of mick having one.....did anyone over there happen to have pics?
Ibanez has been getting hammered for over 10 years with requests for something done on the S series guitars. Their big 1st move was with the 3 years they did the 24 fret models. It met with HUGE success although RG sales diminished.
From there they did the 7 string version in the mid 90s and again sales increased in leaps and bounds, Sales on the Ibanez Univerze virtually were non existant and the RG7 sales dropped in a big way.
RG models are cheaper for Ibanez to make cause of the Basswood body vs the Mahogany found in the S series.
When ibanez saw diminishing sales due to their quality lacking from 94 to 2005 the S series wasnt practical for them to push cause it cost them more to build and it was difficult for them to compete with other guitar manufacturers as far as price was concerned.
Schecter and LTD almost killed ibanez dead in the mid to late 90s, they were making MUCH higher quality instruments for the same price. If you look at the late90s to early 2000's they didnt really have any major names on the METAL end of things.
Satch, Vai, Gilbert, and Petrucci arent very "METAL" and pertrucci was the closest thing they had till he jumped ship for EBMM.
They have actually come close to losing Vai AND Satch more than once.
Recently ibanez has really stepped things up. Their guitars are starting to reach the quality standards they had in the late 80s when they were at their peak.