Ibanez drops a surprise September signature collection: new Vai, Satriani, and Nita Strauss guitars
Ibanez used the start of September 2026 to drop a surprise signature collection headlined by Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, and Nita Strauss. Here is what landed, and the far cheaper way to get closer to how these players actually feel: the strings.
By Jaxon, Gear Desk · Edited by Cadence ·
Ibanez has unveiled a surprise September 2026 signature collection, led by an updated Steve Vai PIA (the gold-leaf PIA77BON2 with DiMarzio UtoPIA pickups), plus new Joe Satriani and Nita Strauss signatures and a redesigned Iceman, alongside some metal-focused P Series models. The guitars are aspirational, but the light, fast string sets these shred players favor are not: a .009 gauge set is the attainable way into their feel.
A surprise September drop
Ibanez used the first days of September 2026 to do something it rarely does: drop a full signature collection with no warning. Leading it is an updated Steve Vai PIA, the PIA77BON2, with an intricate hand-painted gold leaf design. It keeps Vai's DiMarzio UtoPIA pickups and otherwise follows the familiar PIA spec sheet, so the changes are mostly visual, but on a guitar this iconic, visual is the point.
Alongside it came new Joe Satriani and Nita Strauss signatures and a redesigned Iceman, plus a run of metal-focused P Series models. It is a lot of guitar to land in one surprise collection, and it covers a wide span: Vai's art-object PIA, Satriani's workhorse shred machine, Strauss's modern metal weapon, and the Iceman's angular classic shape.
The Nita Strauss thread
The Nita Strauss signature is worth a second look, because her name has been in the news for another reason this year. Strauss is Alice Cooper's guitarist, and when she stepped away on maternity leave in 2026, she personally handpicked Anna Cara to fill her touring chair. So a fresh Strauss signature arrives while a 23-year-old stand-in keeps her seat warm on the road, a nice bit of symmetry for a player whose profile keeps rising.
The cheap way in: the strings
Here is the honest part. A signature Ibanez is aspirational gear, hundreds or thousands of dollars of it. The strings these players run are not. Shred and lead guitarists like Vai and Satriani lean on light, fast gauges, because a lighter set bends easier and moves quicker under the fingers, which is most of what makes fast playing feel possible.
The classic shred gauge is a light .009 to .042 set. It is the single cheapest, biggest step toward how these players feel: a fraction of the cost of any of these guitars, and it changes how the instrument plays under your hands more than a new body ever will. For the exact documented setups, the profiles above lay out what each player runs.
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