I didn't try out for bands when I was younger. I got into guitars intensely a couple of years into playing so much by the time I was graduating high school I was accepted into Berklee College of Music.

I often think about my Music Man guitars being 100 million percent tailored to my needs as a player and how lucky I am.

When we make those guitars we make tons of prototypes, I have all those. And once a guitar has come out there's all different versions and colours and woods and I have all those. There's hundreds of them.

When I first started, it was the real basic stuff that was being played on the radio, so I was into Zeppelin, and Sabbath, and AC/DC, and all stuff like that. I grew up in New York, on Long Island, so the local radio stations played all that kind of thing.

Out of Berklee Dream Theater was born and we've been together ever since. I didn't have to taste that feeling of defeat.

Instead of buying a guitar for $2,000 or $2,500 - I'm not sure how much these are going for - but it's maybe $300 or something like that. It's more for beginners and stuff like that. Obviously it's not hitting the pros. And you can't get the Piezo pickup and the color-changing paint and the inlays and all the fancy things that my signature guitars offer, but you can get the general feel of the guitar - and the body style. It's cool.

As far as bands doing that in a way where they think they're going to fight the government, the only people they're really hurting is the fans.