"When do we get to talk about guitars?" asked Slash, eager to get off the topic of Shannon Hoon's death and his differences with Axl. It would seem like a fitting topic due to the fact that Slash was hard at work with luthier Mike McGuire to hopefully create a Slash model Les Paul guitar. Like his music, Slash has a solid idea on what a guitar should be.

"The only reason I'm here is because I did a show with Michael Jackson on the MTV awards and I played my regular Les Paul that I take everywhere with me," Slash said. "Gibson said 'You gotta come down to the Custom Shop and we're going to give you a guitar we want a Slash model'. I said 'okay' so we were just going through all these Les Pauls so we can try and get a simple but direct approach to what I would consider the optimum guitar."

So what is Slash's criteria for a great guitar?

"If I can't use it live or in the studio, then I'm not going to endorse it. I've been here all day just talking about it so that they really understand how important it is, not so much what color it is or how different its appearance is compared to what I normally use, which are old stock models. As long as it sounded right. They've been very nice about listening to my views and trying to focus on that. And then whatever color it's going to be and what knobs are on it, we can do later, let's just get a good piece of wood together."

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