Michael Wilton...

"Happy 50th Birthday" 

Michael Wilton...

An American guitarist for the progressive metal band Queensrÿche. Wilton attended Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle where he met future Queensrÿche drummer Scott Rockenfield and began recording in 1981. Wilton's musician life began when he was eight years old, when he inherited a bass guitar from his uncle, who died in a motorcycle accident. He started to learn bass by learning some songs by bands from his father's collections, such as The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan. Later, he also got a nylon string acoustic from his aunt and accidentally blew his father's speaker. He convinced his father to give him his uncle's equipment, a Fender Bassman and speaker cabinet. In junior high school, Wilton changed his mind and chose to play guitar rather than bass, when he bought his first guitar, a Les Paul copy and a fuzzbox. At school, he also joined some garage bands with his school-mates, including Chris DeGarmo, Queensrÿche's former guitarist. He began to explore the guitar world further in high school, where he started to listen to hard rock and heavy metal music  and began practicing seriously, for 2 hours per day. -Wikipedia.com

Some facts about the B-day boy: 

Wilton has used many different guitars throughout his 24 year career, mostly Gibson guitars and Fender guitars. He then began endorsing ESP guitars in 1989. He also has had two signature series from ESP, which are the 2004 ESP Signature Eclipse (comes in three different colors) and the 2004 ESP Signature Skull. In 2010, ESP Released a new Michael Wilton signature, the LTD MW-Demon. Everything about the guitar is much like his previous MW-600, except it has a heavily distressed black finish with a custom demon graphic in the center of the guitar. -Wikipedia.com

 Sweet Guitars...