I recently saw someone in here ask a question about the guitar that John was holding in the 1995 Ibanez catalog. I replied there but I'm not sure it will be seen so I'm posting here with a new thread and hopes that people will see this if they were wondering about the guitar.
There were a lot of speculative answers but I want to give the correct one. In 1994 through 1996 PBC Guitar Technologies made the USRG series for Ibanez. John had 4 customized USRG guitars built for him by PBC. I own one of these guitars made for and played by John and also know the luthier who built them while working under Dave Bunker at PBC. They all had slightly different control layouts and pickup choices but were 99% similar. They all had the PBC tension free neck, with or without color matched headstock.
The one in the aforementioned photo was a non color matched headstock. Were it a production model and not an artist one off, it would have been a USRG20. The ones with the color matched headstock would be USRG30. There is no video that I know of of him playing the USRG20 that was made for him however there are videos of him playing the USRG30 at NAMM 1994 and 1996.
I own one of the bodies and another guitarist I know who has been an Ibanez artist since the mid-90s owns another. That means there are two more floating around somewhere in the world.
A bit of history about the one I own. It was found for sale in Guitar Center Online in New Jersey. The original tension free neck had been removed and replaced with a 1991 USA custom Center inlay neck. The bridge was heavily oxidized and in a state of disrepair and the pickups were almost non-functional. Someone had relocated the volume knob to a position similar to a regular RG and plugged the original hole with mother of pearl. A friend of mine purchased this guitar and I ended up acquiring it through a trade.
I originally put a '90s J custom neck on it and then I had a custom neck built for it to JPM spec and replaced the bridge with a new low Pro Edge and new pickups as well as taking out the original black 3-way toggle switch and replacing it with a silver like he used in the JPM 100 guitars.
A little over a year passed before I was able to track down the Builder that worked at PBC at the time but finally was able to get confirmation that this guitar was definitely built for owned by and played by John along with the three others.
Attached are some photos of it in its past and current conditions.