Rusty Cooley (born April 27, 1970) is an American guitarist, known for his highly refined guitar technique. He is regarded as one of the fastest guitarists in the United States and a master of the shredding technique of guitar. Guitar Player magazine called him "the leading light of the post-Malmsteen shred-volution." Early life Cooley received his first equipment (a Peavey T27 guitar and a Peavey Decade amp) on his fifteenth birthday. From that day on he immersed himself in music, practicing upwards of four hours a day. He took guitar lessons for a while but became dissatisfied with local guitar instructors and decided to become self-taught. He relied on instructional books and videos like Doug Marks's Metal Method, Ted Greene's Chord Chemistry and Modern Chord Progressions books, REH instructional videos, and Robben Ford's instructional DVDs. His early musical influences were guitarists Randy Rhoads, Yngwie Malmsteen, Steve Vai, Paul Gilbert, Vinnie Moore and Tony MacAlpine. After only three years of playing, he became a guitar teacher at the music store where he had purchased his first guitar. After high school Cooley went to the local college and studied music theory. Solo work Cooley was unsatisfied with local musicians and began to work on solo music in early 1996. He began playing seven-string guitars exclusively at this time. His debut solo album was the self-titled Rusty Cooley, released in 2003 by Lion Music. It consists of 12 tracks, one of which, "Under the Influence", was released as a video as well. The album featured Cooley on guitar, Brent Marches on bass, Eric Sands on fretless bass, and Bobby Williamson on keyboards. Music was by Cooley, Marches, and Kelly Carpenter; Carpenter also wrote the lyrics for, and handled the vocals on, the vocal versions of "Dominion" and "The Machine". Programming was done by Cooley and Williamson, while guitar engineering was done by Sands. Cooley also was in charge of production. Track listing Currently Cooley has collaborated with ProTone Pedals, testing their new Jason Becker Perpetual Burn Signature distortion pedal, as Becker himself has suffered from ALS since 1990, and as such, is no longer able to play guitar. ProTone Pedals has posted several videos of Cooley testing prototype versions of the pedal on YouTube . One of these video features a comment from Cooley himself, citing Becker as one of his biggest influences and stating that working on the pedal was something he