Malupit talaga yang si Gabe! Almost three decades back, when everyone else was into clapton, page & beck, gabe was already into jazz/rock fusion, playing John Mc Laughlin/Larry Coryell & Al di Meola licks w/ his band Destiny. even before the term "shred guitar" was conceived, gabe was already doing this. I was blown away by their tune "A Taste of Honey" (sounds like a porn film
.png "lol")
), but the guitars was freekin' awesome!!!
During the early 80's i wuz teaching guitar part time at YSM. I remember gabe coming at the makati branch, got this les paul & was lookin' for the
"heaviest" guitar player to jam with
we became friends after that encounter
( needless to say, i was floored 
) gabe's a monster! we became friends, & even classmates at the UP College of Music, (extension classes, UP Jazz Ensemble )... but we were the "Iskul Bukol" type, often skipping classes only to jam & smoke weed along w/ johnny A.
at that time he was playing for Eddie Katindig Sr., I was jamming w/ Tateng ( Eddie K Jr)
Gabe was one of the very first clients of Mang Rudy... had a custom ES-335 made to his specs... He was the original axeman for Side A. He also jammed w/ the blue rats trading licks w/ joey puyat. then he moved to Bacolod. think he got into the tiger prawn culture business
Couple of years back he keeps on texting me, looking for a Tele. a friend of mine flew all the way to bacolod & brought him a 52 ri Tele. Gabe told me that it's more challenging to play Teles ( kinda like Ritchy Kotzen's trip ) one of my students was able to buy around 5 of gabe's high end Les Pauls & PRS... Lucky dude
there were even urban legends that gabe jammed w/ the allman bros, & jeff beck ... but if you know gabe, he's such a humble guy. showed me some pat martino & mike stern licks while drinkin' San Mig Grande & feasting on Baliwag's liempo:-D
Gabe's fingers do the talking... truly a guitarist's guitarist 
