Date of birth: 11-01-1979, Aruba

Location: Vlissingen, The Netherlands

Plays the guitar since: February 1992

Inspirations: Joe Satriani, Vinnie Moore, Santana...

Other instruments: Drums, bassguitar and keyboards

My name is Alex van der Linde. I was born in Aruba 23 years ago, and I came to Holland at the age of five. I began taking drum lessons at the age of twelve, but when I saw my uncle and my cousins playing the electric guitar, I turned in my drumsticks for the real thing... It didn't last long or I was playing in a Guns n' Roses coverband called Wetlegs. But like most bands we had some problems with the bandmembers, so we split up and we all went our own way. From there on I've played in several bands as a drummer, bassist and guitarist.

My present band is Over The Edge. It's a hard rock / metal band from the Netherlands. We mostly play own stuff, but also covers like Master of Puppets and One (Metallica), High Speed Dirt and Tornado of souls (Megadeth), Ace of Spades (MotörHead), My Misery and Davidian (Machine Head), Arials and chop suey (System of a down), Thunderstruck (AC/DC).

In 1996 I helped out a friend by renovating his new guitarshop. He is a master luthier, and instead of giving me money for the job, he proposed that I could build a guitar (with a little help ofcourse). My first guitat turned out so well, it didn't last long or I was building a second one. After that I realised it is much cheaper building your own guitar than buying a new one, and the quality is much better! From there on I've been building guitars, custommizing and converting them all the time ;-)