Mostly known as "Fenderias" among musicians, Yannis Papadantonakis was born in 1964 in Athens, Greece.
Being a restless soul, he was very early attracted by arts. At the age of 5 he begun drawing and painting, taught by his father. At 7 he won his first painting competition, judged by the famous Greek painter Ch. Passalaris. In parallel, he begun writing poems and novels. The first large novel was written at the age of 11, a castaway story, obviously inspired the French writer Jules Verne, many books of whom Yannis had read at the time.
At the age of 11 he was attracted by music, especially the 70’s rock, which was the dominating music of that period. Right on he felt that he wanted to do more than just listen to. So, he begun playing his melodica as autodidact.
Soon he was attracted by a more serious instrument: Drums... He joined the 40-member symphonic orchestra of the highschool (German School of Athens) playing the Timpani for more than three years. The intensive music lessons in the school brought him through the years to a much higher level of music theory-, harmony- and rhythmic-knowledge. Music became such dominant on him, putting almost everything else aside... At the same time he formed his first school band ("Time Machine"). Against his parents unwillingness to support him on drums, he played on a borrowed drum set of his old school mate (and still big friend) George Karambateas. His only obligation for being allowed to use the drum set, was only to teach George how to also play the drums...
While still in highschool, he decided to switch over to guitar, and made his first attempts by the age of 17. Some people claimed it was a little bit late to start with guitar playing at an age where the hand and fingers were already formed up to 90%, but Yannis had made his decision.
In September 1982 he moved to Germany for studies in the Electrical Engineering faculty. Germany opened new horizons for fulfilling his wish to go deeper into guitar playing and music technology. Only being a few weeks there he bought his first real guitar, an original Fender Stratocaster. That's how his nickname "Fenderias" was born...
In the following years, by combining his musical interests and his technical knowledge (which mostly came from the studies) he worked as a live sound engineer, mainly for stage monitoring. He also became a guitar technician, learning a lot from his friend guitar master-builder Peter Cimrman. He modified many electric guitars in Germany as well as in Greece, especially customizing the electrics. In parallel, he was practicing intensively on guitar and also keyboards, and started performing live occasionally.
In 1987, moslty inspired by his biggest influence, Ritchie Blackmore, he started scalloping the fretboards of his own strats, to become more control on vibrato & bendings, while he was raising the string gauge to 11's and 12's, which are his regular ones up today. He further scalloped a few other fretboards for some customers in Greece.
Around 1988, remembering his old painting abilities, he painted some of his own axes using water-based colours, air-brush, polyurethane lacquer and imagination. Also, in the 1988 Music Fair in Frankfurt, that he used to visit every year, he met one of his most admired persons: Mr. Leo Fender(!!!) himself, and had with him a very fruitful conversation about guitar business.
In 1989 he built a Les Paul, nicknamed "Claudia", complete out of the wood, under support of his uncle Kosmas, who was an experienced carpenter.
After finishing his studies, he became a professional musician in Germany for ca. 3 years, during his post-studies in economics. He played in various bands, various places and very different styles of music ("from Dio up to Dio-nysiou" as he claims). Playing for living, he had the chance to join a part of the real pro's life. He learned how to work professionally in music, to choose and maintain his equipment, to avoid technical problems, to organize gigs, etc. But he also faced situations that made him soon decide that this wasn't something he would do for life: As long as Art is being mixed with the earning of the daily bread, then, inspiration, spontaneity and creativity are (sooner or later) poisoned.
At the same time he worked as a guitar teacher but foremost as a Sound-tech advisor, making clinics for guitar players on how to optimize and use their equipment, how to maintain their guitars, amps and gear, in order to get the best out of it.
After the military duty, he permanently moved back to Greece in 1995. Since then, he continues up to date with his preferred lifestyle: He works on his profession (as an el. engineer), but keeps playing music for fun. His main project since 1995 is the rock band Backtrackin' .
Based on the experience as a pro musician and guitar- & sound-tech, he gathered through the years lots of equipment, including a full digital home studio & matched recording gear, guitars, amps, peripherals, electronic drums, etc.
In 2003 he recorded his first CD "DAY" with mostly instrumental music, by playing all instruments and performing all sound engineering tasks.
Despite the huge equipment, Fenderias never saw music as an investment, and never felt as a "guitar collector". He is a true player, and uses, depending on the needs, every single axe he has.
Today, Yannis still modifies and maintains his guitars and his amp set-ups. Each amp setup is tuned for a different live-venue, be it a small bar or a stadium stage. "Perfectly tuned equipment is as vital as good playing in today’s rock music" he always believed. Further upon, he maintains guitars from friends and also customers, who want a specific setup.
But, above all, Yannis likes more acting as a tech advisor, guiding guitar players on equipment choice, budget estimation and sharing, setup & matching, and showing them how to maintain, optimize and tune their gear for a more proper use, especially in live situations.
Yannis has been further specialized on "Aging" of electric guitars, mainly Gibsons and Fenders. "Aging" is far from just hitting, scratching and almost destroying a guitar, in order to make it look old (or used), as many people think. The aim is to make a guitar look (as possible) naturally old, but not affect its functionality, which has to remain perfect. Artificial aging becomes worldwide slowly an art. It requires a lot of experience and detailed knowledge, since every guitar ages totally differently, depending on its construction, wood, hardware, electrics, finish, etc. Further upon, not only the usage but also the place, where the guitar might have been (virtually) extensively used, determines the aging grade and the look. Different geographical locations means different environmental influence (temperature/humidity), and therefore different aging results and look. After years of research, and based on his long-year experience, Yannis has developed his own complex "Aging" method, combining (not that harmless...)chemical reactions with mechanical elaboration and weather influence. The method is being optimized permanently. You may see some aging details on a few guitars in the relevant photo album and on the slideshow in the left.
