Some guy at Guitar Center was looking at a new Gibson SG Standard, which was tagged at something like $1,300. Being a good fellow shopper, I let him know that there was a used SG Special elsewhere in the store for just $700 in really good shape. Big mistake on my part!

The guy proceeded to talk my ear off about how he had been in a band that had a big million-selling hit song, and he had also been involved with cocaine dealers that had gotten Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton elected. Hmm...yes, okay. He wouldn't be interested in a SG Special, though, you see, because they had "plastic pickups" whereas the Standard had "metal pickups." Any of my readers who know guitars know that ALL electric guitars have plastic pickups, it's just that some have chrome-plated covers. Just the kind of thing I wouldn't expect a guy who sold a million singles (yeah right) to know.

More recently -- yesterday, in fact -- I was browsing Guitar Center and some black guy was doing a heck of a job shredding on a Squire Stratocaster. At first I thought he was plugged into a high-end Joe Satriani signature amp, but then I saw he was actually plugged into an amp called a B-52, which I had thought was some lame-o off-brand, but it sure sounded good! He noticed me listening over his shoulder and said, "Can you believe that's a transistor amp?" I couldn't, and we discussed how modern solid state amps sound so much like their more expensive tube counterparts.

He said he had sold his equipment 12 years ago and considered himself done with guitar, but the Lord had told him to play again. He just wondered if the Lord was going to provide the equipment. Then he said, "Are you saved?"

Aw, shit. How did a nice discussion of budget amps go in this direction? No, I'm not "saved," because there's nothing for me to be saved from, unless it's boredom. I live like a monk. If I visited the local sorority house every Saturday with a crate of Jack Daniels and the ladies took turns mounting me...well, that's not a situation I would want to be saved from, anyhow. But if sitting in your pajamas watching CNN Headline News for hours is a sin, I guess I belong in the lowest pits of Hell.

"Do you believe Jesus was here in the flesh?" Yes, I think he was a real person, but the Romans did him in, just like Socrates drank the hemlock and Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot in Memphis. I don't look for any of them to return soon. "Well, if you believe he was here in the flesh, then you're on the way to believing in his return..."

Somehow I got away from this conversation, and reminded myself of the rule I had made after meeting the guy with the big hit song and Carter/Clinton cocaine contacts: don't talk to strangers in guitar stores! It's a beehive of weirdos!

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This trip to the guitar shop was a fruitful one, though. There was a gently used DigiTech Synth Wah pedal in the display case for just $40. I tried it out to verify it was working, which can be a problem with DigiTech pedals, and indeed, it sounded great. I bagged it, and felt further satisfied to find that the $40 price tag was lower than what they go for even on E-Bay. As well as making Edie Brickell "What I Am" sounds it also has a couple of settings that sound just like Edgar Winter's "Frankenstein." I'm pleased.