It's time to blow the dust off and get back into blogging!

Guitar Crazy

I think I've gone a bit nuts on the guitar front lately. First, I bought a Gibson SG Classic off of E-Bay. This is a reissue of the SG Special like Pete Townshend used at Woodstock and Live at Leeds. This particular one has been upgraded with Grover tuners and a nice hardshell case. The P-90 single coil pickups are surprisingly louder than the humbuckers in some of my other guitars, and give an aggressive sound like a humbucker but maintain a clear and highly-articulated sound like a single coil. I can't figure out why these pickups never caught on more because I think they have the best of humbucker and single coil worlds and the drawbacks of neither. Whoever set this guitar up at its home back in Oregon did a really extraordinary job, too. This is definitely one of my two or three best-playing and sounding guitars out of about 10 that I have.

Somehow I just couldn't leave well enough alone, though. I had been surprised by my attraction to a natural finish Explorer at Guitar Center. Used to I laughed at pointy guitars, but this Explorer with a natural wood grain finish looked cool as hell. When I saw one of a non-Gibson brand for a low, low price in the used section at the Guitar Center across town I broke loose and bought it. Unfortunately...I've found the damn thing won't stay tuned! I even dropped $58 for some locking Grover tuners for it, and it still won't stay tuned. I also checked the intonation, and it's right on, but...I think this thing is headed to E-Bay. I think I'll get a Epiphone one later, even though they're not as pretty. (A Gibson Explorer in natural finish is $3,000 from the Custom Shop, the only other option is one of their Epiphone branded ones for $275 or so used).

The guitar lunacy didn't stop there, though. Awhile back I had visited the acoustic guitar room at Guitar Center (maybe I should stay away from Guitar Center?) and tried out a Yamaha FG730S acoustic. The look and sound of it really impressed me. Then I went across the room and strummed a Martin acoustic that cost over $2,000, about 8 times the price of the Yamaha, and...the nuts on guitar forums would say if I thought a $300 Yamaha sounded better than $2,300 Martin I must be out of my tree, but I think they're out of their tree! In my experience a $100 guitar has every bit as much of a chance of sounding good as a $1,000 guitar, and this Yamaha sure sounded better than that Martin. To make a short story long, I found one of these Yamaha FG730S guitars on Craig's List and bought it from some teen-ish girl with "Meant to Live" tattooed on her tits. I put some Ernie Ball Earthwoods on it and it sounds fantastic! I've loved it so much I'd kinda like to get another, maybe one to keep nice and one to knock around.

Finally, I've always been thrilled with the Music Man HD-130 amp that a neighbor sold me back in 1993 for $75. So...I got another one off of E-Bay as a "backup." Unfortunately this one isn't quite as tip-top as it seemed on E-Bay, but I think some new tubes and a replacement grill cloth and it will be great. I've got that being worked on by a pro now.

The last thing I want to do is a get a 2x12 speaker cabinet for places where my 4x12 wouldn't be appropriate (you know, with this huge music career I have going on). I A/B'd the Fender Bandmaster and Egnater Tourmaster cabinets today, and I think I might follow the advice of someone on the Telecaster forum and get one from a company called Avatar. They make custom cabinets for just slightly more than the Fender and slightly less than the Egnater, with your choice of speakers and tolex and everything.

So that's some of what I've been doing while I've been not writing.