When my birthday came up in august, my wife told me she wanted to buy me a guitar but wasn't sure of what to buy because she didn't want to get me something I didn't like.

So I went to the Guitar Fetish site and ordered all the parts needed to build a Tele-style guitar. Here's the result:





This Tele is loaded up with GFS Fatbody pickups (recommended!), a Wilkinson compensated bridge, Wilkinson true mechanical lock tuners and heavy-duty strap locks. And it wails. Happy birthday to me!

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When I bought the Ibanez Artist I mentioned in the last post, the guy selling it also had a Line 6 Spider I combo amp that he insisted he wanted to sell with the guitar. Since I wanted the guitar, I paid the extra dough and got the amp as well.

I tried the amp on a couple of gigs, and it was just horrible. Probably the worst idea Line 6 ever had. So I put the amp up for sale or trade on craig's List, and I got a response from a guy who had one of the most unusual guitars I've ever seen.





This guitar is made by a Korean company named Spear, and it's an odd one in a few respects. First off, the body isn't wood, it's a dense plastic compound called luthite. It was developed by Cort guitars for use in bass bodies, and Ibanez also used it for some Jem models and the Joe Satriani 'Silver Surfer' guitar. It's heavier than a comparable wood body would be, and it's got pretty nice resonance. Spear has been winning awards for a couple of years in Europe, and while this guitar is on the lower end of their catalog, it's still pretty cool. The molded design on the top of the body is just pretty cool, although the bronze color isn't among my favorites. A paint job may be necessary, but probably not for a while.

I don't have many shredder guitars in my collection, but I grabbed this one just for the novelty of it all.

The last 'Gear' entry on this blog was back in April, when i posted my Gibson Les Paul Special. Since then, I've gotten more stuff, and I modded one of my old guitars.

This used to be a black and white Squier Strat, which I bought new in 1995. I decided to mod the guitar after (briefly) considering buying a Les Paul body and putting together my own LP replica, but then finding out that there were QC problems with the kit I was going to buy. Instead, I ended up refinishing the Strat in a retro color and setting it up with a pair of P-90 pickups.





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During the summer, I started gigging with a Clapton tribute band, and my old Ibanez Artist is the #1 for that gig. I was looking at Craig's one day and saw an ad for another '80 Artist, and I bought it to be the Clapton backup guitar. It needed a little TLC, but it's a rock-solid guitar. Ibanez sure knew how to build them in the day.




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More to come.

I posted last week about the guitar my wife got me for my anniversary and the problems with its finish.

Well, I spent time on the guitar last week and here are the results.





I had intended to finish the entire guitar in 'TV White,' a sort of transparent white that showed the finish through the color. The sides and back of the guitar did not take the stain very well, so I sanded them down to bare wood again and left the top white.

I've taken to calling this finish a 'Cowboy Top,' after the way that old-school cowboy singers like Roy Rogers used to to the tops of their guitars in a color and leave the back and sides natural.

I played the guitar at Saturday and Sunday's gigs, and it's a little beast.

So, Thursday was my fifth wedding anniversary, and my wife informed me that the designated gift for anniversary #5 is supposed to be made of wood. She then said that she wanted to buy me a guitar for our anniversary (another reason why I love my wife!).

I remembered a guitar that I had seen on Craig's List: a Gibson Les Paul Special Double-Cut in their legendary TV Yellow color. I found the post, got in touch with the guy, and luckily he still had it. We went out to Mastic and picked the guitar up on Friday night.



The downside: The paint job is a re-finish in what they seller thought was closer to Gibson's TV Yellow than its original finish, and he kinda hacked it. The guitar most definitely has another re-finish coming when the weather gets warmer.

But the guitar plays really well - I'm really digging these small-body Gibsons lately. And despite its dodgy paint job, this one is definitely a keeper.

Many of you have seen my Epiphone Les Paul Standard at our shows, although it's been semi-retired for a few months while I did some modifications to it.

Here's what it most recently looked like (click for detail):



You'll notice a little 'wear spot' on the top cutaway, which I made when I did a relic job on the guitar a few months ago. Well, when i did that, I noticed what looked like a hint of flame maple peeking out.

I decided over the weekend to remove the Ebony from the top of the guitar and see what was actually under there. And I was right - there was a nice bit of maple under all that black!



And in a move guaranteed to piss off any Epiphone purists out there, I turned the headstock into an approximation of the Gibson 'open-book:'



I'm pretty pleased with it. As I told my wife, it's like getting a new guitar for the price of a couple of packs of sandpaper. Can't beat that with a stick or a bat...

I drove from LI up to Nyack, NY this afternoon and got a 1995 Korean Epiphone LP Junior DC in Heritage Cherry. Guitar Dater says it was made in the Samick plant. Dot markers, no Les Paul sig on the headstock, just a semi-flowerpot inlay. The pickup switch is on the top cut of the body instead of down by the knobs

This guitar has some real weight to it - not neck-heavy like a G-400. The P-90s sound amazing, and there's practically no fret wear whatsoever. In fact, for a guitar that's nearly 15 years old it's in near-perfect condition. One of the top hat knobs has a crack in it, otherwise this guitar is 100 per cent.

This is an awesome little guitar, and I'm a happy boy... Here's a pic (click to see it big).

I almost forgot to mention that Tommy got a cool Christmas present - a Mark Bass 4x10 cabinet to match his amp. It looks like this:

A few years ago, I bought some sound gear from an old friend of mine. He was so happy to get the racks and amps I bought from him out of his basement, he showed his appreciation by giving me one of these (click for larger image):



It's a Univox EM-200 Echo Tech Delay box, from way back in the 70s. The one I've got is in practically mint condition (a small scratch on the face plate, but the Tolex is perfect). I've even got the cover they shipped it with.

Now, I was under the impression that this unit used actual analog recording tape to produce delay, and because of that I just stored it away with the idea that someday I would get some clean analog tape and reload the cartridge.

While pulling my Christmas tree out of the storage area today, the Echo Tech caught my eye and I figured I'd pull it out to have a look. I plugged it into my POD 1 and plugged the SG into it, just to check and see if the damn thing even worked.

Imagine my surprise when I turned up the echo balance control and actually got delay out of it!

It turns out that this model doesn't use analog tape (I used to have the smaller Univox Echo that used the tape cartridges - the one that EVH used on 'Eruption' - and I figured this one used the same principle). There's some sort of spinning disc in the thing that produces the echo. And after all these years, the disc has somehow survived.

We're going to Dare Studios to record the track and shoot some footage for the 'World Fall Down' video tomorrow night, and I'm gonna bring this baby along for the ride. The thing I like most about these stand-alone delays is they've got a preamp built in, and when you put it on the front end of an amp and push it a bit, it really fattens up the sound.

I feel like a dope for letting this thing sit for 2 years without even trying it, but now that I know it works I may just add it to the effects chain.

The horse-trading continues...

I put my Yamaha AES-620 on Craig's List for sale or trade last week, just looking for something new. A guy got back to me offering an Epiphone G400 (their name for what's essentially an SG) with upgraded pickups - a DiMarzio Breed in the bridge position and a Mighty mite Motherbucker (love that name) on the bridge position.

He came by this morning, and once I saw the guitar I went for the trade. It's a little banged up, but I was planning on banging it up myself anyway.

Here's a pic. Click for the big version....

I decided that I'd get rid of my Epiphone Explorer. I love the guitar, but I never play it any more. I figured I'd post it on Craig's List and see what I could get in return for it.

I looked at what I had and what need could be filled, and since I didn't have a maple neck Strat I figured I'd test the waters for a trade and see what I could come up with. I posted that i was looking for a maple Strat and sat back to see what came back.

It didn't take long - within an hour I got 10 replies, some guys wanting to trade, some looking to buy the Explorer outright. I think it had to do with Epiphone raising their prices, because about half of the responses wanted to just buy the guitar.

But I got a response from a guy out in Queens that interested me - for an '03 Mexican Strat, maple neck, and a matte purple finish that I'd never seen before. I talked to the guy and got more details. the pickups were swapped out and replaced with a set of Seymour Duncan Performers - also known as Scorcher Rails. I decided to meet up with the guy and check the guitar out.

When I saw the guitar I liked the look right away. The matte purple is pretty cool, but it had a tortoise shell pickguard that didn't look great on such a dark guitar. This afternoon I headed off to Guitar Center to get a replacement.

I unscrewed the pickguard and lifted it up, and was I in for a surprise! Not only were the pickups swapped, but the guitar was outfitted with 500K posts, an Orange Drop cap, the works. And really well done work, too.

So I put the white pickguard on it, and it looks much sweeter than the tortoise shell. The guitar now looks more like something I'd play. And the Duncans are wild - not quite a full HB sound, but definitely stronger than stock Strat pups. And the neck is really nice - if I didn't just re-string the guitar with .010s, I'd swear it had a set of .009s on it.

Here's a pic.