Guitar stuff

I've played guitar off and on since I was a teenager,tho not with any great distinction :- . I currently serve as guitarist and sound guy (which involves a lot of running back and forth at rehearsals :-) ) for the praise team at Living Faith Fellowship here in Gainesville. While I don't consider myself any great shakes as a guitarist, "His grace is sufficient for me", so I guess that makes my playing sufficient for Him. I'm deeply grateful to have the opportunity to offer my talent to the Lord who redeems me and gives me life.

Here are my babies, in all their somewhat-blurry glory. (Note to self- use a tripod next time!) On the left is a Martin Shenandoah D-2832, bought nearly-new from John Sprung back when he was in Wheaton, Maryland. Evidently the prior owner had a sudden reversal of fortune right after he bought it; the warranty registration card was still in the case. The Shenandoahs were a sort of "midline" offering between the Korean-made Sigmas and the high-buck made-in-Nazareth factory Martins; the parts were prepped in Korea, then shipped to Pennsylvania for final assembly and finishing. I am nothing short of thrilled to death with this guitar. I couldn't see replacing it, unless Martin ever got off its collective duff and puts the D-60 into general production!

The Black Telecaster in the center is my prize, the first inanimate object I would save if the house torched off. It was built in 1984 by Koontz and Thurston and wired by yours truly. It's ash or alder, don't remember which, with a relief in the back so that it doesn't dig into my side. Pickups are a DiMarzio SuperII at the neck and a Duncan JB-4 at the bridge. The mad scientist wiring scheme lets me do all kinds of fun things with series/parallel, in and out of phase, cutting coils, etc. I can pretty much make it sound like a half dozen different guitars. The neck is a replacement, basic maple with an ebony fingerboard; the orignal was an unbelievably beautiful flame maple that developed a very unfortunate S-bend the the truss rod was powerless to resolve. I've had three other electrics in the interim; none have lasted nearly as long as Blackie here.

The shiny blond critter on the right is a Jay Turser semi-hollow, picked up to scratch the "I want something jazzier" itch. It's really not bad for a CNC-produced Chinese factory special. I play it about 1/3 of the time now. I expect at some time I'll put new pickups in it, and possibly replace the buzzy trapeze with a stop tailpiece. Have to live with it for a while first.

One can never have too many guitars, by application of the Mae West Principle (Too much of a good thing is barely sufficient!), but one can never afford all one wants. Exposure to The MIMF suggests a way around the dilemma, especially if, like me, you have a garage full of woodworking tools and some wood laying around! Somewhere in the back of my head (and the far end of my lumber pile) are a small handful of homebuilt guitars. I should live so long!

The guitars plug into a Fender RocPro1000 combo. The Fender's actually too much amp; it doesn't really sound that full-bodied and chunky unless it's turned up too loud for the rest of the band. I can't really cost-justify a replacement yet, so it continues to be used. Ironically enough, our other guitarist's Strat sounds *wonderful* thru this amp. It must be the low-output single coils his guitar's got, compared to the hot humbuckers on my Tele. I'm working on putting together a buffer/volume control that'll sit between the effects loop and the power amp in; early experiments were promising, but I was using too big a pot - 50k or so would be better than the 250k I was using.

I have an all-Boss effect setup living in the Fender's effects loop - a BCB-6 loaded with:

• PSM-5 Power Supply/bypass switch
• SD-1 Super Overdrive
• PS-3 Digital Delay/Pitch Shifter
• CE-2 Chorus
• BF-2 Flanger
• DD-2 Digital Delay

Direct box from the amp feeds the PA. Mister Donut feeds the guitarist :-).

Another avenue for experimentation that I'm planning on exploring, courtesy several bins of NOS vacuum tubes and so forth inherited from my father, is homebrew guitar amps. Maybe after some false starts boutique amp tone on a budget will be mine. Should be fun.