No more guitars

This may be redundant for my regular readers (all one of you) but I'm declaring an official moratorium on guitar purchases for the foreseeable future. This means no more looking at guitars in music stores, no more looking at guitars online, no more thinking about new guitars... Well, maybe I can still do that. But no more situations in which I find myself wanting to purchase a guitar.

I came to this epiphany for two reasons.

First, I've been exclusively playing my Stratocaster over the last few weeks and I realized that I really don't need another guitar. I am Stratocaster. Everyone has their own sound, mine starts with a Strat. When I play my Tele or my Les Paul Special I just can't get the same sound, for as nice a pair of guitars as they are, they can't sound like a Strat. I'll play my other guitars, but if I could only choose one, I'd choose my Strat. The tone control change really made the difference, I think, because without tone control on the bridge pickup, it's OK, but with it, it's perfect. All Strats should be made this way.

Second, I came to the realization that I need to upgrade the rest of my stuff first. My entire guitar rig consists of a Line 6 Spider III 15 amp and a Dunlop wah/volume pedal. That's it. Good for bedroom noodling, but not so great for recording. I want to get a nice small tube amp - Blackstar makes a nice, affordable 5-watt amp, just gotta figure out if I want the combo or the half-stack version. I want to get a digital processor, most likely a Digitech RP55 or RP90, just gotta decide if I want the expression pedal built-in or if I want to use my Dunlop. Then there's the recording stuff, which may or may not consist of a Mac laptop, but will consist of a MIDI interface, a MIDI keyboard (the piano kind) and a microphone or two. I just need to figure out if a gently used Windows tower will be powerful enough to serve as a recording platform or if I need to get a Mac.

The fact that all this will cost money - real money - and the fact that I don't have a lot means that it will probably take me years to get all the stuff I need. So, of course, that means no more guitar diversions (I could've at least got the amp, the effects processor and the MIDI interface for how much I spent on my Tele). The only way I will buy a new guitar is if one of them gets lost or stolen or irreparably damaged, and even then I'd probably only replace the Strat.

Did I mention I was a Strat guy?