Not much to say lately

I admit I haven't been posting much lately. Not good for the hit count, I'm sure, but there hasn't been much to say. Not a lot going on in the guitar department these days. Sure, I'm still playing, but it's been typical practice stuff. Plus, I had to give back my Linux machine (it was borrowed after all) so all recording experiments have stopped.

I do have some things on the horizon, though. I'll be putting together a few more prog album reviews. I finished up the Hal Leonard book, so I'll be updating that. I'm going to a few concerts this summer - Iron Maiden and Rush (bows head in reverence) - that I'll be reviewing, too. I also want to share some of my custom settings on my Line 6 amp - they sound pretty good, much better than stock.

In the long term, I'll eventually be getting my own Mac, so I can start recording again. Once I have a recording platform I'll start writing my own stuff. I want to upgrade the pickups on my Strat. I also have my eye on a few effects processors, one of which would make a great Christmas present (is it too early to drop Christmas gift hints?).

So I have some things that hopefully you can look forward to. That is, if you haven't completely abandoned my blog by now.

Exercises in futility

I have a new mission: I want to win a guitar.

I found a site called GuitarSweepstakes.com, which basically scours the 'Net for any guitar contests and posts them. So over the past few days I've been entering pretty much every contest there is with the hopes of getting that elusive free guitar.

Well, almost every contest.

I didn't enter a contest to win a Daisy Rock guitar, and it's not the guitar that's the problem. Despite being "girl guitars," Daisy Rock actually makes some nifty guitars. They're pretty androgynous, too, as long as you stick to the standard colors and not get something like Rainbow Sparkle with pink and white zebra humbuckers (I'm not kidding). In fact, the guitar being given away is a pretty fair copy of a Gibson dual-cutaway Melody Maker, complete with a Duncan Designed P-90. No, the reason I didn't enter that contest is that it's being put on by a magazine that caters to pre-teen and teenage girls, and the winner will be featured in the magazine. A 37-year-old man with no children is probably not the kind of image the magazine wants to promote itself. In fact, I'm sure that if I won, after I picked up my new guitar there would be a few nice men from the local police department waiting to ask me questions about my lifestyle and confiscate my hard drives.

I also refused to enter the giveaway sponsored by Alvin & the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel as it's one of the most annoying things ever devised by man.

Maybe someday I'll be the proud owner of an Epiphone Les Paul signed by Slash, or a Jackson V signed by Bullet for my Valentine (who I've never heard of), or an ESP 7-String signed by Deftones, or even an M&M's guitar.

Wish me luck!

Am I a glutton for punishment, or what?

I successfully modded my Strat last week. I think it awakened a sleeping giant inside of me - the Mad Tinkerer. I want to do more, and do it now. There's just one thing I'm missing:

Money. Dinero. The long green.

So I needed to find something good and free to satiate the craving to completely screw up my guitar. I decided, after almost no deliberation, to de-hardtail it. I saw a video on YouTube recently from Rob Chappers explaining how he set up his tremolo and I wanted to try some of his techniques. And that's how it was that on Saturday morning, I grabbed my trusty Phillips head and got to work re-tremoloizing (that's a real word) my Strat.