New Guitar

**WARNING** Technical talk advisory. For those of you quick to comment as "boring", this post may be uninteresting to you.

So, I wrote a while back that I had to send my new guitar back for a refund. I was pretty bummed since it looked so sweet and sounded fairly nice. My sadness is no more. I was at Guitar Center checking out the Epiphone Les Paul Juniors and realized I just had to have one. This is basically the most inexpensive guitar in the entire store, but there are a lot of positives about the guitar.

One, the quality of the body is pretty good. It is a laminated body (kind of like a firmer plywood - which is not ideal) but it is still really solid and has a great finish to it. Two, there is only 1 pickup. To some, that may be a negative, but when you're replacing the stock pickup with one that costs almost as much as the guitar, it's better to just have one. Also, the style I got this guitar for is for that one sound - ROCKIN'!!!!!! Besides, once I get my Strat all fixed up, this guitar will be the backup. Three, it's cheap.

So, after buying the guitar, putting in a new pickup, and changing out all the electronics, it came out to be cheaper than the previous guitar I bought (which I wasn't completely satisfied with the sound anyway). So here are some pics of my new baby.




Now, my only project left is changing out all the electronics in my Strat (new pickups should be in any day now).

I'm also working on another idea. I'm really starting to dig the sound of my POD running stereo without an amp in front of it, but there is still something to be said about a cranked tube amp and how it sounds. So, my next idea is running 3 inputs into the mixer (if Steve will let me - at least sometimes). 2 will be coming from my POD (stereo) and 1 will be coming from a mic in my speaker isolation cabinet with a tube amp cranked in front of it. Since my Fender amp weighs a ton and would be a pain bringing back and forth, I think I can sell off enough stuff to buy a Valve Junior Tube Amp Head. But before I get ahead of myself, I will see what it sounds like with my Fender for at least one week. Anyway, if you've read this far, thanks Steve and Bobby!!!