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GEAR

Ahh, gear, the joy and bane of any musician's existence, especially guitarists. Between multiple different types of guitars, amplifiers, effects, heck, even strings, cables and plectrums, the combinations are endless. But what resides in my gear cupboard? Let's take a tour...

GUITARS

Yamaha RGX-420D6

What's hard, 27 inches long, and makes grown women scream? The low B string on this guitar. Extended scale length, tuned to BEADF#B, hot pickups, licensed Floyd Rose double locking trem, 5-way pickup selecter (coil tapped on positions 2 & 4 for stratty clean sounds, yum), maple neck, rosewood 24-fret fretboard, alder body, none-more-black finish, and Yamaha's high standards of construction. If you see one of these going cheap, bag it pronto as they're not made any more.

Epiphone Les Paul Classic 7-String

Another out-of-production low-end riff-monster by Gibson's budget bods at Epiphone. Bought it off my mate Paul for £170. Bit of a bargain, in my opinion. Neck pickup keeps falling into the cavity though, mounting rings probably need fixed or replaced.

Godin SD

AKA 'The French-Canadian Tickler', this is my chief standard-tuning guitar. A great guitar for the money, made in Canada and the USA, maple body, maple neck, HSS pickups by Schaller, and my particular Godin had the tuners upgraded to Sperzel locking tuners. The only downside is the weight, and I'd like nicer pickups, maybe Seymour Duncans or Rio Grandes.

AXL Telecaster clone

I bought this for about £55 from The Guitar Store in Glasgow, mainly to have another guitar to pick up and fanny about on. Given the price, it's fair to say one shouldn't expect boutique quality, and you'd be right. The B string doesn't stay in tune for long, the electronics are pretty weedy, but with some work, I reckon this could be a nice little guitar. The blue sparkle finish looks nice, and the neck feels good.

DeArmond JetStar Special

Couldn't find a decent piccy of this one, but imagine a mutant hybrid of a Gibson SG and a Fender Strat. My first electric guitar, it cost £70 at the time of purchase, and I could probably get that now if I restored it to a better condition, seeing as they stopped making them after Fender took over Guild and they're now L@@K R@RE on eBay. I won't sell it though, for sentimental reasons.

Applause AE-128 Electro-Accoustic

Ahh, my first guitar. It needs a fret dress/polish and a bit of fixing to the electronics, but I still pick it up and noodle on it. I'll probably wind up getting buried with it. Unless it gets broken before I die.

Vintage EST96AF Bass

My main (and only) bass. This little baby cost me £190 brand new and nary a day goes by that I don't pick it up and plonk some low end grooves. I'm no Victor Wooten, but I've got my money's worth from this bad boy: gigs, recording, writing and general low-end fun. Every guitarist should at have at least one bass.

Behringer GMX212 V-Tone Combo

My first proper amp: I bought this a couple of years ago and I've only gigged with it once, where it was too quiet and had to be miked up, even with the master at 10. Not bad for the cash, some nice sounds in there, but needs to be...one louder.

Behringer V-Amp

Another one of my chief weapons of musical mass destruction, I've ran everything through this, mostly out of necessity. There's some really nice tones to be eked from this little blue box of tricks: currently it's seeing heavy use on The Mocha Nights' demo album. Clean sounds aren't it's strong point but the filthy noises it produces are top notch.