Thursday morning, Feb. 12, 2015 -- Well, I've learned this much ...  playing my Oscar Schmidt OE-30 semi-hollow body has fired up my sore left shoulder again .... at 10 lbs, its easily the heaviest guitar I own.

I played it a couple of times today for a bit, and just put it down a few minutes ago. My shoulder fired up and I realized that its my guitar -- or the lack of a good strap. I'm rethinking my thoughts about buying another hollowbody guitar, simply on the issue of weight.

One thing I'm experiencing with the guitar is a problem others commented on -- it keeps going out of tune. I'm just about ready to put new strings on it. I lowered the action on both sides of the bridge, but the low E string was too low creating buzz of the kind I don't want. The action is lower than it was, but not low enough to cause a problem.

I'm beginning the think the nut is binding, Once I have it tuned and play a while, the tuning changes. I don't think the strings are stretching, but I think they may be binding at the nut ... therefore the tuning changes once I begin playing, Playing allows the strings to move slightly to equalize the pressure.

I am NOT a fan of the "diecast tuners" used on my Oscar Schmidt ... some call them Grovers, but I think they are cheap Grover wanna-bes ... the tuners are too coarse for my liking. I'm tempted to replace them, but I think my first chore would be to improve the nut to keep the strings from binding. That isn't a big fix.

A DEAL TOO GOOD TO PASS. One of my favorite pieces of electronics (other than my computer equipment) has to be my Behringer V-Amp 3. It has added tremendous new dimensions to my guitar playing and added a great deal of enjoyment. The next piece of gear I want to add is the rackmount version of the V-Amp ... while browsing eBay for the "pro" version, I saw a new listing for a V-Amp 3 like mine -- for less than half the price I paid. It comes complete, and all of the others listed with prices at the same price point (or higher!) than I paid for mine .... I decided to go ahead and buy the second one. It was so cheap I have nothing to lose.

There are a number of semi-hollow body guitar actions ending on eBay in the next couple of days, but I'm fairly contented to just keep my guitars busy.