Catching up a little bit ...

Saturday, Jan. 30, 2016, 11:50 p.m. -- Can't let the month go without an additional update in this space.

No, no new guitars acquired lately, just been playing a lot at night ... and now my left shoulder is giving me fits, telling me *not* to buy another guitar as heavy as my Davison Les Paul clone!

Its frustrating, too, because I have straps that have a shoulder pad, and I still have pain. Perhaps the strap isn't wide enough, I dunno.

My go-to guitars lately have been my two Fender Squire strats -- my tobacco sunburst with the cracked body, and then the arctic white hard tail. Oh, can't forget one of my non-strat favs -- cherry red OE-30 semi-hollowbody. I've enjoyed playing Johnny Rivers tunes on it ... Rivers seems to almost always use Gidson ES-335s, either red or sometimes black. My OE-30 is a pretty close clone to the ES-335. I've thought that the next guitar I buy will either be something along the lines of a Epi Dot, or more likely, the ES-339, which plays about like the 335 but is smaller in size. The body of the 335 (as well as my OE-30) makes playing it a little cumbersome. If I can get a knock-off clone of the ES-339 (that's playable), I might take the plunge. The ES-339 isn't that expensive to begin with, so maybe that's where I should set my sites.

BEHRINGER? I HARDLY KNEW HER!  I have a couple of guitars in gig bags that I seldom play -- my Behringer strat clone and my Ibanez GAX-30. I broke out the Behringer the other night to give

it a try, and wow, was I in for an unpleasant surprise!

I haven't played it in a while, but I had forgotten how shitty the pickups sound! I've been playing my Squires and other guitars exclusively for months, and complain you may about the Squire strat pups, the Behringer sounded horrible! They just sounded distorted on every setting -- not loud and distorted, but just trashy at any volume left (with the exception of "0").

I'm tempted to buy a set of Squire pups for it, just to see if I can improve its sound. I don't think I can hurt it much!

I'm off to play some more, probably my OE-30, and probably to some Johnny Rivers. Rock on, Garth!

Update from the field ...

Jan. 6, 2016 -- I decided to post an update lest my readers (reader??) think I've forgotten about my little corner of the web.

I continue to practice just about every night, from 15 minutes to an hour. For several nights I went so long that I irritated my left shoulder, so I'm trying to keep the time down for a while.

I mostly have been playing the Tobacco Sunburst Squier stat (the one with the cracked body) and my Arctic White Squier strat. On occasion I'll play my Cherry Red semi-hollowbody (its really nice when I'm playing Johnny Rivers tunes).

I have not yet fixed the crack in the Sunburst Squier ... I keep playing it. The main problem the crack seems to cause is allowing the tuning to shift more than one might expect, even with the Fender Tremolo. I need to bite the bullet -- remove the neck, fix the crack and go back at it. Before I do, I'm going to have to make sure I have sufficient clamps to hold it tightly together.

I also have not done a single thing with that disassembled strat copy I bought that had the finish sanded off the front and back. I bought the supplies to paint that Surf Green, just need to get my ass in gear and do that. Life seems to get in the way, lol.

First thing is to find the painting supplies I purchased. Wish me luck on that. Yeah, I know, I should have freaking labeled them ... they may be in the corner with the damn guitar. Perhaps I'll check that out tomorrow.

Lots of to-do's on my to-do list.

NEW GUITARS? Nope. The last guitar I bought was the sunburst Squier.

The only guitar I've decided to part with is the bass guitar I rebuilt this summer. As stated in an earlier post, I had never tried playing a full-size bass guitar before this one (my first guitar was a Fender Musicmaster bass, which was at the time an inexpensive 3/4-size bass). What I would like to do is to sell it and apply the proceeds to another guitar ... perhaps even a 3/4 size bass.

My foray back to playing bass hasn't been that satisfying ... of course, I'm not very good at it, either. But I may just keep the proceeds and apply them toward something I want more -- a Gretsch (or Gretsch clone).

That's it this time. Keep rockin'!