Playing with a band for the first time in  years really got my adrenaline pumping.  My schedule makes doing that regularly still a bit difficult, but working with those guys did open to me the possibilities. It also lit a fuse. Or more correctly FUSE. As in Fender FUSE -- a software system that allows for total connectivity not only between a computer and a guitar amp, but more important, between a musician and the sound he or she hears in his or her head.



I'd turned on to the…

Getting together with a group of very capable musicians for the first time in 40+ years was a joy. Getting to experience the way at least some bands rehearse these days was a shock.



Amps? "We don't need no stinking' amps!"



Well no one actually said that, but they do live it.



Instead of amplifiers each instrument - yes, even the "drums" - plug into an electronic gizmo that sends the sound to earphones worn by each musician. With the phones on one hears the…

As most all of that play electric guitar know, that while there are dozens and dozens of worthy and desirable guitars 'out there' (both past and present), they almost all fall into one of two sound categories: Fender and Gibson; single coil of humbucker.



I started out as a Gibson man - something that is rather funny considering that my first love as a guitarist was surf music. But my first Gibson was equipped with P90s - a single coil PU that could pretty well emulate the Fender…

A buddy had come by yesterday asking me to spend an evening jamming with his band. Very tempting!  But I've been playing solely acoustic of late and the necessary change over to electric will take a little time.



What the hell! Why not give it a try?  So I grabbed an electric out of the music room and the little battery-powered Pignose amp and took 'em into the library and wailed. What fun!…