Here we go again,another blog

What is this all about then? Well recently Ive got back into playing guitar. I think I can blame Rocksmith for that and the 25th reunion of my school band. I've also rekindled my passion for modifying guitars.

I bought my first guitar around about 1984. Without any musical skill whatsoever, I joined a band as lead singer, and some short time after that found myself in the Notting Hill music and video exchange. For the princely sum of £60 I  bought a used Kay Electric strat copy. Seen here being played by my friend Nick

Nick Baron and my Kay Electric

This guitar had obviously seen some action. The frets had grooves worn into them by the strings and it was a bit buzzy but otherwise sound. Of course not having a clue about playing guitar I didn't do anything sensible like learn music, take guitar lessons or anything like that. No I got The Guitar Handbook
by Ralph Denyer. I learnt how to dress the frets, set up the action and intonation, added new strings and  adjusted the truss rod. I still couldn't play for toffee, but now the guitar was really nice to play and easy on the fingers.

But it didn't stop there. I added a pre-amplifier that I'd build on perfboard from a circuit diagram in the book and turned one of the tone controls into a gain control. When I was done, the guitar could go from a sweet acoustic tone to sounding like a jumbo jet. I eventually sold it to pay for a squier telecaster for double what I paid for it

Every guitar I have owned has had something done to it and I have been bitten by the bug again. In this blog I'm going to document the crazy stuff I've started doing with my newest guitar