Music Gear Discussion

[Diff-chan]

I'm going to do that.

[Josh]

[Josh]

I haven't been able to write for a while. No inspiration at all.

[Jed]

I haven't been able to write for a while. No inspiration at all.

WTF, you just moved to the Pacific NW. If you can't get inspired here, I don't know what to tell ya.

[Fe 26]

whats there to be inspired by?

[Josh]

To be fair, if I wrote positive things there would be a lot to be inspired by up here.

[Josh]

I'm more talking about music though. I haven't heard a band since the Thermals that made me want to get off my ass and try to do something better. Lyrics are the least important part of a song.

[Fe 26]

they really are. Instrumentals forever.

[Josh]

I say this having just recently recorded a record where the lyrics are very important.

[PaCrappa]

Now I kind of want to get a nice tube amp.

Actually you need one. The amp is the most important part. A $50K Les Paul will sound like a dog turd if you play it through a weak amp. A $60 Squier strat will sound EPIC if you play it through a righteous amplifier. Therefore you want to do this right. And the rightest amp for you is called a silverface Fender Vibro Champ. It's like 7 watts of pure cleanass Fender goodness and features the best vibrato known to man. The silverface ones came later ('70s-early '80s) and don't have all the collector 'value' of the blackface ones but are still from the good ol' days when shit was designed with future maintenance in mind. It is literally the best combination of sound, features, reliability and maintainability ever created for the home guitarist and has also been used on thousands of popular recordings over the decades. At $3-400 it's the kind of thing you buy once and keep it for life.

I have said it before, and I'll say it again. Squires are surprisingly solid guitars, especially for what they cost.

My Squier strat was $60 and is definitely my favorite guitar to sit down with. I don't like it standing up but nobody's perfect.

Also if you want 'higher end' guitars in the popular vintage shapes ALWAYS look to Japan first. The prices on all those lawsuit guitars are steadily climbing but they're usually at least as quality as the American guitars they emulate and are still less expensive.

If you haven't yet had it set up professionally, I would recommend doing so.

This is a good idea and another good idea to go with it is that you should find a luthier/tech/whatever that will teach you how to set your action and intonation. A monkey could do it and it takes five minutes to learn and then you can be your own Setup Professional bustin' professional setups all day for you and your boys.