Practice

Been practising all afternoon for a new band we are in the midst of forming, we all met to talk it through this week, decided on the first two numbers to try out, first rehearsal together this coming Thursday. So after an afternoon of John Lee Hooker's "This is Hip" & a quick pop at Little Walter's "My Babe", it is sore fingers & time for a blip.

After an afternoon of music I decided that this would be a good time for the next in my series on my guitars, after 'Tools of the Trade' last week.

This blip has been my afternoon, a lot of listening to the tracks over & over again on the computer, playing through the Pod X3 Live on the floor through headphones, & occasionally through the amp.

For the detail ....

The amp is a Blackstar Series One - 45, a 45Watt valve combo with 2 x 12" speakers & 4 channels from sparkly clean AC30 style to full on super crunch. Great amp which can drop it's output from 45 watt to 4.5watt, very useful at home. I picked up on Blackstar Amps after watching Paul Weller a couple of years ago, & his guitarist Stave Cradock was playing through a set of Blackstar's & they sounded brilliant. A year later & I had talked myself into getting this second hand, & haven't regretted it.

The guitar is my PRS SE Paul Allender model. I bought it cheap so I could save the frets etc on my Custom 22 as it was noticing a bit of fretwear, and as it has a tremolo (and it looks great).

It is a great rock guitar, good clean & powerful pickups, doesn't have the coil split but back off the volume knob & it calms down nicely. Same Wide Thin neck profile as my Custom 22, bat inlays in the 24 fret neck, mahogany body & neck with quilted maple top finished off in a purple 'Allender Burst' finish. love it

Now off to the pub for a Carvery.