diablo175

I'll be damned. Practicing your ass off tends to improve your playing. Who'd've thunk it?

The satisfaction derived from performing someone else’s music, even flawlessly, will always be slightly less than writing and performing your own. - Saul A. Terry

Serendipity- disassembling a Cali(ablo) for the new paint service that you managed to snag at a discount rate, only to find the bridge p'up is a highly sought-after JBJ! Gonna go play the lottery now... 😂

Understandable. Really digging the 2018 MIM DK24's and the older San Dimas and Pro Mods are even better.

For the record, EH's Synth9 and B9 pedals f*cking ROCK! Whole new sonic world has opened up and my songwriting is re-inspired!

I'd say you might be onto something... something I hope I can side step in the years to come. I learned today of the potential impending demise of my cover band which has been running since 2010. Faced with no gigs, I wonder how I will deal with the GAS and the revolving door of axes that it oft creates.

I encountered one of the best feelings this morning when every guitar I picked up sounded good. Mind you, I didn't say, were played good <well>, I said. "sounded good." I picked up no less than 6 different axes from Charvels & Jacksons to Hamers. All sounded pretty damned good. That's something of an anomaly. Usually, in a multi-guitar jam session, one will standout to my ears as most pleasing. The rest: irritating or frustratingly meh.

Ouch. Agree that's there's no substitute for performing live. For years my wife has suggested that my buying guitars was an effort to fill some other hole in my life/soul. Ironically and at the risk of being crude, my taking up guitar was, in part, an attempt to find more hole to fill in my own special way.

I've arrived at what I feel is a reasonable criteria for limiting and simultaneously validating GAS. Being in a gigging band is justification for acquiring guitars, ergo, the cessation of said gigs or the band altogether means no more guitars may be bought without sell/trading one already in the herd. In the case of the complete dissolving of all musical endeavors (outside of bedroom variety) the herd must be thinned. Them's the rulez.

All too familiar story of my life.

I can no longer trust my judgement on pickups. In truth, I'm starting to think I never should have. What sounded good yesterday sounds harsh today. What was grating a few years ago sounds crisp now. So on and so forth. Time to give up on buying guitars and instead just buy a shit ton of different p'ups?

I'm too hard headed to let it go completely. Got musical ideas in my head that need to come out and are contingent on a certain level of skill. While I accept there are limitations, I just choose to ignore them most of the time, As a result, I wrestle with frustration when my abilities don't pony up the goods. But... for the most part I break even and every once in a long while I have brief but significant break-throughs. Playing stuff that doesn't challenge my musical abilities and/or push me to expand them, just doesn't appeal to me at all.

In the absence of jaw dropping skill, I'll happily settle for heartfelt creative output. Bitter pill of reality: I'm never gonna get to where I wanted to be 20 years ago.

Apparently, my attempt at humor has fallen flat. The appropriate emoji has been added to clarify my intent.

Isn't it funny how guitars in the stable can fall in and out of favor and yet, nothing changes about them? One day, you barely even see it sitting there on the rack next to all the others, and the next day, it calls to you to be played and rewards your prudent selection with incredible performance. And you swear you'll be back the next day (or that afternoon, evening etc.) but when you do return, you pick it up and meh. But wait, there's that one over there that seems to be calling to you... Guitars sure are temperamental and fickle.

I'm changing Thanksgiving to Ax-getting. This is right around the time I typically go off the GAS rails on a crazy buying train.

I think there's more to it than that but it's a good place to start- the Japanese allude to it in their concept of Mushin or "no mind".

Well, with an attitude like that...

WOW! You'll have to tell me how that goes. If you succeed, I'll stop down for some help learning a few of the tunes...

If I could bottle and sell whatever it is that puts me "in the zone" while playing guitar, I'd be a millionaire- either by selling that shit to every bedroom guitar god in waiting or hording it to myself and becoming the internet's next bedroom guitar god. All BS aside, I really would love to know what unfathomable combination of variables make for those all-too-infrequent and fleeting moments when I get in the zone and tear shit up that I couldn't even hope to hit any other time.

Most times, taking a few days off from playing guitar typically improves my playing upon return.

I find that inspiration helps. Whatever inspires you to want to play is the secret to getting past the low point. It can come in many forms. For me, it's usually watching footage of other players I respect or admire. Sometimes, it's hearing musical items I've created in the past and now hear potential in for revisiting. Keep at it, Gorch.

I'm the last person anyone'd want to take amp advice/recommendations from but my Mesa Roadster 2 x 12 combo was a seeming half ton rubic's cube. And I don't have the patience. Jeffro is quite a fan of his Mesa.

D'ja ever have a brief period where you went through several phases of widely varying levels musical capabilities? Like, from "I'm doing okay here" one day to "holy shit, I totally suck today!" the next and back to "Wow, that's pretty cool!" the following day? I did. Yesterday, my playing sucked so bad and was devoid of inspiration and passion, I was poised to enter into the 2nd Great Guitar Dormancy of my life wherein I barely pick up a guitar, except in rare times of great inspiration and motivation. The good news is: I was re-inspired, by Face Book of all places, and I was carried to a new height on the wings of a couple of beloved Hamers. The C3 and my trusty Python of Love have brought me back to the place where I am transformed and reborn in the crucible of rawk guitar.