Will Chen

I used to be a very active member here. This used to be a cool place. Now I pop in once maybe twice a week just to see what's going on and its the same group of trolls dominating everything. Time to blow it up, tear it down, and rebuild...

While its certainly true that the more mass a string has the greater potential for a "thicker" tone, IMHO that should be that should be about the last thing you do to change your tone as a typical guitar rig has multiple points of EQ adjustment available. The only way to get comfortable on a larger string gauge is to practice. No shortcuts. You should choose string gauge primarily based on feel IMHO. I like to feel a certain tension, when I was younger and played all day and gigged all the time I played 11s, these days with less play time to get the same feel I used to get when my hands were much stringer, I use 10s. I imagine when I get even older, I'll use 9's.

There are a couple different stories. I believe he actually started on a cigar box guitar pretty young. I think it was in the liner notes to the Jimi Hendrix Blues Album...

Very cool guitar! Very uncool price!

Looking at just jamming at home and based on your tastes.

If you gotta go tube, check out the Vox AC4TV and w/ a nice od pedal. HT5 sounds great overdriven but the clean tones left me wanting (though I haven't spent extensive time with it). If you're open to solid state look into one of the lower powered Peavey Transtube combos or the Tech 21 Trademark 60. If you need the versatility of a modeling amp, I like the Peavey Vypyr line and the older blue Vox modeling amps (the newer ones just don't sound the same to me). I specifically don't like the Line 6 Spider series, but the Spider valve sounds pretty darn good, but likely over kill in the volume department for home playing.

Bring it to a shop and have it set up correctly.

For all the glory of and simplicity of the guitar straight to Marshall goodness, Malcolm reported used Amplitube 2 on 2 tracks of Black Ice...

http://www.ikmultimedia.com/amplitube/testimonials/NewsDisplay.php?Id=1994

That being said, can't wait to see them in all their glory on Nov 2 in Dallas!

Texas seems to be less impacted than much of the rest of the country. Home values have shown a slight decline, but nothing like the horror stories I've heard on both coasts. Honestly, those hit hardest by this recession with regards to home foreclosures are those who bought way more house than they should have and put little to no money down.

We refinanced out of a 30-year into an 5-1 ARM after a year in our house, but continued paying at the previous mortgage level with all the overage going to principal. We just recently refinanced into a new 30-year. We had enough equity that our payment only increased $20 a month and if we sell even for less than the market rate, we would still have enough for a down payment on another place.

With regards to tickets to sporting events. The majority are priced towards the upper middle and upper income brackets where people can afford to spend even in a bad economy. I'm a huge basketball fan but can count the number of games I've bought tickets for on one hand. I just find it difficult to justify the expense.

When the gas price sky-rocketed over the past few months, we definitely had to be a little more conservative with our spending to ensure we continued to save 10% of our income. Now that prices have fallen, I'm going to try to continue our thriftier mindset...

Just for the sake of discussion, what about the interface boithered you?

Being a long time Cakewalk guy, I guess I'm used to where things are laid out. I played around with CUBASE prior to going the SONAR route and ended up going to SONAR because the interface is more or less the same but SONAR was more affordable, backwards compatible, with older projects I'd been working on, and had a better bundle.

I'e heard this but haven't run into any issues as of yet. Appears to funtion fine for me. I was a Pro Audio user and used the early versions of the wrapper and things run a ton more smooth now than then (such as preset integrity and interface continuity).

SONAR is great. Cakewalk has a long history of DAW development which shows in the flexibility of their products. The newest versions come with a 64 bit version making them forward compatible once that is the norm. Native VST support is great in the new version as well opening up some great free plugs as options.

Based on their license, no selling used and installed on 1 PC at a time. One thing to consider if you decide to use it long term despite the license prohibition, you will not be eligible for customer support (which I've only used once over the course of around 8 years of use of their products, this speaks to the quality of their products) nor their loyalty upgrade discounts (which I've used 3 times saving a good deal of money).

...From looking at Fender, Gibson, PRS, Ibanez, and many others.

All of them jack the prices of the wood and none of them offer many different choices in the first place.

Here's an example and I've said it before.

At Fender unless you pay for a higher price Tele they only give you a choice of Alder. And only the Thinline is ash.

That's not a choice. All those damn companys act like their selling the only instruments that work good for music.

I don't want to buy the wood from them is basically what I'm saying.

I'll pay them to build it. And to do all the finishing, and for set up and any other service they may offer warrentys.

I love the services that guitar companys offer

But I ain't gonna buy their wood cause the prices and selection is bullsh#$. :rolleyes: