Leaderboard

It sucks when you can’t play your best at any time, let alone when trying out new gear. However, I’d I read your post correctly, you bought an amp anyway; nice.

So the first date didn't happen as I checked the advert only to find that the price of the guitar i was looking at had jumped up considerably and being as it is not a short distance away from me I decided that this particular example is now beyond what I want to spend when I consider the pride now and travelling costs. This has now given me a bit of a dilemma as there are several places which appear to have good reviews fairly local to me, however how do I decide where to go? Is it in appropriate to ask for recommendations here? I have seen several guitars that I like the look of but obviously I assume that I really need to try them before buying. Being a novice I am obviously more reliant than somebody with more experience than I, on good advice from sales staff etc.

I have a Burns Shadows Special which is quite stratty and started off on 9-42's as recommended by many. It seems that if you want to get more "Shadowy" you need to have the heavier strings (with a wound third) that Hank had on some of his guitars and experiment with effects to get the (sometimes) triple echo etc. It seems that extra effects were added in the studio, so they rarely happened on live gigs! I used to love flatwounds in the 60's as they helped with my sore fingers! I picked up a couple of "project" strat copies last week and after a fair bit of setting up, they are settling down and are producing something close to the Burns! They had been in storage after the guy had "tried to learn", broke one, bought the other and still had no luck. It was hardly surprising as the settings were well off (double decker bus under the action gap"!). A good set up, everything stripped, cleaned, levelled, wiring resoldered, restrung and put back together within spec and they play! A bit more "cosmetic" work and they will be as good (if not better) than some of the strats I played in the 60's!