Heather and I sitting in our living room in 1998. I'm playing my Guild, which has a personalized truss rod cover. I bought it at a pawn shop in November of 1997. It is a 1995 D-4 and I only paid $300 and got a hard case with it!!
Playing my 1995 Fender Tele Special on the campus of Northern Arizona University in April of 2001. My parents bought the guitar for me in 1995. It is a little different than the standard in that it has a humbucker in the neck position with the coils split and a five way switch that works like this: 1, neck humbucker; 2, humbucker coil nearest neck alone; 3, humbucker coil near middle; 4, middle coil of humbucker with bridge pickup; 5, bridge pickup alone. This is a very versatile axe! I can get any of the standard Tele tones, and a few that are unique to this setup. After all this time, I still haven't found a guitar I would rather have. I have made a few modifications to the guitar including a customized pickguard (see below), a set of Dunlop Strap Locks, replacing the stock Fender TBX tone control with a standard 250k pot, and I replaced the brass string saddles with Graph-Tech String Savers. I tend to play hard and I just broke too many strings no matter how many times I got out the files and smoothed the bridge saddle grooves. I rarely break strings anymore, and it still sounds great, so I guess it worked.
Winking at the camera on the NAU campus in April 2001. You can see my pedal board (there's a couple of close up shots below) and my Allen Amp that I built from a kit.
Here is a close up of my main guitar and amp. I don't know whose bike is in the background.
These were some older shots from 1996, 1998 and 1999 respectively. You can see my personalized pickguard really well in the third picture and you can see my old Crate amp in the background. I sold that after building a new amp in December 1999.
Relaxing while camping with my Guild in April 2000.
I bought a Washburn bass used at a music store in early 2000. It was my intent simply to use it for recording some ideas on a four-track. Here I am playing with some friends at the Salvation Army. I am a much better guitarist than I am a bass player, but overall I would rather play something than not play at all. This beautiful bass is mahogany with a flame maple top and a better than original replacement bridge and DiMarzio replacement pickups. I paid less than $200 with a hard case!!
Same day. Same place. Different view. These are the only two photos of me with a bass as I really don't play it often in public, it is used more for recording.
Some friends and I playing outdoors on the Northern Arizona University campus in Fall of 2000. If you look closely you can see me using a wah-wah pedal and you can get a small glimpse of my pedal board--I have some close up shots of it below.
Taking a water break.
Here you can see my effects close up from the front and back. In the list below you can see what is on the board currently, in the order that I have them. I had to build an adapter, but I am powering almost all of these with the SKB's power supply and haven't had any problems. I've moved some around and added since the photos were taken so you will want to read on for furthere info. I'm also adding some notes on a few of the pedals and some favorite settings. For the settings, pretend all of the knobs are labeled 1-10.
As you can see, I am partial to the Boss pedals. You can use 'em, abuse 'em, and they just keep working. Fact is, I haven't had any trouble with any of my pedals, but they are all well built. I am a little skeptical of plastic pedals, even if they sound good, so all my pedals are in sturdy steel cases. I'm not actively looking for anything new right now, but if I happen upon cheap deals at the pawn shop or on eBay I could acquire a new "toy" at any time...the ShredMaster is among the more recent--I only paid $15 for it in near mint condition!! All settings listed are subject to change at my whim, but this is where I had them today (5/29/2001)--I do update this page whenever I get a new pedal and I update my record of all my settings at the same time, just for fun.
Got 'em dancing and having fun.
One last shot--same location, different time of year--it snowed the next day!.
