I'd be lost without my furry alarm clock 22nd October 2006

Bit of a picture post, this. Here's a not very good photo of my new guitar:



It arrived the day of the GIITCD launch gig and I tried it that night, which perhaps wasn't the best idea since we didn't get a soundcheck and the Purple Turtle has god-awful sound anyway. That said, this thing is everything I was after. Kevin wound the pickups hotter than usual, so what results is Telecaster-like brightness, with the added focus and optional clanginess afforded by the metal neck. The neck is very heavy, but it balances well, and the overall weight is about the same as my Jazzmaster. Between this new guitar, an amp I'd gigged just once before and failing patch leads the GIITCD (a compilation of bands so long in the making that half of them have now split- The Swear anyone?) show largely involved me fighting equipment for half an hour. The Imperial College Union gig a couple of days later went much better, but unfortunately this one was underattended (presumably because the alternative music soc. night was the night before?) Anyway the promoters were all really nice to us and enjoyed our noise so we've been invited back for the alt. mus. soc. gig in November which will be a great warm-up before our first Brighton gig.

Pedals are your enemy:



I've cut-down on effects. Taken the great Danelectro Reel Echo delay off the board as I just wasn't using it, sold a bunch of other effects on ebay. That MXR supercomp acts as an overdrive here, although it's especially nice as it only breaks-up when you hit the guitar hard, so it's more expressive in that respect.

In other news, Stacey and I are visiting Berlin again in a couple of weeks. We both hope to do a bit of photography and to this end I've just got a 'new' camera (Pentax MZ-5n) for yay cheap as no-one is interested in film SLRs now and they can be had for a pittance. My old Pentax MX, which was one of my favourite things and served me well through university, has been being a pain recently - it scratched one roll of film, jammed on another, and I accidently destroyed the focusing screen (admittedly not the camera's fault) so it's being put out to pasture. I'll probably get it serviced when I'm old and nostalgic.