I bought some more wall hangers for my guitars the other day, to add two more guitars to my “Wall of Guitars”. It seems that 6 guitars is all I’ll be able to fit on this wall, so I put one up next to my amplifiers on the opposite wall. I still have one guitar that has nowhere to go, maybe I can hang it in the other room…
I have enough guitars. 
I recently got a new guitar amplifier. I got an Orange Tiny Terror along with a matching 12″ speaker cabinet. It’s my first tube amplifier, and I’ve been impressed so far. I also got a couple more pedals. A BOSS NS-2 Noise Suppressor pedal, because with 19 pedals — especially overdrive and distortion pedals — it can get a bit noisy, and that pedal does a good job cutting it out. Funny that it even cuts the noise made by my computer if I walk close to the case with my guitar.
I also got a BOSS ME-25 multiple effects pedal, which is pretty cool, and can also be used to record with a computer. But that turned out to have a little snag. They don’t include a USB cable with it, so I searched all over my lair for one. I had lots of USB cables with the mini-B connector, but none with a full sized B connector, which is what it uses. Coincidentally, I happened to go to Home Depot with my father to get some things for the yard, and I saw a USB cable there, so I bought it. In the past, I had tried recording with a microphone or connecting the headphone jack to my line-in on the computer, but never got a really good sound from that. The ME-25 records much, much better. Although I couldn’t get the software they include (Cakewalk Sonar LE) to actually record anything yet… I used Audacity instead, which is free.
I got some new guitar effects pedals yesterday. I ordered them online. Since I couldn’t get any BOSS pedals online, I bought something different. I got a couple of Behringer pedals, the “Slow Motion” and “Ultra Vibrato”, which are copies of a couple of old BOSS pedals that were discontinued long ago and are very rare and expensive now. These Behringer pedals are cheap plastic pedals, but not bad. They’re certainly better than paying hundreds of dollars for a used pedal. Roland could make a lot of money by making limited edition reissues of their older discontinued BOSS pedals, but they don’t. I like their products, but I really don’t understand what the company management is thinking. Maybe it’s something like: “Oh, we have too much money! Let’s make pedals that are not as good as our old ones, and we’ll make it difficult to buy our pedals, because we sell too many of them.”
But anyway, the real gem from this order is the Visual Sound Comp 66 pedal. It’s a great compressor, I’m so glad I got it. I had thought about getting a BOSS compressor, but their latest one doesn’t seem to be too well reviewed. It seems that their old one was better. I also got the Visual Sound “1 Spot” power supply, which is quite good. They say it can “power all your pedals”, but since mine are not all in the same place, I will keep using my other power supplies for some of the pedals. It does have much better daisy chain cables than what I had before, though. So if I were to go back in time, I would have bought this for all of them, I suppose. Or maybe two.
Last night, I decided to see if I could buy some BOSS guitar effects pedals online.
It should have been easy, but it isn’t the case for those of us in Canada. The few online retailers that actually have them are not allowed to show the prices!
Apparently, Roland Canada has a policy that prevents retailers from listing the prices online. So you can’t even buy them online. Call for the price? No thanks. The prices are not some trade secret. Are they trying to discourage people from buying their pedals or what?
This is the year 2010, I want to put the pedals into a shopping cart and proceed to the checkout. Meanwhile, in every other country — the USA for example, the prices are listed on every site. So I thought, “well I can maybe order from the USA and eat some yummy shipping and duty fees…”
But again, another policy; they don’t allow the US shops to ship these to Canada either!
So I will have to buy my pedals in an actual shop somewhere downtown as I have been doing in the past. That would be fine, but the problem is that they almost never have the pedals I want in stock. I have to go to different shops to get them all. I have collected quite a few pedals over the years, but I would probably have more if it were easier to get the ones I want. Now the pedals are hard enough to find, but their accessories, like pedal boards, are nearly impossible to find in shops. I don’t understand why they can’t sell those online.
So a suggestion for Roland Canada; if you don’t cut out the archaic internet policies, make a new policy so that the shops have to stock the entire line of BOSS pedals at all times. 
Tonight, I got my Epiphone Thunderbird Pro V. I had ordered it last week, and the first one had arrived on Monday, but there were serious problems with the bridge, so the shop had to have another one sent from the supplier. I don’t understand how the first one made it past the factory inspection. I saw it, and it was pretty obvious just by looking at it that there was something wrong, not to mention the fact that it was unplayable. Luckily, the second one arrived today, and it’s just fine.
I had always wanted a Thunderbird bass, but I never got one until now. I decided that since they introduced this model with a five string version, and I was interested in getting a five string bass, that this would be the perfect time to get a Thunderbird. It was. 
Epiphone Thunderbird Pro V
Now, I heard about some people not being able to adapt to the five string basses, but while playing it just now, it was no problem for me at all. I actually prefer the feel of the wider neck. I’m really glad I got it, despite the problems with the first one.
I went downtown yesterday afternoon. It was a surprisingly nice day; sunny without any clouds at all. That’s quite nice, especially since it has been either cloudy or raining almost every day for the past several months.
So, I went to the music shop, and I ended up getting a bass amplifier. I was thinking about the Roland Cube, but it seemed to not be the right choice, since its knobs are all at the back, and I was thinking about possibly putting all my amps on a shelving unit, or just stacking them all on top of each other. The bass amp would be at the bottom in either case, so the knobs would have become impossible to reach. So, I got a Traynor DynaBass 100. This amp is 100 watts, it has a 15″ speaker, and it only cost a bit more than the Roland Cube. I seem to have made the right choice, I really like this amp.
Traynor DynaBass 100.
I also got a couple of BOSS pedals; a Blues Driver and a Chorus Ensemble. This brings me to a total of 13 pedals. And I ordered something that should arrive in a few days… 
I told my parents last night that they should buy the new central air conditioner soon, and they did just that today. I was a bit surprised that they did it so soon, but that's good. It will be installed in early May, and it is twice as powerful as the old one, apparently… 
I played a lot of guitar and bass, and I have improved my bass playing a bit. It's nowhere near my guitar playing skill level yet, but I'm making progress.
I tried tuning my bass down to C, but that was feeling and sounding too weird. So I have to improvise while playing Rammstein and such, although thankfully most of their songs don't seem to need the low C note, so I can get by with standard tuning.
It's strange… I like different tunings for guitar, but I hate them for bass… 
Since I haven’t really done much of any interest lately other than playing guitar, that’s what I’ll write about.
I’ve been experimenting a bit more with different tunings lately. I had done so before, but tended to prefer to play in standard tuning. Especially since I got the Futura FX with the Floyd Rose, changing its tuning would be unpleasant. I played it much more than any of my other guitars since I got it…
So this meant that I stopped playing Big Wreck songs for the most part. But I’ll be getting back to it now. Changing guitars 3 or 4 times while I play isn’t fun, but I can manage. Tuning down to B modal isn’t for everyone, but it’s way cool for that one song or two
My Epiphone Prophecy Futura FX has arrived. I almost didn't get it today, since my father decided to get new all season tires for the car, and they had a lot of winter tires to do. He literally answered the phone the moment he walked through the door when he returned from dropping the car off at the garage. So he was probably expecting me to not be too happy about that interfering with getting my guitar.
Luckily, it didn't take too long to change the tires, so we were able to get to the music store in time.
There was bad traffic on the way there and on the way back as well, and it was past what should be rush hour. It's not the first time that has happened…
Traffic is getting bad on the highway now. Ottawa needs another major highway for east to west traffic. The geniuses didn't plan ahead and made all the highways combine into one going through downtown, and that sure isn't sufficient now. 
Back to the guitar… Epiphone Prophecy Futura FX.
I've waited about 5 months for it, but it was worth it. It's a lot like my old Explorer in shape, but I like the Futura FX more. The Futura's body is pretty much the same, but with an extension near the neck. It has a beautiful translucent black finish, while the neck has awesome blade inlays. It also has EMG pickups, and the Floyd Rose Tremolo.
It's great. It is a bit more complicated with the Floyd Rose and EMG pickups, though. Tuning takes longer because of the locked nut, and the EMG pickups require a 9V battery. I'm not really impressed by the strap locks. I don't think I'll be using them. Actually, I prefer the regular strap button to these. I never have problems with straps falling off, because I always buy good ones with leather ends (Levy's Leathers).
I also bought a Dunlop glass slide that I've wanted for years, but always forgot to get.
Thinking that my finger was healed, I decided to try my hand at playing some of the new Danko Jones songs on guitar for the first time. That was an interesting experience. I picked up some of the parts of some songs pretty quickly, even playing along while listening to the album, but others not so much.
And now the finger seems to have some sort of inflammation/bruising near the part of the joint where it was cut. The skin has completely closed up and healed, so I don’t know what’s going on. It didn’t hurt at all while I was playing
I’ve also started writing another screenplay. This one is inspired by Olga, and it will be pretty interesting if I ever finish it.
I tend to start things with great enthusiasm, and then after working hard on them for a few days, I completely run out of steam. I have 6 or 7 other screenplays in the folder that had that happen to them.
I guess now I understand why some filmmakers have been using some very brief scripts, sometimes possibly as short as one page and just improvised the rest
It’s warming up now. Tomorrow should be the warmest day of the year (so far), but there are still a lot of mounds of snow all over the place. I guess the snow will only be completely gone in the beginning of May.
