My 1976 Stratocaster has a fairly storied past. It was purchased from a heroin addict outside a music store in Detroit in 1979 for the princely sum of $75 dollars. This thing’s been with me on five continents for close to thirty years. People ask me about it not because it’s a particularly great guitar (it surely is not!) but because it doesn’t sound much like a strat. Well, you can partly blame it on the fact that I never intended to play a Strat. Never liked ’em. So I always wanted it to not sound like a Strat. Hence, there were many home-made modifications.

The pickups have been replaced with a variety of humbuckers… most recently a complete set of Seymour Duncan JB ’59s which are supposed to sound like, what? Jeff Beck; Jazz Box? Who knows?
The 5-position switch was replaced with a 3-position switch. The three positions now function as follows:

i. Front pickup

ii. Front and Rear pickups […]

AKA, New Year, same ol’ whiney posts.

But this will likely be the last post before I switch web hosts. As doctors so like to say, ‘Some side-effects may include…’ But hopefully there will be no ‘dead air’. As always, if you notice anything untoward, please give me a jingle… e-mail… tweet… flaming arrow… semaphore…

I needed more space and some features to make the upcoming ‘Detroit’ site possible. There’s also the older concert videos which I haven’t had the time or the web space to present. So there are a lot of plans… if I survive. 😉

NB: I’m writing this from bed. Again. Don’t ask. Instead of opera-tin’ (get it? Even with the grim reaper at my door, I still got it.) But it’s making me even more ADHD than usual laying on my back. To avoid going nuts, I’m trying to remain ‘useful’ by doing stuff I always mean to get round to—like ITEM #318: Re-learn French by watching Canadian TV and old OSS 117 movies. (Did I say ‘going’? […]