G3 London, the verdict:

It was a kick-ass show. It was a lot better than Bournemouth. I could see everything and the sound in the Royal Albert Hall is amazing. After the good sound at the Toto show on monday night, my confidence was rebuilt about G3. The sound crew doing the house sound at RAH definitely know what they're doing.

Joe was also on form and seemed to be having a great time, as did Matt. Vai played well on the Jam, but I didn't think he was the best of the three on that set. However, there were some really nice ideas on there, especially with Joe and Steve harmonising their feedback, a very cool routine, it must be said!

Delfino, yeah I reckon a DW UK tour would be cool, but you're right....it's not gonna happen any time soon. he'd also need more then 7 tunes to play for a gig! hehe. I've listened to the album 2 or 3 times, I think "The Ghost OF Denmark St." is my favourite at the moment!

anibur, nice joke! well actually, less of a joke and more of a disturbingly good point, but it's still kinda funny!

I just picked up your mail, awesome photos! Could you do something for me; those photos you sent....could you put them in a zip file and mail them again, cause as it is I can see smaller versions (of most of them) within the mail but downloading is going to be a nightmare. especially with my 14K connection! hehe.

marimariSRV, assuming you have a version of winzip on your pc, it'll be pretty easy. Just select the files (in this case photos) that you want to zip and right-click the selection. In the menu box that appears, will be an "add to zip" option, which is what you need.

winzip will open itself, and the top corner will have a dialogue box asking you where you want to put the zipped archive when it's done, and by default, it will select the same directory as the one you took the photos from.

Below that will be the 'action' option, and by default it will be set to "add and replace files" which is fine...leave it like that. Below that will be the compression setting, which will be set to normal. Since they're photos, they're big files, so select "maximum" from the menu. Maximum takes the longest to compress, but it's most economical, especially for mailing. The other options and attributes below can be left as they are, then just click "add" at the top.

By the way, i'm basing this off winzip 8.0 or something, not quite the newest, so the arrangement of buttons may have changed, but it's probably the same!

Have fun playing with zips! hehe

oh and also (hehe, sorry, I keep remembering stuff) you should work on the CD-writing software next cause you really ought to get all your (amazing) photos on to CD! Do you know what software your cd writer uses, is it Nero? if it's Nero, I can help with that!

Ovation1, hehe, I know what you mean. I haven't listened to EJ for a while cause I been listening to Joe loads lately. I put Venus Isle on the other night and listened to Lonely In The Night in real disbelief! I've heard this song countless times, but it still gets me! I love it.

Rock on bro, and definitely Eric Johnson for G3 again!

take it easy!

Master Yoda, no probs! I tried both Engl and H&K. Both are excellent, but I am kinda partial to the H&K's no bullshit/no fuss manner. The Engl heads sound good, but a little more processed, whereas the H&K sounds a little more ballsy, if a little pissed off. hehe. It's all down to personal opinion, but if you go for either of those I'd say you'd be doing a very wise thing!

regards your second post (your rant), dude! i mean....DUDE! Two little girls spitting on you and your mate is not a cool thing to happen. I don't agree with what you said about "we couldn't hit them, they were girls" cause if people want equality that's what they should get, but it's unfortunate that they were young cause they would probably have gone running to the nearest pig and got you done for abusing a minor or some sh*t like that.

The important thing is in the question you asked - how were they brough up to think that this kind of behavious is okay? That is something I really want to know. Kids these days worry me!

and finally, do you think you could e-mail me that Productive Practice article too? It sounds useful!

airman_siro@yahoo.co.uk

by the way, I love your take on how to deal with annoying little girls/kids....haha, classic!

Ovation1, dude, you're into Ritchie Kotzen, right? I bet you could recommend me some of his stuff. I was listening to "So many notes, so little time" on Gregg Bissonette's "Submarine" record, and thought I bet I can't play any of that. I was right. I mean, there's a few slow phrases in there which I managed, but anything from moderate to fast is beyond me, not because of the speed, but the note selection. He does strange new things with arpeggios, hehe. What a genius tho....when I start earning again I want to start an RK collection!

Hope you're enjoying it and finding out about it's various different characteristics. How are you getting on with that switching system? Very nice indeed!

Austin, thanks for your Carvin input. haha, hasn't changed his strings since he got it used 2 years ago? ouch!

I'll let you know when I finally get some Richie Kotzen music......it'll be a while, but I'm sure i'll be wildly excited about it! hehe

By the way, intereseting what you say about that TWA 747 explosion. I do believe that there's a lot of occasions where news is fabricated to pull the wool over the eyes of the general public. Landing on the moon? I dunno, i'm split on it. It takes an awful lot of information and processing of info to get 3 people from earth, to the surface of the moon, and back again, yet when it was done, they had the computing power of a pocket calculator.

Now we have home PC's that are millions of times more powerful, but they crash and die dramatically every other time we use them. That said, i've been on a Plane ride from the UK to California.....I know that's a long flight, and there's an awful lot of opportunity for the Artificial Stupidity to f*ck things up, but it's always been hitch-free. Planes seem reliable, so why can't extra-powerful, extra-long-range planes be just the same.

I dunno, I'm a cynic, but I do think people stood on the moon, and I also think flight/space-technology is far more advanced than we are allowed to know

Delfino, the RGT in it's standard form is just not particularly nice. Like I said before it's heavy, and the bridge kinda sucks, although mine is the old Floyd Rose Rip-Off, the Lo-TRS II, not the new Edge Pro which is aparrently just as bad. The standard pickups sound pitiful, and for a thru-neck construction, it's resonance is relatively below-par. My RGT actually sounds pretty sweet, but that's cause I put the Bil Lawrence pickup in the bridge and dropped the tuning a half-step, so it sounds like Nuno's Washburn.

I dunno, I just feel that the S Series is a slightly more thought-about guitar. The 22-fret neck is nice, a little more open than the 24 that is standard on every RG, and the S Series gives you the option of an H-S-S pickup config, which is the most versatile. That's why I regret it so much - If I'd have got something with the H-S-S layout I could have dropped a really variable pickup set in there and it'd be much more useful.

get an S Series with a Wilkinson-type trem, put the right DiMarzios in there and you've basically got an Andy Timmons model!

Delfino, yeah I saw the end of that thing about the 101 weirdest things removed from the human body. The 101st was f*cking sick, I so nearly lurched! It was a pretty funny show tho. Shame I only saw the last ten!

Mater Yoda, hehe, yeah I know.....obviously, you choose whatever you want. Although I would say, if were to buy, for example, a Mesa Boogie, and then try an H&K, i'd probably find myself going "shiiiiit!"

Of course, it's dependent on what kind of tone you want, but the classic H&K distortion is the sort that you can't help but grin at!

Greyfox88, Igor Belsky has done an amazing two-handed tapping song called "Forgotten Planet" on his new album Equilibrium. It's a lot like The Forgotten (Part 1) and Midnight, and I can assure you you'd love it. Only problem is, you can only hear it by buying the CD straight from Igor cause he hasn't given it to any online suppliers yet.

IceZer, Yay-Yo Gakk; Steve recorded hours of his infant son's baby-talk. What you hear on Ya-Yo Gakk is all random noises that his son (I think it was Julian) was making, and Steve took the bits that sounded funniest/most quirky/most useable, then wrote a tune surrounding those sounds, and mirrored them exactly with guitar! There's the story of that one.

You'll grow to like it, it's cool, and Joe likes it. He referrs to it himself as a kind of "free-for-all", and if you get to meet Joe you will quickly realise that he's normal like the rest of us, and is quite happy to discuss stuff that isn't about guitars. Hell, he probably gets sick of guitar-talk, I know I do!

TASTEY, mmmm, mmm, toaster....yip yip yip yip yipyipyipyip. hehe

I did my first analytical tests this evening, comparing it in various regimes against my Jem. I gotta say, I love the JS! I wish I'd bought one, it's SO COMFORTABLE!

However, I feel like i'm gonna break it, the body is so sculpted i don't wanna hurt it. Opposed to that, the Jem body feels more sturdy and it's bridge more compliant to abuse, but it's neck feels more vulnerable, and I love the thickness of the JS neck and the frettboard radius.

This is one area which presents a massively noticeable difference - the radius on the JS makes it easier for me to play accurately. That is to say, I can "wing it" but make less mistakes than I would on the Jem. The curvature of the 'board makes spacing nicer, and I love the openness of the 22-frett neck. The upper register is so much easier to flow into than the cramped 24.

That said, the Jem is superior for shred style. These are characteristics that start to come through in the electronics too. My initial verdict is that the JS has the better body and neck, and better wiring but the Jem has better electronics. The Jem is better suited to shred and most noticeably, sweeping, whilst the JS is much better suited to legato and tapping than the Jem.

Although I like the tone of the Jem, I love how easily you can pull a massive variety of harmonics out of the JS, and it all comes naturally.

The JS seems more controllable, and so far i've found it easy to get some very 'Joe' tones out of it.

If I had to recommend one of these to someone who could not afford both, I'd say get the JS.

I'm sure I'll discover more to the JS in the next week, so my feelings may change, but as it currently stands, I think i'm playing the wrong guitar.

OCPS470, yeah I'd agree with you, that the S is somewhere between JS and Jem. I like the width and depth of the JS neck, it's much more relaxing for me to play......a lot, of course, is down to technique, and hand size. I'm almost entirely self-taught, so much technique is not as good as it should be, and I have fairly small hands.

After making these initial comparisons, I went back to my GIO. It's a cheap-as-sh*t guitar, but the body is great. It's curved across the top, it's more comfortable than the Jem. All it really needs is a re-fret, and I'd like to put a wilkison-type trem on it. I'd perhaps put an Evo in the bridge then a Virtual Vintage or something in the neck single-coil position.

To start with, I found the JS pickups lacking in some character, but I quickly got accustomed to their tone and characteristics, and found them more consistent and predictable, hence easier to control.

JustJack, excelent, i'm glad to hear you ordered Road Tested! For your info, if you really love it and you decide you want his two new albums, then you can mail Mr Belsky and he'll give you the address (in London) to send a cheque to. This is actually pretty cool, cause it means he's getting all the money for the 2 CD's, rather than loosing 75% of it to middle-men!

Enjoy Road Tested!

Warm regards to you and your wife, sensai. My condolences on your loss. Take it easy bro!

Damn, I think that was my first Satch-based joke. It was pitiful as well, i'm sorry! This is not cool news!

I don't know where Plant and Page grew up.....i'm a bit young for them to be honest! hehe. Well you went to London, so you've definitely been around te area they used to roam......they would have done all the major cities, England being so small and all!

civgeek, those numbers indicate that the JS is 1mm bigger, in general, than the Jem, which will account for a vast amount. You'd be surprised at the difference a mil makes! And yes, the radius definitely makes a difference.

The 3 russians aren't glowing! I dunno if they should be, but they're not. Here's the thing - my amp doesn't sound any different to the way it always has done. That said, if I turn the volume up, even just half way, it hisses quite noticeably, and that's not something I'd expect. It's certainly not that golden silence you get from a Mesa Boogie when you have your guitar volume wound off. And the reverb has always been pathetic, but if the problem has always been there then I obviously wouldn't know any different!

This all started cause the channel was switching wildly between the clean and dirty channels for no aparrent reason. It could perhaps be a dodgy lead in the footswitch - after I unplugged the footswitch it didn't do it again, but that could be coinsidence. Anyway, when this odd switching happened a few times, I looked in the back of the amp and couldn't see 9 orange glowing valves, only 6.

How do yu know when a valve is burned out? does the whole tube burn black, or is it just the top where the reflective part usually is?

DCK, cheers dude, I didn't realise that they don't all have to glow all the time. It's interesting, I took the 3 sovteks out and had a look, and one definitely seemed to be a bit more black on the reflector than the others did. I swapped the positions of 2 of the Sovteks when I put them back in, and got much more reverb! If there was a problem with the reverb tube, and in the swapping-over I had put it in place of the pre-amp or powerdriver, that would have great effect on the channel tone, right? It didn't....

The other thing that confuses me, I would have thought the 3 pre-amp tubes would be the same, but no, 2 of them are Groove Tubes whilst the 3rd in the line is a Sovtek.

I have to say, it's a lovely amp, and for the money you'd pay for a Marshall, you can't go wrong. I had a Marshall DSL before it but returned it after a couple of weeks cause it sounded lame, and replaced it with a Legacy. It is a very, very warm amp, on both channels, but it sounds great.

I definitely recommend at least trying one, although if I had the money I'd probably go with a Hughes & Kettner Tri-Amp (MkII).

It's an odd problem, cause if those 3 Sovtek 12AX7lp's were buggered, there wouldn't be any reverb. I think i'll go check out eurotubes!