berns1, what? Joe has just left europe! G3 just finished, and while Vai has veered off to cover asia and Australia, Joe has gone back to the US to do his tour/evening-with season. There were 5 and a 1/2 weeks to catch him in europe!

GODGUNSGUITARS, congrats on getting the first G3 DVD! Hope you're enjoying.....I personally think it's the best, especially EJ's set!

I tried an American Deluxe strat on thursday. It's the one with the S1 switch. It's damn impressive, it has to be said. Also, i like american build-quality. Fender is always going to make better guitars than Ibanez, not because Ibanez are really bad, although they do have their faults, but because Fender simply has the experience, and 1100 pounds-worth of strat is as good as 1800 pounds-worth of Jem!

DCK, 'relic it'.....haha. A relic Jem! That'd make tonnes on ebay, people are often so gullible on there!

I tried the trem a little on the American Deluxe and it was great. Locking tuners and a roller nut are a massive plus-point too. The only choice I have to make is on colour! haha. It's between 3 colour-sunburst and Chrome Tangerine at the moment!

Once when I was little i'd come downstairs to make breakfast in the morning, and had to stand on a chair to reach the cereal box off the shelf. As i was standing there, all sleepy, on this chair I felt something on the back of my dressing gown, and as I went to scratch it, I pulled my hand away and this massive house spider was perched across the back of my hand. It was huge, it covered my hand, and it freaked me out. I flicked it off and it fell all the way to the floor, then darted under the fridge.

A few months later, my mum was cooking, had the kitchen window open and a wasp came in. It was a big-ass wood wasp and it kept pissin her off so she swatted it with a towel or something. It fell to the floor, on it's back, in front of the fridge, and the bastard house-spider darted out and tried to bite it. They were there, screwed up in a ball, fighting to the death on the kitchen floor! You usually have to pay for entertainment like that! The spider limped it's way back under the fridge and the wasp crawled away bedhind the dishwasher!

Ovation1, thanks for the good-luck wishes dude. and yeah, regards we haven't seen them since!.... AHHHHHHHHHH!!!! ;-)......precisely! It worries me when I stop to think about it. They could be furiously breeding a new species under the fridge. It'd be a weird, 8-legged brown hairy thing that can sting, bite, and fly. Damn....there was a kid at college who fitted that description! hehe

Delfino, rocky? well, that's a cool name for a chameleon! especially when you're five!

Yeah Igor was reluctant to write on the scratch-plate! hehe, he said "I can't put my name next to these guys!" I think it's really cool to have it there. I'd love to update it some time, with Andy Timmons, Nuno Bettencourt, and the absolute holy grail for me, Eric Johnson.

Austin, damn......that explanation of "Raspberry Jam Delta-V" was a real surprise.....I always thought it was just random! hehe. it's pretty cool, i'll have to remember that one. As you can tell, I don't read sci-fi much. I always find that it works better on TV cause I like to see how other people's imaginations make things turn out differently to the way i'd visualise something.

Damn, that wording was awful.....i'm sorry, I hope you can pick out the meaning from that odd...er... jumble... of.....oh f*ck it, grammar is just not playing ball this evening!

I know these may be kinda crude...well...the second one is....but I nearly died from laughter!

Suddenly, a voice from the other side of the wall screamed, "For f**ks sake, it's twenty to two in the f*c*ing morning!"

OCPS470, of course, that's no problem at all man! I mean....it's probably not exactly much of a promotion, but if I put his weblink in the photo caption, and obviously credit him for the guitar, it might just help!

I get a weekly report on how many 'new views' there have been of my webshots page, and it's quite surprising some times! It's the sort of thing people stumble across! Can you give me his web adress again! hehe, I thought I had it somewhere but I must be wrong!

I watched Red Dwarf tho - Kryten is the best, he makes me laugh so hard!

My sister works for the museum at Cambridge Uni here in england, and there's a lot of fossil exhibits in there. One of them is a fossil of some prehistoric spider, meant to be, like, 6 million years old or something stupid. Anyway, a bunch of palaentologists got together and recreated a full-size, 3D model of the spider out of latex. It's about a foot long in the body. It's legs must span 18 inches.

They had a bunch of school kids visiting for the morning, looking round, learning, and one of them asked "how do you know this was an adult and not the baby?"

evening all, glad you enjoyed the jokes! hehehe

Clarky, megarachne! that's the kiddie, the same one (probably the same fossil) they have in the Sedgwick Museum at Cambridge Uni. What gets me is the idea that you could have heard it eating. It was even able to spin 'silk', like all spiders, but it didn't spin the heavy duty stuff for making webs to hang off. It just used it to make traps instead. Fuckin great bear traps probably! haha

I was in tears at that one.....kryten is the best!

Mr Nick, series 4 as well? cool news! that's half of them!

Evbro, dude I tried entering www.evan-brown.com and www.evan-brown.net in my browser and both seem to suggest they're yours for the taking.

Hyphens are always useful.....www.population-1.com, for example.

Artanis I, no the Red Dwarf on the other night was from series 8 - the one where Lister gets put in the brigg on the newly re-built Red Dwarf!

Hey, congrats on the ratings mate! Top 100 is ace! keep on climbing

Delfino, yeah man, it's near the end of series 8, i think, when they have to deal with the dinosaur!

update; I see Ausin has covered this above!

Ovation1, wicked, fingers crossed on you getting to see Eric Johnson!

by the way....you said you make/edit websites for your mates? Dude....you should have something about web-developing skills on your CV - that's dead important!

You got mail!

Speaking of good music.....there was a 'skate-fest' in the town near where I live this evening. They had a live band at 7 playing grunge-come-surf rock, then a DJ playing some hip-hop and stuff with people breakdancing to it. cool.

OCPS470, cool thanks for your info! yeah I checked out the price listing on his site....it's amazing, considering what everyone else tries to charge for custom builds!

I don't doubt that your guitar is better than any PRS, Tom Anderson etc. that you could buy at 4-grand-a-piece from the local guitar store!

I'll see if I manage to sell the Jem, and then contact peter with my ideas!

Keywe, well unless you got your JS100 in the last 12 months (and if I remember rightly you've had it a few years?) the tremolo arm should have a little collar around the bottom of it. it's quite loose, but round the top of the hole where you insert said tremolo arm, there's a threaded ring which the collar screws onto, tightening the arm.

If there's none of that, and your bridge is actually the new edge pro, then it's using a pair of nylon bushes on the end of the bar. These can be replaced easily.

Delfino, no problem dude! By the way, I hear what you're saying about the window-cleaning! Mum's have curious ways of going about things sometimes! One of them is the use of vinegar instead of a product specially designed for cleaning windows, just because they can! It makes them feel tiumphant or some sh*t like that. The other one that cracks me up is when they've gone looking for a car, or they're thinking about getting one and are taking note of those they see out on the road;

"I saw a nice little car today....I could see myself driving it, it looked very neat" "what was it" "I don't know....a nice little blue one. It had a stop light in the middle of the back window too, very clever"

Haha, mothers....bless them, they're so much fun!

Delfino, haha, I like what your dad said about the range rover! it's the "...you're too fat for this car" part that made me chuckle! Honesty is a virtue man!

By the way, i'll try and remember to sort out those exercises tomorrow afternoon. They should help with training your fingers to play really weird-sounding progressions. I am having a serious problem with muscle memory and awful habits at the moment...I think i'll read them myself!

I just feel at the moment like I can't write anything decent, especially solo-wise. I mean, yeah I can play something fast that fills the space, but it doesn't sound interesting at all.

You know that pace that jazz players play at - a Larry Carlton solo would be a good example - where it's fairly quick but not shred-speed, with a few really pacy flurries thrown in, the sort of pace where it can sound really satisfying.......are there particular modes or techniques or anything to use that will force that into your playing? cause I really need it - my solo technique is horrible, none of the note progressions excite me.

I remember you saying that it's very easy, from the players point of view, to get bored with your own sound because you get used to it, but i am having serious problems here man! hehe.

Also, can you think of any good, jazzy chord progressions that might make a good backing track? if you can list one that'd be great cause then I can write a simple backing track in cubase that will force me to use some odd progressions and key changes!

Clarky, cheers dude. I totally get what you're saying.....part of my problem yesterday was I fancied jamming with some of Kenny-Wayne's stuff, which I haven't played, and hardly listened to in months, so obviously my head is full of Joe-isms, Igor-isms and so on! That's why there's not an ounce of Kenny-Wayne-isms in my playing.....if I were to listen to and play his stuff daily for the next month, like I have with the guys I lised above, I'd get it!

I'm going to try some of the more jazzy/fusion type stuff from Gregg Bissonette's albums later. Scott Henderson, Lukather, Mike Miller, Richie Kotzen, Frank Gambale - that oughtta do me some good!

Master Yoda, haha, so much hard work that "finished" came out as a flurry of letters! hehe, sorry i'm not being pedantic and annoying - I just know the feeling of having written so much you can't be fucked to spell properly anymore.

As it happens, I haven't written anything for a couple of years. I tried writing earlier and now I can't read it! haha, not cool

So yeah, Paul is definitely accutely tuned to what really matters, and does cool stuff cause he wants to, but because he likes pleasing people. Billy is so similar in that sense!

When I met Billy I asked him if everything was cool with him and Pablo cause I'd read somewhere that they'd kinda fallen out and he said "not at all man! Paul is a very dear friend and a great musician and I got a lot of time for him". I wish they'd hook ip and Jam some time!