Ovation1, cheers dude! Yeah I was checkin out this new SA on the Ibanez-US website and it looks pretty sweet.

The average price of an RG or S-series is around 500 quid, right.....for a prestige, ie top-of-line-model S or RG, you're looking at 1200 quid.

The SA i'm lookin at is the top of the SA line, and is a little over 500 quid. It's got Jumbo frets (just what i'm after) a Sat-Pro bridge (exactly like on the AT300) and decent wiring for it's H-S-S arrangement, which is exactly the pickup format I'm after! It's like a Fat strat but better, cause it's half the price of a decent fat strat, it's more individual, installing DiMarzio pickups will be "a piece of cake" (hehe), and it's half the price of all the aforementioned big hitters! I'm in!

Delfino, dude you have such cool dreams! haha. Actually, I gotta say, I had a cool one the other day - for some reason, Joe and Steve dropped in at my house for tea, only Steve looked really different. But Joe was spot-on, and was chatting away with my mother, was cool! hehe, it's all good, clean fun!

by the way, I found that 'Bad Horsie' Jem when I was busy putting my Jem up for sale.....it's nice ain't it?! if you're gonna buy a Jem555, you wanna do something like that with it!

marimariSRV, cool, i'm glad you enjoyed the show! Yeah Robben does have a beautiful voice, there's no two ways about it! I remember the first time I heardn the Blue Moon record, I was thinking "What the..? His voice sounds perfect with every other tone, frequency, sound in his music! This guy is incredible!".

Jonny A is good huh? thanks, i'll check him out when I get some money! hehe

jazzzzzyy, aah man, that sounds f*ck*n awesome bro! And only 4 people! You lucky sod, haha, hardly anyone to compete with. Sounds like you had a great time talkin to Joe.....he just rocks, quite simply! There's not too many people who are as cool as Joe!

oh yeah, then there's the T2J CD, EJ's new record, KWS's new record, Vai's new record, and Joe Bonamassa!

Delfino, hahahahah! oh dear.....ahahahahaha. You're great man, you're so right about the awful use of awful effects on the DT DVD. I found myself trying not to sneer the first time I saw it....like you do when you're trying not to be affected by a nasty smell. hehe. Musically it's cool, but it's not the visual masterpiece of LISF or Vai's Live At The Astoria!

Thanks loads for you help!

Respects be paid to Russia today - yesterday's air disaster was very bad, and lots of innocent lives were lost. So far it seems Mr Putin is dealing with the situation in a very controlled manner.

Ovation1, dude...thanks loads for the PPL link! I've wanted to fly for years, and recently the urge came back really strong. I'd especially love to fly Heli's, but the license/test/lessons for that are about ten times as much as plane-flying! Anyway, despite my urge to fly, I never wanted to join the RAF, cause I'd be no good in a standard military role.

Thanks for that, time to start reading up, methinks!

jelly man, yeah I love Naked Gun. Those films are hilarious, your quote being a prime example!

Apache/Longbow pilots are the ones I don't get - they have auto-torque control on the tail rotor so they don't have to worry about it, which is dead useful....they just use it like a rudder.....but the whole concept of training to consciously focus your eyes independently.....that's just crazy!

And yeah, if you've got a Floyd Rose bridge, you really want the locking nut. That said, you could go with a roller nut and locking tuners, but the nut was designed for it.

It's better to go with the 'vintage' or 'fulcrum' design of 2-point trem, with locking tuners. Or even better....use a hardtail!

DCK, yeah I think you're right to a certain extent, but there's also the side of guitar shop owners where they do require someone of a certain standard, cause they're often so arrogant and self-absorbed, that they like to have the satisfaction of mocking you in some way, saying "no, you're not good enough" even when they haven't actually heard you play!

You get the same with applying for jobs. I have applied for a bunch of jobs I am easily capable of, but they haven't even interviewed me, just because they say "you don't have the experience we require". People can get very short-sighted with things like this, so you gotta act hard and pretty fast to show yourself off.

My advice to Delfino is to give a mixture of both! And when they 'audition' you and say "what's your guitar of choice" cause they're about to get something off the wall for you to play, tell 'em "well I tend to use Ibanez but I don't really mind.....the purpose is to demo something for someone else, not myself" but make it a little more tactful! hehe

The Farting Gnome, duuude! Good to see you round here again! Hell yeah, Toto at the Royal Albert was one of the best shows i've seen. Luke and Bobby K were really on top form, absolutely amazing, and the set was excellent.

I also agree with what you said about G3 - setlist could have been better, but it was still a great show, and the booing of Bob was harsh. I thought he did a good job, personally, and he played some of the best bits in the G3 Jam!

Suzie2000, I have shopped from Nevada Music. I bought my amp from there, and the do have a lot of guitars! Expect the JS1200 to average 1,200 quid, pushing the JS1000 down to about 1,050.

I'm intrigued, why do you particularly want the JS1200? hehe, i'm just wondering! Nevada Music and The Guitar, Amp and Keyboard centre, Brighton, have the lowest prices in the UK. check out www.gak.co.uk!

Regards London there's a bunch of shops on Denmark Street, and near that area, and a lot of them are major Ibanez stockists, but don't be tempted to go to Soho Soundhouse - they're sh*t. They don't look after their stuff at all, all they care about is how long it's going to take for you to hand your card or a cheque over........bastards!

From oxford it might be easier for you to get to bournemouth than portsmouth? If so, let me know and I'll help you out there!

I managed to get about a third of the way through that Jonathon Mover interview before I got tired. I don't really get what the deal is......bands change, people leave.....it's what happens.

I also think that Joe and Jeff have an excellent working partnership, and Jeff seems very able to tune into the same wavelength as Joe, with crystal clarity. That's got to be a bonus when you're against the clock in the studio, and it shows cause they have a very long working relationship now!

SupaaDave, "and besides...I kind of have a life". hahahahaha, dude that's spot on!

No i've bought nothing from Soho Soundhouse. I went there cause they started selling the Arbiter-Dallas Fuzz-Face pedal as a reissue, which I was interested in cause Eric Johnson gets a cool sound from it.

I asked if I could try it and they said "yeah if we have one that works". The assistant eventually found a battery to put in it and puggled it until it started working. When asked what guitar I play I told him it's a Jem, so he got me one of those, and I also asked to try the JS1000. When they arrived in the little demo-room thing, the JS wasn't setup, was out of tune with ancient strings on it.....i'm telling you, carbon dating those things would have suggested that Ibanez predates christ.

And the Jem was damaged - the top e-string bridge saddle was fractured so it was not actually playable.

After 5 minutes of playing around with the JS/fuzz-face/crappy marshall valve-state amp, the guy comes in and says "are you gonna buy any of these then". I just said "haha. NO".

You probably wouldn't find anything in bournemouth which you couldn't get in London, so there's no real point.

JS1000 is retailing for a good couple of hundred quid less than the JS1200, and the only difference between the two is the colour, and the neck pickup.

Clarky, yeah like I said to Suzie, I got my legacy from Nevada Music, in Portsmouth. Mate, it's definitely worth a visit, they have a cool, nicely laid-out store with some cool stock, and a great room for testing the amps in. They're nice staff as well - they don't all have this attitude that they are a class above whoever walks in the door. I must admit, I do think they f*cked up a bit with my amp, and that's why it had such an odd bunch of tubes in it, but hey, they managed to Bias it ok, and it works fine now so overall It's all good!

I prefer Nevada Music to GAK because it's more spacious and has nicer staff, but GAK is nearly unbeatable for price in the UK, and they have loads of stock, and it's all in good condition.

Suzie, yeah it was sad to see that Jem broken, especially since they still wanted 1800 quid for it. And I have no idea why some places are selling the JS1000 for more than the 1200. I think it all depends on what they pay for it in the first place, which is sometimes less than others because of fluctuating costs in shipping from Japan to Europe.

Suzie, thanks for the expplanation of your goings-on.....I have a good understanding of where you're coming from now. Hey, that's totally cool that you and your husband are getting new guitars!

I would definitely say yes to Fender, they are great amps, although you may find it harder to get a Joe tone without using stomp-boxes for your distortion/overdrive. It depends what Fender you go for, cause their different model lines have very different sounds!

I get what you mean about the Line 6 Spider/Spider II.....they're cool, but you have to be ok with ultra-modern, very processed sounds. I'm guessing you guys are going to prefer the more natural, vintage valve sound. Maybe check out some second-hand Marshall Vintage gear? I don't like their new DSL/TSL amps, but their vintage stuff sounds somewhat better. Also, Laney amps are worth checking out, they're not expensive, and they sound great.

If you want something small then Fender would be good, as would a Hughes & Kettner Edition Blue amp - the 60watt model is about 350 quid, but is transistor, not valve. However, it's the closest I've heard from a transistor amp built to sound like a valve amp. I love it, I want one.

Mesa Boogie make a 50 watt 'practice' valve amp, the Nomad, but it's about 11 hundred quid....

Sorry, I may not have helped, listing all those completely different possibilities, but my overall recommendation for something you can both use, which is going to give tonal variety and versatility, is the H&K Edition Blue......it'll do it well, it'll be reliable, it's clean and dirty channels both sound gorgeous, and it has wicked blue lights on top by the control panel!!

God, I don't even get a commission for this.....I should write to H&K and suggest it. haha

Regards the fixed bridge aiding sustain, er....yeah I guess, but it's a bit of a pisser cause you miss out on one of the most important features of the JS - the trem. You need it if you want something to put the rest of the collection in the shade.

Suzie, no problem, and hey don't worry about the 'life-story'! hehehe, life stories are good!

Definitely Valve, you say? I will reitterate that the H&K Edition Blue is not a valve amp, but it sounds almost like one - it's much closer than any 'amp-modelling' you'll get from Line 6 etc.

Oh yeah I forgot the Mesa Boogie F50, but I don't know anything about it so I can't really comment - as far as I know it's a lot like the nomad. Why are Boogie's so expensive? For the same reason that Quicksilver T-shirts cost 65 quid.....they have the right name on them. I mean, Boogies are good, no doubting that, but I personally find them overpriced. They have good, identifyiable tone, "the coolest distortion on the market"...aparrently (tho I beg to differ!) and they are definitely built to be robust, and not fall apart halfway through a tour like a Marshall Speaker Cabinet might. They are fairly reliable, but not to the same degree as Fender or H&K.

Boogie's are american, so that helps, and H&K are German, so you've got American tone versus German engineering. Thing is, for me, the German Engineering in the H&K is partnered with Boogie-beating tone. Do you ever listen to anything by Nuno Bettencourt/Extreme? he's big on H&K and gets one of the coolest tones I've heard!

Eric Johnson uses all vintage gear, with a mixture of mainly Fender and Marshall. Joe has tried a bunch of different things, and a lot have been vintage-like, so I guess the JSX is a bit of a departure cause it certainly sounds kinda different.

Suzie, i'm kind of in a non-peavey area.....there's not much round here.....there's just loads of Boogies indstead! As a result, no I haven't tried the JSX. I'm mixed on it - it's cool and everything, but I preferred Joe's tone when it was a little smoother, with Cornford and Marshall. That said, he's getting a great rhythm tone out of it. Igor Belsky also uses Peavey, and I love his sound, and Jennifer Batten gets a good tone from them as well, although she adds some synth sounds too.

Beware, if you really want valves, H&K valve amps cost big money....like, more than JSX money! They're not the sort of ridiculous sum that Mesa/Boogies are levelled at, the sort that the bank manager would laugh at, but they are pricey. Especially if you go for the Tri-amp, the best of the bunch. It's all for a reason tho - they kick ass! hehe.

But, I still think the Edition Blue transistor combos are a goldmine for guitarists who care about tone.....Despite their lack of any valves, they react like a valve amp - I noticed that it's response to changes in volume, tone and pickup selection, as well as pick attack, were as consistent and high-quality as my Carvin amp, which is all-valve. If you find someone who's stocking them, definitely give it a try.

Also, the H&K Warp Factor amps are a completely different ball-game. They're of the industrial-distortion ilk, with a processed, ultra-nu-metal tone that is great for pissed off rhythm players, but somewhat unsofisticated! I found Engl a little like that too, but that could just have been the settings I managed to find - mental note; Engl amps can be confusing. There's so many switches.....it's like a Japanese Hi-Fi!

DCK, yeah the compressed sound is what I don't like about Mesa Rectos, and Engl too. It all just makes it sound like a big fancy effects pedal with a speaker attached. Tone? What do you need tone for when you got distortion?

I personally don't like DSL's, but I'd still agree that they have the open sound to them, like yuou said.