Journal of the Guitar Hobbyist/Junkie

I, like many before me, love my guitars. I love acoustics, classicals, but my niche is in the world of electrics and guitar synthesizers.

I began studying the guitar when I was 19 years old, between my sophomore and junior years of college at Wichita State. I found out that I had teratoma and embryonal carcinoma, two forms of testicular cancer. I returned to my hometown of Salina, Kansas and had two operations to remove the cancer (after 24 years, I can say that the treatment was successful, thankfully).

I was laying about most of the time during my recovery, and I noticed my brother's Peavey T-60, so I picked it up and started figuring things out. When it came time for me to return to school in the spring (January, really), I snagged my dad's acoustic that he wasn't playing much, and signed up to take guitar lessons at WSU. Little did I know...

WSU offers a jazz guitar program, with outstanding instruction. Today, that program was headed up by Craig Owens, and fine guitarist and instructor in his own right. When I started taking lessons as a beginner, my instructor was none other than Jazz legend and Kansas Music Hall of Famer Jerry Hahn . Jerry accepted me, a lowly beginner as a student, but he instilled in me a passion for the guitar. I still try to play everyday.

Since then, I've found that many a guitar player can become the victim of a strange neurological and economic disorder called G.A.S. - Guitar Acquisition Syndrome. Over the years I've owned probably half a dozen Inez guitars, still owning 3 today, a couple of Epiphones, an ESP, a Fernandes Nomad (great for travelling), an Ovation, a couple of Yamaha acoustics, one custom Warmoth LP copy, and now my new favorite guitar is a Godin xtSA with Synth-Access.

As someone who wants to get the most versatility out of my instrument of choice, I'll take the Godin. It has a humbucker - single coil - humbucker configuration for nice tonal aspects (I prefer the PRS dual humbucker configuration, but the Godin is a nice alternative). It has a piezo pickup in the bridge for a nice raw acoustic sound, great for fiddling around with a fingerstyle sound. Lastly, there's the RMC 13-pin synth pickup, tied to the piezo pickup in the bridge, with access to all the weirdness a synth has to offer. I don't play piano, organ or flute, let alone a classical orchestra instruments, but if I think a song I'm working on calls for it, I know I can get there, either through the use of my Roland GR-33 or through one of my other favorite toys, Propellerhead's Reason 3.0 (buy this product!). I can set my GR-33 to do midi-output to an M-Audio Uno Midi-to-USB cable, then compose directly into Reason's instruments and manipulate from there.

All for now...