Things:

1: Byebye Kramer Voyager
2: Thing Jen didn't know, probably - Def Leppard's '90s guitarist Vivian Campbell was a Kramer endorsee, and a Kramer model was released based on his design, the Nightswan. Kramers = Heavy Metal. Trufax. (Well. "Small American makers using ESP hardware = Heavy Metal. I'm looking at you, Dean, Jackson and Charvel").
3: When I grow up I am going to own a Citroën DS
4: Estate agent is going to switch the heating on All Day in the house and says Hawick hasn't been freezing
5: Going to Hawick, Kelso, Edinburgh tomorrow and will probably be woefully sensible and go to Glasgow on Friday. Also going to collect guitar from Lancashire.
6: Thankyou, Apple, for making the 17" MacBook Pro SO close to what I want, then screwing it up so massively I won't get one
7: Gosh. That feels familiar. Where's alt.gothic... (If LiveJournal dies, we can has alt.gothic back properly?).

Flowery Twats

ETA: I've just been trying to play "Photograph"... I can do the bridge bit that I can't do in Guitar Hero, but I can't do the chords. Anyone saying Guitar Hero doesn't help is underestimating HOW little I know about music though, as playing it gives me an idea of the timing for a given song; tab tells me where the notes are but I have no reference for when they happen unless I know the song :D

Almost finished EVERYTHING now!

Just got the effects unit I wanted sorted out:

http://www.tcelectronic.com/fireworx.asp

Which replaces the three I had before - Zoom 1000, ART Multiverb, Digitech S100. The former two are still to sell; when I go up to Hawick I'll get the box for the Zoom and that can be sold in as-new condition - this doesn't change the fact that it is really a very low quality device, but maybe I'll get something back for it.

Guitars are nicely sorted, tomorrow I will have four - Kramer Focus 6000 which has a slanted humbucker in the bridge position then two single-coil pickups, coil tap and Floyd Rose - this basically does pretty much everything a non-active pickup guitar can do apart from "OMGMYEARS" that the 3-humbucker Kramers can presumably generate. Godin Freeway, which has two EMG active pickups and I have no idea how it will sound, but I liked my last guitar with active pickups, the Stagg bass and Squier 5-string bass (which I'm going to have set up properly, like the Focus).

Hopefully soon I'll have Cubase 4 with a little controller surface as well, which should tidy all this recording stuff up nicely. I spent some time yesterday on the vocal channel, and apart from still being a bit confused about how best to use the Antares (it's currently a side chain on the Behringer compressor), the compressor alone sounds pretty damn good.

One thing I am a bit sad about - Moog are releasing Taurus pedals again, and I got a press release with discounts for pre-orders and stuff - they won't be made until November 2009. I missed the pre-order run, but I'd missed it by the time I was aware. I'm disappointed that the UK gets so little information from Moog. Either way, the new models are set to be about 1/2 the price originals fetch on eBay and with original analogue circuitry, so I will be trying to get on the order chain for a set (limited production). I've emailed them asking if they can do one in mahogany to match my Voyager.

The bass pedals are a funny thing. I think of them as a "goes with traditional organs" type of object, but the Genesis concert on TV showed $guitaristunit using one, and that was quite interesting - playing, but using the Taurus as a foot controlled synth drone (perhaps providing a carrier wave to a vocoder or something, or just making a noise). I want a set because they'll be hard to get, and are new Moog kit, and I can handle "a bass note" with my foot and "a lead note" with my hand for duophonic Moogness (I'm really hoping that they have some CV interfaces for building into the Voyager "modular"), and the price isn't horrific for what they should be (which frankly is just ODD for Moog).

OMG

We no longer have neighbours.

Theatre said I could park on the bit in front of downstairs for now as it'll be a while before the property comes up; I'm going to talk to Greens about it.