Ah Thom, love yer playing and voice, good stuff.
I really need to work on my chord transitions. If it ain’t a power chord, I get confused 
Still, my improvisation’s getting better on a daily basis!
I’ve splashed out loads on guitar gear since picking it back up during lockdown after over 20 years.
Initially, I picked up a nice Blackstar amp and a Les Paul Studio to replace my old Washburn KC40V and Fender M80 amp. The Les Paul was a revelation coming from my Washburn. I was amazed by the tone and how it could be shaped using the controls. And with my old amp being transistor, I was blown away by my new valve amp and how the LP’s pickups interacted with them to create a warm, natural overdrive even on the clean channel.
I all of a sudden understood what people meant when they talked about signal break-up.
Then the pedal-hunger started.
Bought a bunch of cheapo Chinese nano pedals, some of which are surprisingly good (I swear by my Tone City Durple overdrive, which produces a lovely, textured drive in combination with my LP’s pickups and the amp’s valves).
Decided I wanted something with more metal grunt, so splashed a bit more on an Electro Harmonix Metal Muff Nano which is fantastically nasty and coarse / squealy.
Then a more classic distortion sound in the Boss MT-2W Metal Zone Waza Craft. Great pedal, but in all honesty, not as interesting as the cheaper Metal Muff.
THEN I decided that I wanted to explore the other end of the classic rock guitar spectrum, so bought a lovely Fender American Performer Strat, which gave me exactly the Strat sound I was after. I blame Cory Wong for that purchase.
Also picked up the classic Big Muff, before going REALLY CRAZY and splashing out on a Jack White / Coppersound Triplegraph pedal, which is just jaw-droppingly cool. Three telegraph-style buttons, left is octave down, middle is switchable between raw signal cut-out or an fx loop, and right is octave up. The octaves can switch between latched or non-latched. Blows my mind every time I play with it, and creates an instantly recognisable Jack White sound.
And my last purchase was a really nice Harley Benton CLR Reso-Electric, a single-cone resonator guitar with a lipstick pickup. I wanted an acoustic, but also something a bit different, and this fit the bill perfectly.
Plus, it’s a tenth the price of a resonator from a more renowned company like National.
And it’s SHINY.
Action’s a bit too high for my liking though, so I’ll need to look at how I go about lowering it.
The problem now is every time I get bored at work, I need to actively prevent myself from visiting music shop websites, lest I spend a small fortune on more guitar gear.
