For those of you who have played professionally, I'd be curious if you recorded and the names of the bands.
73 de Ed W1XAW
Nah never recorded. They've always been just local bands. I've never been full blown proffessional (where my living has been solely from music), just semi-pro. Still, I do it for the love of making music. Past a certain point, I get more enjoyment out of playing with people, than just by myself. I don't know, maybe it's my ensemble musical upbringing. I was playing in brass bands several years before I took up guitar in 1979. Still, there is a limit to this mindset for me. As I've mentioned, playing with other people, is no fun for me, if I don't like/get into the music.
Also, while many musicians like jam sessions, I have mixed feelings about them. Oftentimes I find them to be too chaotic, with nothing but noise being made and/or no songs being played. Or, everybody at the jam session only knows a few songs in common, and because you haven't really gelled as a group, you hack your way through those songs either over and over, or in long extended jams. That gets old, and painful. But, I will admit that I've gone to reunion jams held by old bandmates, and had a blast ripping through sets of the old material.
73 & play on,
Ellen - AF9J
P.S. - here's a photo of my present guitar rig.
1. The guitar is a Squier Affinty Telecaster (I call her Candy for the Candy Apple Red color),with a high output, overwound GFS single coil pickup in the bridge position.
2. The amp (I just got recently for chump change) is a 100W Peavey Supreme head. It's a switchable, 2 channel amp (clean & mondo distortion). Yes, it's solid state. My days of breaking my back lugging tube amps are pretty much over with. It's sort of the solid state version of Peavey's 5150 tube amp.
3. The speaker cab is an older Crate 2x12" bottom with 70W Celestions in it, I got cheap last year. I find living with 4x12" bottoms to be a pain. Anyway, 2x12" bottoms have almost as much bass response.
4. The yellow stompbox on top of the amp is a reissue of a 70s DOD overdrive pre-amp. With the gain my amp has, I doubt I'll be using it much anymore. I'm not a huge user of processed guitar as it is. My only effects are a Morely Flanger, and a cheapo Danelectro chorus pedal. I usually run a pretty dry signal.
I took a vacation day tomorrow. I'm hoping to give my guitar and amp a workout. Oh yeah, the little Crate practice amp in the corner of the photo, is my old practice amp that I gave to a friend of mine. I borrowed it back from her a few weeks ago. I hope to give it back to her this weekend.
