About Me

So, you've managed to wander across my blog, eh? Want to know a bit more about me and my music (and gear!) obsession? It all started when I took piano lessons (not too successfully, I might add) in grade school. By the time I got into high school, I was ready for something different, and I took several years of guitar lessons. Thus began the unending guitar saga... playing in the garage cover band that never made it out of the garage, joining the high school jazz band, doing way too many coffeehouse acoustic open-mic nights in college, composing epic progressive masterpieces that I’d never find time to finish recording, doing a brief stint as a choir director, etc. Somehow I’ve managed to find time to play in original local bands (like Serenity, Naughty Butterspoon, The Burning Sensations) in recent years and work on home recording projects. My latest project of choice is Conundrum, and I have also been playing with a 30-piece big band. About The Gear... The gear, in a nutshell, has been collected over the course of my 15+ year musical journey. Most of my joy comes from guitars & amps and recording gear, though I do have a bit of keyboard and PA gear around as well. Over the next few weeks I'll be creating new posts with details on all my gear. About The Site... I put together a website a few years ago just to show off pictures of my guitar collection. As more & more people discovered the site, random people started writing to ask “How do you like that guitar?” or “What pickups does that guitar have?” or “Where can I get one of those?” That prompted me to expand to include a little commentary and a few specs on each guitar. It wasn’t long before I started getting even more messages like “What type of amps do you use?” and “What gear do you recommend for home recording?” So, once again, I expanded to include some basic information on my guitar rigs (amplifiers and effects), keyboards, recording gear, and PA gear. Over the years, I've redesigned the site a few times, but the most recent switch has been moving the content to Blogger and pictures to Picasa. Ideally this will allow me to spend less time maintaining the site (and perhaps less $ on web hosting); plus, this gives me the chance to play with some of those new-fangled web2.0 technologies that I've been reading so much about in Wired. (j/k... I've actually maintained a blog where I work for the past 4 years) As much passion as I have for music, I have just about as much passion for photography, which has become a secondary cause of GAS over the past few years. The pics on the site have been taken with various digital cameras I’ve owned over the years, including a Kodak DC120 Zoom, a Nikon Coolpix 3200, and (my current pride and joy) a Nikon D90 digital SLR. I also have a Nikon N60 SLR in case I ever want to shoot film again (hmmm... not too likely). To complement the D90 I have a Nikon SB600 flash, a Nikon 16-85mm VR lens, a Nikon 70-300mm VR lens, and a backpack full of various camera accessories for handling just about any photographic “crisis” I come across. All videos have been shot using a Sony HDR-UX5 camcorder, edited with Adobe Premiere Elements, and hosted on YouTube. Enjoy your visit! --B