DETERIOR

I had been thinking about getting a new guitar to record the new album. I've had my current one, the Ibanex EX 370 (I talked about it a bit here ) for I think about six or seven years now and while it's held up all that time it's really not that great of a guitar; it has obnoxious features and it's a bit beat up and doesn't sound all that great. So I was going to look around at some stores, see what struck my fancy; I wound up getting a new one on the first day I went looking (Saturday, at Woodsy's in Kent, Ohio ): a Schecter Omen-6: (Not my photo, although it's the same exact thing except with all-black pickups.) It's not an expensive guitar, but it's new and very well-built (Schecter is a great brand, from what I've played before) and it sounds awesome with my Metal Muff. (I'm pretty sure the Schecter Diamond series are designed specifically for playing metal anyway.) The only thing is it needs new strings and they closed the only good musi...

Thanks to all your wonderful donations over the past few months, I was able to afford a replacement for my broken Digitech pedal. I've played around with it a bit and it sounds great; I've heard many good things about Metal Muffs (one of them being durability, so that's always good) and I hope this one will serve me well in music to come.

It is with sorrow that I announce that one of my most faithful companions on my musical journey, my Digitech BP-80 effects pedal, has finally gone on to meet the great circuit board in the sky after at least five years of use. I'm going to be shopping for a new one soon, but that means I'm not going to be able to do any further work on Ectype for a while. Oh well.

I was planning to post some pictures or video or something, but that's not working out yet ... I'll try to do so in the future. Right, so, I've officially begun the recording process for the new album. At this point, I have recorded all the guitar for the first of seven songs, and I'm probably just going to progress straight through and then do bass and vocals after. Seems simpler that way. So about my equpiment: I've been using the same guitar for a long time now, an Ibanex EX 370 that I got used in 2005 or so. I don't like it very much. The main problem with it is the fact that it has a floating (Floyd Rose) bridge, meaning that where the strings attach at the bottom just kind of goes up and down whenever it wants instead of staying put. Apparently there are professionals who can string guitars with floating bridges. I can't. When I restrung my guitar for Antimonument , I tried to use regular drop D tuning, resulting in so much tension that I just broke th...

one day, when I decide to buy a new bass, I will consciously not buy one with active pickups. these things are the worst idea ever. yes, this is prompted by my having a perfectly good battery turn out dead for absolutely no reason. or maybe I'm just bitter.