Knowing

Song writing mode ON (again). On days when I wish to be efficient with very little distractions, I have my single pickup guitars to go to. That's right, single pickup guitars prevent pickups selection so that I can focus on the task at hand. In this case, I always solo in the neck, so the bridge pickup is my riff focus reference. The Gibson MM above helped tremendously.

Also, having the right tools get the job done well. I need an intense distortion source & the pedals brought out & chained up did not fulfill this objective. I'm glad I have more than one amp to see things through & the Blackstar here did it with ease- if you need to get the right tones going, go to the tone source; it's the amp, not effects pedals.

On the subject of pedals, the ones left in the mix was an OD whose function was no more than to saturate the signals & one that kept irrelevant noises out of the way.

So my friends, knowing what to use & when to use it is rather crucial in this aspect.

Electro Harmonix: Silencer

Summer 2015 NAMM release- EHX's Silencer. Hopefully this won't be as adverse as the Hum Debugger- remember that one?

SIT silencer

This set of strings are almost a year old; left in another one of my guitar bags & forgotten. The 'silencer' label is there to indicate its coated nature; the strings are coated with a very thin layer of silk so that when one drags one's fretting fingers over the wound strings during play, it would minimize that annoying screeching sound that entails. This coating's other benefit would be its corrosion retardation function- the strings inside are still shiny & ready to go.