On the left is my Ovation electro-acoustic guitar, with a discrete volume and tone control. This ovation has too sharp a sound for my liking. Playing the guitar as a pure acoustic is a bit disapointing also as it is not as vibrant as I would expect. It can however be tempered to some degree by using an equalisation system/pedal to shape the sound the sound of the guitar into something more acceptable for studio use. Even so, I am thinking of replacing it's pickup system with something a bit more mellow and versatile.

On the right is one of my solid electric guitars. It's a custom guitar with 24 frets, active humbucker pickups and a Roland GK2 controller for use with a Roland GR-33 or VR-88. Beautifully straight neck, really low strung, in tune all the way down the fretboard, locking Schaller vibe unit and locking nut. I can easily access all the frets right down to the last fret, great for some real screaming lead work, and sounds real mean when played through the ZOOM 505 MkII - wicked. Originally customised for use in heavy rock bands but sounds good for most kinds of music.

On the left is my Telecaster. I like the blonde colour. It has a terrific sound for most kinds of music. Unfortunately since writing this the Telecaster has had to go back as it had a few faults. I took it back to the shop where I bought it, Flying Pig in West Ealing, and had it changed. They hadn't got another standard Telecaster in stock and they offered me a Fat Telecaster with a neck mounted humbucker - a great shop. While I was there I bought a HH Studio Fifty amplifier.

On the right is the custom hand built Stratocaster that I am building. It will be totally custom too with active pickups, and custom wiring. It will probably sport a Floyd Rose type of locking vibe unit, and will incorporate a locking nut or locking machine heads. This guitar is natural woodgrain, much lighter than a standard Fender Stratocaster which makes it a real pleasure for playing for long periods of time, and the scratch plate is black mother of pearl. At present I am not in a hurry to finish the guitar as it is for myself, so I can please myself when I work on it. However, in it's current state it plays and sounds great, and could be used quite successfully on stage or in the recording studio.

I shall be changing the pickups that I am already using on the Stratocaster for custom pickups. Although I shall be looking at using active ciruits on the pickups I shall be including a facility for selecting whether the pickups are played through the active circuits or not.

This is a superb guitar that I have been using for a little while now.

The body is very like a showmaster shape and has a beatiful finish. It has three pickups, one of which is a bridge-mounted humbucker, the other two are single coil pickups, selected by a five position switch like a Stratocaster. One volume and one tone.

The action is low and plays very nicely. The pickups are very sensitive and punchy, especially the humbucker, and I can get quite a wide variety of sound combinations from them.

On the neck is a locking nut. The tremelo unit is made under licence from Floyd Rose.

When this gets put through my rack, it sounds fantastic.

I like the sound of HH amplifiers. I remember the HH from the early seventies, we used a 100 Watt HH PA with one of the groups, and the sound out of that was great.

The HH Studio Fifty amplifier has a rather nice feature, which is a pre-amp output, which can be hooked up into another amplifier or into a recording device or mixer. The amplifier, as I said, was bought second-hand and there was only one fault with it that I could find, there was noise on the control potiometers. A bit of Servisol soon sorted that out. No more noise on the controls. Mind you, I had a lot of help from Muffy, my chief electronics engineer. She supervised it and I couldn't have done it without her.

Just in case you are interested, this is a photo of the Schaller tremelo system that I have on my Custom guitar. Each of the bridge pieces are adjustable for individual string intonation. There are fine tuning adjustments for each of the strings, and a locking bar to lock the tremelo.

Note also the Roland GK2 controller mounted on the guitar. The contoller pickup is mounted just above the tremelo (out of sight on this picture).

The guitar itself has a locking nut for the strings, two humbucker pickups and active pickup circuits.