One for each day of the week

Today I bought my seventh guitar, so as one of my friends at work said,  I now have one for every day of the week. Seven may sound a bit excessive but in fact they are all very different to look at, different to play, and of course they all do sound surprisingly different. Well they do to me!

I now have 4 solid body electrics, 2 semi-acoustic electrics and an electro-acoustic so I think I've got all the bases covers (no pun intended).

The electro-acoustic is a Tanglewood resin back guitar that I got about 20 years ago - I don't pick it up much now but it is nice to play and has a typical 6 string acoustic sound.

One of the semi-acoustics is also a Tanglewood, a Gibson 335 copy, and has a very nice warm sound, very easy neck, and lots of sustain. The other semi-acoustic is a Crafter 12 string in black which looks stunning. It has a very bright jangly sound and although it's great to play it's not really my guitar of choice most of the time but it is certainly fun to play now and then and that 12 string sound is a real novelty.

The solid electrics are my real favorites. I have a Gibson Les Paul Studio in cherry that has tons of sustain and a very warm sound, a blue G&L ASAT Special which has very twangy and clean sound, and a sunburst Fender Stratocaster that I bought in 1975 which is in amazing condition for it's age. It has a wide range of sounds all the way from very twangy and edgy through to very thick and warm. I've had it wired differently to a standard Strat which gives it some unique sounds.

And so to the new one... a Fender Telecaster Special Edition Custom FMT HH - which is a bit of a mouthful I know. It has a carved flamed maple top in amber - unusual for a Tele - dual pole Seymore Duncan pickups - also unusual - and a set neck which is unheard of on a Fender. It has a very wide range of very clean twangy sounds and is completely different to the other three solids I have.

So yes there is one for everyday of the week which just might help me to decide which one to play when I go up to practice every evening.

email formats

I love the fact that all the emails I get at work are of a relatively similar style, mood, and format. And because almost all of them originate in Lotus Notes, then they typically have the same look and feel and I love consistency which to me makes them easier to work with.

Now that I'm about to leave IBM I'm having a lot more dealings with people from all kinds of organizations sending me emails from a myriad of different systems and the inconsistency can be staggering. People use all sort of weird fonts, some write them as if they're text messages, some as if they're letters, and other write them in a very officious style, others use a very loose style. This all seems to make some of them quite hard to deal with for some strange reason. I guess it's because I'm used to responding in a consistent style and now I find I need to temper my response to the original email which just slows down the whole process.

Just one of the things I guess I'll need to get used to post IBM!