My Life in Six Strings
I was away for a week but managed to finish my GeneralGuitarGadgets.com ITS8 pedal kit. Imagine my joy when I plugged it in and it lit up & worked! I played it only a short while so as not to keep the kids up, but this pedal is very cool. Nice and versatile & a good complement to my OCD. And I can’t say enough good things about GGG’s excellent instructions. Next I’ll have to decorate it a bit and record some soundclips. Man this DIY bug is powerful stuff..I hope it’s contagious! 
My buddy Jerry over at Jerry’s Music has a sunburst 1974 Gibson Howard Roberts guitar for sale and it is gorgeous, so I had to put a picture of it on my blog. :) I had the opportunity to play it and it is one sweet guitar. Very smooth sounding & playing. If you’re looking for a new jazz box, this one’s worth a look.
The 74 Howard Roberts has the shape of an ES-175. It has a single floating neck humbucker, ebony bridge, and a tailpiece like the classic big band guitars. The oval soundhole gives it a really cool & distinctive look. Check it out, it’s a work of art!
My wife recently started an Etsy store, and so naturally I typed ‘guitar’ in the search box. Among the items that came up were these beautiful handmade guitar picks of Ebony, Cocobolo, Abalone, Bone, Horn, and Snakewood by Brossard: 
I’d be into wearing these around my neck, and they do sell leather necklaces on the site. But I’ve never used these kinds of picks on a guitar & I imagine it would take some getting used to. Still, these will make nice gifts & I’m into supporting small business so I wanted to pass this along. Check ‘em out!
I’ve been working on a bunch of music lately, some original stuff for our church play and some new tunes for a duet project that’s just getting off the ground. But last month I caught a sale over at General Guitar Gadgets and picked up this ITS8 kit plus the boutique mod kit. Yep, all those parts go in that little box (well, most of ‘em, anyway). The ITS8 is their Tube Screamer copy.
I don’t know when I’ll get to it, but I had to share this exhilirating (and somewhat intimidating) array of parts just waiting to feed my amp & ears some punchy & jangly goodness!
Angled View. Note the bolts sticking out pretty far. I ended up countersinking them later.
Just before I left for tour with Joyful Noise, I put together this awesome DIY pedalboard with shelving parts from IKEA. I got the idea & plan from Armchair Bronco over at the Harmony Central forums. His detailed step-by-step guide is excellent, so be sure to check it out!
The beauty of this board is that I made it in one afternoon (about a day and a half including stain dry time) for a grand total of $44, which breaks down as follows:
*You can probably save even more money on the Velcro. 15 feet is WAY too much, but I wanted the 2″ wide stuff & that was the only one they had. Checking out Velcro’s website, they offer it in smaller doses. (Hmm, I wonder how sticky Velcro’s website is…heh heh). O well, the stuff comes in handy & the Mrs. has already been using it.
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