Don't play the guitar? Want to look at the pics without reading this boring guitar-spod stuff? Then scroll to the bottom...

I have been playing guitar now for a little under two and a half years and have had virtually no formal training. In September 1995 I joined Woodhouse college and started a folk guitar course for which I needed a guitar of my own.

My first guitar was a Washburn D-10 accoustic, which I bought so I could go to the guitar group in college. I was hooked straight away, and I continued to learn new things long after the six week course ended. The course only taught me a few simple chords, but it helped to get me started, and gave me an incentive to practice.

About six months later, I persuaded my parents to buy me an electric as a birthday present. I started of playing it through my stereo, but later got an amp to fulfill my need for distortion. The guitar was an Epiphone SG, with standard hardware and half size scratchplate. It is a beauty looks-wise, and has a nice tone. It is finished with a translucent Red finish, which shows the grain of the neck and body. I still use it a lot, since it is my favourite guitar, and plays really nicely despite having the neck repaired after the bag strap broke a year ago, causing a shattered neck and popped off fingerboard.

I now also own an Ibanez RG 470, that I bought around the time I bust the neck on the SG. It is black, with a FloydRose licensed trem and three pickups. It has two humbuckers and a single coil, with a five position selecter switch that can select the pickups individually, or split the humbuckers to a single coil twinned with the centre single coil.

I now use the Ibanez with a set of .009s for standard tuned songs, and the SG with .011s for anything with a bit of down tuning, so the SG sees more active service. I am not in a band at the moment, though I would like to get one together, initially playing covers with a stoner theme, like acidbath, Down and Sabbath. I have tabbed several Songs by Acidbath and Down, for the respective guitar tab sites. I often play along with records in my collection, and try to jam with people from time to time.

THe real pics may be along later, 'cos I am having a bit of trouble with them. For now here are pictures I have edited to look about right. They look better than I had expected them to, so I may as well leave them here for a while.