You may have noticed a new ‘Donate’ button at the right hand side of the screen. This is not intended to take your hard-earned money from you – it is a counter-measure to the hoards of spammers who inhabit the nether regions of the internet.
I know I’m not alone in this, but I have been invaded by hoards of visitors from non-English-speaking countries who use the dubious qualities of Google Translator to post on my blogs. There are a variety of posts and they would seem genuine were it not for the same posts appearing regularly and repeatedly across each of my four platforms – the Lazy Man series. A recurring theme, however, is that these people are floating in money and constantly beg me to include a ‘Donate’ button so they can pour money into my coffers.
The following are typical –

It’s a shame you don’t have a donate press button! I’d most certainly donate to this outstanding site! I think right now i’ll are satisfied with bookmarking and attaching your Rss feed to my Google account. I look ahead to fresh updates and will promote this blog with my Facebook group: )

It’s some sort of shame you don’t employ a give money button! I’d definitely give money for this brilliant webpage! When i suppose in the meantime i’ll be satisfied bookmarking in addition to putting ones Feed to help the The search engines bank account. When i glimpse forward to help new messages and may share that webpage having the Facebook or myspace team: )

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So, to satisfy these people with their millions to spend, I am now including a ‘Donate’ button on all my blogs and they can now donate as much and as often as they like.
I suggest the rest of us ignore these buttons as I’m not trying to take your money – I just want to see these spammers put their money where their mouths are.

Until recently, and I do mean the last few weeks, I had never heard of Ashbury Guitars. However, I have long been on the lookout for an electro-acoustic guitar with cutaway as I frequently use the higher frets and they are the devil to reach comfortably without that cutaway.
I frequently view the listings on ebay, more as a whim than a serious buying attempt, and was quite surprised to see this guitar being offered as a medium range guitar with a very low price.

I did my usual trick of sitting it out until the final few minutes of the auction and it was clear that only the original bidder was interested. I had expected this guitar to be quite expensive so I decided how much I was prepared to spend and during the last few seconds went in with my bid. Another sniper had also been lying in wait but even so my bid beat his and I bought the guitar for an utterly ridiculous price.
I collected the guitar and brought it home and was thoroughly satisfied with it. The seller had told me he’d had it for ‘several years’ and it had been a superb instrument for him.

I immediately set about to restring it as the previous owner had heavy gauge strings on it which to me are like playing railway lines. I stripped the guitar down, cleaned the neck and polished the body and then restrung it with 9s and reset the neck. I was immediately taken with how easy this is to play – the neck is set up like a rock guitar with a very low action at the 12th fret. The tone rings out beautifully and the electronics are superb.

I was so impressed I decided to find out some more about this instrument – alas, there is little to be found. Ashbury Guitars are produced by a parent company called Gremlin Music and are renowned for their range of Celtic stringed instruments. In 2007 they decided to start producing a mid-quality range of guitars and commissioned a factory in Vietnam to manufacture them. However, my guitar states that it was made in Korea – more intriguing.

I sent an email to Gremlin Music and received a very nice reply form Chris there who told me this guitar was probably around 6 years old and retailed for around £175.

I would love to know more about this superb range of instruments and if any of you out there can shed more light on this then please let me know.

In conclusion, I now have the guitar I have long been looking for and am one happy chappy.

For many years I played guitar in a local rock band. Now don’t get all serious and think you’re in the company of mighty rockstar (well, just a little bit then, it feeds my ego). We were never going to take the world by storm. In truth,  we didn’t even manage a light breeze, but we did have a lot of laughs along the way.

One such occasion happened when we were playing at the local cricket club. As a total sport-ignoramus, even I knew it was a cricket club – the goal posts are much closer together. This place had an L-shaped room with the bar at one end and the toilets at the other. We couldn’t set up next to the bar so we weighed up all the options and set up the equipment at the other end of the ‘L’.  We  did a couple numbers as a sound check and they seemed ok but  a couple of the girls rushed over and told us we couldn’t be heard at the other end of the room. Not to be beaten, we pulled out all the leads, moved the entire band through ninety degrees and plugged everything in again. Now we would be heard properly. We put the guitars back on their stands and went to have a nice drink with our friends before we were due to start.

We were halfway through the first song when our rhythm guitarist, Steve (his real name is Stan but I’ve changed it here to avoid any embarrassment) said, “I can hear Pete coming out of the PA.”
“Don’t be stupid, he’s got his own amp,”  said Brad, the singer (he’s just as embarrassed as Stan).
Then someone in the audience said, “We can’t hear the vocals.”
Brad frowned and checked his settings on the PA. We’d played here before and he knew what the best settings were. Undaunted, however, he turned the mike’s volume up,
“I can still hear Pete coming through the PA,”  said Steve.
“Your guitar is a bit loud,”  said Brad.  So I turned it down.

We did a couple more numbers and things just didn’t ‘feel’ right. I checked all my settings and everything was where it should be for a room this size.  I shrugged and played the intro for the next number.
“Still can’t hear the vocals,”  said the girls, so Brad turned the mikes up even further.
“Pete’s still coming out of the PA,”  said a flustered Steve who had it bashing away at his ears.
“Shurrup,  he can’t be. But your guitar is getting louder,  turn it down a bit,” said Brad and turn it down I did.
“Can’t hear the mikes at all now,”  said the girls. “But Pete’s guitar is blasting out.”

Now you’ve all guessed the reason but we weren’t ready to admit a mistake – alcohol and the presence of the opposite sex forbids it.  So we did three more numbers like this until Brad walked over to my amp and found the mike feed from the PA plugged into it and my guitar lead plugged into the PA. Oops …
Oh, how we did larf.