Cool and cheap Fender Amps

If you're reading this, chances are you are some kind of fisherman or a musician, or like me, both. As I've mentioned previously, I've been working at playing guitar for decades. At several points in my life, I was a decent guitar player, primarily rhythm and chords. Not so much a lead player.



But I've resolved to change all of that. Over this past decade, after 9/11, I resolved that I had always wanted to learn to play the bass guitar. I got a cheap bass, and found a 70's Fender Musicmaster Bass Amp to play through. I had this same rig in high school, and ultimately sold my matching Fender Musicmaster Bass and Bass amp to facilitate a drum purchase, since drums have been my primary instrument forever.



I can now play bass pretty well, at least on the blues and rock stuff that I mostly listen to. I'm no Stanley Clarke, but I can play bass as well as several bassists I know who work in working bands. I'm not so much interested in doing live work on bass, but with the family acquisition of an Apple Mac I'm now fascinated with GarageBand and recording my own stuff.

So I'm trying to improve my guitar playing.

This quest led me to an amplifier that was quiet enough to play at home without absolutely disturbing the family with a loud volume, as well as getting a great sound. I like the Fender sound, and as I've posted before, I'm quite fond of small Fender tube amps that get that Fender "clean distortion" sound at lower volumes.



Because I don't have a grand to drop on a vintage early 1980's Rivera-era Fender Super Champ, I've opted for the newly introduced Fender Super Champ XD. It's a tube amp, with some digital modeling, but the sound is remarkably close to one of my favorite Fender tube amps, the Deluxe Reverb. There are lots of sounds on the Super Champ XD, but the ones I like most are the classic Fender blackface sounds.



Billy Ray opted for the less expensive Vibro Champ XD, which is similar to the Super Champ XD but has a smaller speaker, one less tube and less features. One significant difference is the Champ XD's ability to use footswitching to switch between channels. Both amps are plenty loud for bedroom practice, and just perfect for recording. Just run a mic from in front of the amp or a line out to the Mac and you're in business.

The Super Champ XD has a line out, so I can go into my mbox connected to the Mac to lay down guitar sounds.

I've read a lot of online reviews, and have been playing through this amp since last December, and here's my opinion: For someone like me, it's a perfect amp. I can't pay $800 to $1,000 for a pristine early 1980's Rivera-era Super Champ amp. But I can afford less than the $236 I paid for it at GC. On sale, with discount coupon and gift card for $15.00. In December, 2008, they were going for about $299, and flying off the shelves. Fender raised the price to $399 street, but I suspect diligent shopping could score one for less than $300.

The amp gets rave reviews. Two big areas noted in many reviews is the speaker and the tubes. It appears that a variety of tubes are used, I got lucky I guess and got some good tubes. Some folks replace the tubes with a variety of well known replacements for about $40, although biasing or "re-biasing" might have to be done, and if you don't know what you're doing, you have to pay someone competent to do this for you.

The other modification many buyers made to this amp was to replace the speaker. Many reviewers felt the speaker was of lower quality in order for Fender to offer this amp at this price point. Most reviewers had excellent results replacing the speaker with a 10" Eminance Raging Cajun. Other popular replacements include Jenson P10Q, C10Q and P10R, Celestion tube 10 speaker. These speakers go for about $70, and it's just a few screws to replace, a phillips screwdriver is all you need. It's not complicated like tubes for someone like me, who don't like to mess with electricity.

Most of the reviews where tubes and speaker was replaced said that out of the two, the speaker replacement was more significant in improving an admittedly pretty good sounding amp. For a guy like me, the speaker sounds fine, and the clean Fender channel reminds me much of all of the Fender Princetons, Champs, Musicmaster and the like that I've played and heard over the years. The Super Champ XD is almost as cool sounding as a Deluxe Reverb, but not quite. Again, reviewers remarked that hooking the Super Champ XD to larger speakers yeilded tremendous improvement in what was already great sound.

The sounds on this amp are good, as good as you're gonna find for hundreds more. The next logical step up for a guy like me would be a Fender Princeton reissue, going for about $900. They sound nice, no effects, a very decent reproduction of a classic amp.

I owned a Fender Deluxe Reverb reissue for several years. I scored it for the bargain price of $300, when they were selling new for about $800. I knew the seller and he had overspent and had to sell quick. What a bargain. Ultimately, Billy Ray talked me into horsetrading that amp to him, and since he's the main fellow I compose and perform music with, and would definately trade the amp to me if the situation was reversed. He needed a good tube amp, he was playing it everytime we got together anyway.

The Deluxe Reverb might be the ultimate amp for a guy like me, soundwise. But it was a little much for trying to crank to get "that Fender blues sound" that comes from a wee bit of overdriving a clean Fender amp. You just can't get "that sound" at a practice volume in the home, or late at night. It was also HEAVY to haul around. Heavy to lift. The older I get, the less pounds I want to lift. I don't really want to tote an amp that weighs more than 30 pounds.

I get a great tone out of the Super Champ XD. Although the similar Vox amp is pretty spiffy and sounds darn good. Billy Ray loves his Vibro Champ XD because at five watts, it's gets his desired sound at a very low practice level. You know, something that don't irritate the wife too much. The Super Champ XD has 15 LOUD watts and a 10" speaker, whereas the Vibro Champ XD sports an 8" speaker.

All I know is that you can't go wrong with either one. Solid Fender build quality, five year warranty, cool dsp effects but a clean tube channel as well, it's the amp that many have been waiting for.

You can nitpick and wish these amps had a headphone jack or an effects loop or separate tube reverb or tremelo controls or any number of other missing features. But for the price, it'd be a screaming deal if it was just an ok amp. But many of the voices are spectacular, and I rather like the clean sound it cranks out. It's the bargain of this decade for sure in small guitar amps, and it harkens back to the heyday of the Fender blackface and silverface amps.

Gone Fishing...

I'm taking a couple of much needed fishing trips in the next couple of months, to different parts of the state for some very different types of fishing. This is one of the ones that Billy Ray and I are planning right now.

I've got a friend who put a LARGE luxury, deluxe, top of the line travel trailer in a scenic town in that netherworld that is the area between West Texas and the Hill Country. The line of demarcation is there for sure, but it's a wide line, stretching counties apart, as Texas transitions from Hill Country to desert. We call it The Zone.

The Zone runs from north to south in the state, but the part we were in was that Brady to Mason to Junction area and west of there for several counties. The terrain and available water dances like a snake through many counties, and it's a certain kind of beauty. Not unlike the terrain in better watered parts of the Big Bend country, the hills are smaller but there is sometimes spring fed creeks and rivers running through this area.

My friend's family keeps the trailer at a very nice RV spot in a nice little town. They use it very occasionally when they come to that town to visit relatives. Cheaper and nicer than the local motels, which ain't much. Since they already have the trailer, they keep it there year round.

Right nearby, there are some very good fishing opportunities for rivers and creeks. There's a few lakes in the surrounding area, but many of them are not doing real well water wise. That part of Texas seems to have some good water, despite the drought, and the one creek in particular which we want to fish is spring fed and apparently is running strong.

So Billy Ray and I plan to go for at least a few weekend trips to this borrowed trailer, thus massively reducing trip expenses with a nice free place to stay. The trailer owner's use of the trailer is infrequent at best so using it is pretty much at our last minute whim.

Several years ago, Billy Ray and I were looking at real estate in the area and cruising over several counties in THE ZONE, looking at various bargain properties. Many of these area do have year round water in creeks or rivers, and most of them are spring fed, just like their breathren in the Hill Country.

We found "this spot" that is some kind of highway department picnic spot from long ago, circa the WPA or the CCC. It could have been built by prison labor in the 40's or 50's. The park is next to a very large creek, with nice coolish clear green water flowing from springs. It looked like a VERY FISHY spot to me.

I talked to someone today who lives near there and drives near this spot on occasion. He said the creek is full of water and has been all year. He tells me that catfish and crappie have been biting a short ways further from this spot at some other public access areas (bridges, low water crossings, campgrounds on the river). The bass have been so so, and have been on the smallish "river bass" size. But no one he knows has been getting skunked out there.

This spot is sort of remote, where a small state highway crosses a county road, and there set up on about an acre is a simple park with concrete picnic tables, old tall brick grills and a portacan. There is a small shaded paved area that had some kind of table and benches inside, not very big but next to the grills for someplace to escape the sun while watching the rods.

You could easily launch a jonboat there and run a small trotline. But I think we'll try the bank fishing first. There are also some nearby spots I mentioned above, including a campground that charges a small day fee for access to their property with lots of creek frontage. So there's all kinds of options.

It's kinda in the middle of nowhere. The last time we drove past it, we checked it out pretty good on foot and saw some fish and minnows in the water. There was vegetation and the water looked nice and green like a good eco-system should. It's sorta reminds me of a slightly smaller version of what the Devil's River in South Texas looks like, an oasis river running through hills and desert, a thread of green life following the water.

But for a creek, it's pretty big. I've seen more than one river smaller than this creek. As I mentioned, the variance in the terrain and geology which move from desert to hill country and merge in a fusion that is part of each and yet different. It's a nice part of Texas, and I don't know how better to describe it. But there's some good fishing in a few of the creeks and rivers there, and that means we need to go fishing.

Jon and Kate Plus 8: Some new storyline ideas

I've held off opining about this couple, such as they are, because like everyone else in America, I've been over-saturated with coverage of their miserable lives. In the interest of marital harmony over the past few years, I've watched a few of the shows with Mrs. Fishing Musician. Of course, I've had no choice but to be deluged with the print, gossip, online and televised updates as to the minute facets of their lives. By virtue of being victimized in this manner, I feel qualified, if not mandated, to weigh in on their show and their lives.

First, I'll state for the record that the wife and I disagree on who the least desirable member of that union is. After watching Jon basically be the benchmark for the browbeaten husband during the brief times I've weighed in on the show, I'm on his side, although I think his middle age crazy response is a bit early in life as well as a bit childish.

The wife, on the other hand, clearly the wisest person in our home, weighs in with Kate. Jon's noncommunative "mute" persona did not go over well with her. Husbands are supposed to be happy, responsive, sexually charged at any moment of the day or night, ready to take care of the kids no matter how long he's been working or what his personal issues de jour are, and I understand this. Millions, if not billions, of men across the globe understand this. And we're happy about it, at least if you ask the wives.

I think, both Jon and Kate, in the beginning, did what they thought was best for their children in starting a reality show. I mean, how else would this couple financially make it? Who would buy the big house and the big van, as well as pay the immense food, medical, clothing and other bills their mega-brood calls for. Not to mention the toys. Just buying a moderate, non-spoiled child amount of toys for that many children would bankrupt the budget of most yuppie twin-degree households. How would any normal couple pay for eight college educations? Just daycare or a nannie would be more than most families could pay, even on healthy professional salaries.

But the responsibility goes beyond that. After already having two kids, somewhere near the national average, they decide to go for broke. Now they're yours for the rest of your natural lives, Jon and Kate. And ironically, even though you may ultimately divorce and lead quasi-separate lives, you're both joined at the hip for the next 20 years or so, and then will remained tethered to each others lives until you die. Unless Jon goes off and becomes a hermit living in a tin shed in a desert somewhere and surviving on whatever he can scrounge.

Obviously, America has a lot of problems right now. While Jon and Kate are making a comfortable income with their show, lots of other hardworking good parents who are much longer suffering than either of our heroes here are making ends meet as best they can. Job loss. No health insurance. Paying out the wazoo if they do have health insurance. Paying for college. Taking care of aging and ill parents and relatives. Working, many times, at jobs they can't stand, but nonetheless grateful for having the income to support their family.

This audience is not going to stand for Jon's little romance with a woman who wasn't even in puberty at the time he had his first kid. The earrings, the Ed Hardy shirts, the tattoos, the New York apartment, the BMW, the motorcycle, I could go on and on. Really now, Jon, do you actually think those Ed Hardy shirts make you look like anything BUT a loser? Is it a cry for help?

Likewise, no one that watches this show is going to be around for long as Kate degenerates into a TV version of the crying game, woeful and saying "why me". We know why me, Kate. You did nothing but fussed at that poor dude and glowered at him and chastised him and shook your head and gave him the silent treatment for many seasons now, and it's no wonder the dude is going through his second teenagehood now. You've got no one to blame but yourself.

And Kate. Just a word about that mullet haircut you've got. It's not happening. 1982 is calling and they want that hairstyle back. It reminds me of some sort of alien seed pod that's been grafted onto your brain and you must wear your hair that way to hide the mark of the beast.

So we need some interesting story ideas to spice up the show and get things going. Much of American I suspect, thinks you two want to keep the show going so you don't have to do what the rest of us working schlubs in America have to do: work for a living. Therefore, I think the motivation is there to come up with some interesting twists.

1. The Divorce Court Judge refers the couple not only to mediation and counseling, but proscribes various activities they have to participate in. Couples bonding weekends, perhaps where the two are handcuffed to each other for 72 hours in the midst of a tropical locale where counselors and other co-dependent types attempt to dissect their issues in a public and non-respectful format.

Perhaps induce a real experimental psychiatrist in another country into one of these forced counseling sessions. Medicate them with drugs that will make them tell the truth, or at least their innermost feelings. Surely there's some out of work CIA types familiar with chemical interrogation that could assist here. After taping their most innermost confessions, make them watch the videos while strapped to a chair with eyes pinned open a'la Clockwork Orange.

That, my friends, would be a show I would watch every week.

2. Two words: Sumo Wrestling. OK, really three words: Sumo Wrestling Costumes. Strap Jon and Kate up in a couple of these babies. Grease the the costumes up with some form of lubricant just to make things interesting. Take the marital warriors to a hilly area, someplace where their pratfalls might turn into hundred feet tumbles down hill and dale.

The goal of the fight is to fight your opponent until they are worn down to the point where they have to admit that the other party is right about everything. It's a winner take all divorce mediation taken to the next level.

3. Celebrity commentators. Have a split screen, with part showing the trials and travails of Jon and Kate and the other half with celebrity commentators giving their sage advice and opinions. Imagine Bill Maher, Kathy Griffith, Michael Moore, Perez Hilton, Oprah, Jerry Springer, and the ladies from The View are a few who immediately come to mind.

Celebritity commentators could every week, not unlike the Bill Maher show or a more bizarre version of Hollywood Squares. To make sure that it is as wild and wooly as it can be, choose a guest host each week. For more fun, choose a guest host that is bi-polar and who has a history of not taking his or her medications.

4. Merge other failing reality shows with Jon and Kate. Jon and Kate meet the Kardashians. Jon and Kate and the Rock of Love. Jon and Kate and Hulk Hogan. The possibilities are endless. They do it on Disney with the kids shows like Miley, Suite Life and so on with great success, why not with reality shows?

With the current aging out of work actors and actresses that undoubtedly need work, not to mention the plethora of once famous and now forgotten reality show rejects and has-beens, the talent pool for such an endeavor is endless. You wanna have some real fun? Bring in Steven Adler and Doc Hollywood for a weekend intervention with Jon.

The premise of the show could go like this. Someone like Kim Kardashian or Paris Hilton agrees to come live with Jon and Kate for a month and do whatever the custodial parent of the day says. They are boss. If the guest de jour doesn't do as they are told, they are shot with harmless paintball guns in non-vital locations. Want to up the ante? Have a bitch session, and before having it make sure every one is copiously intoxicated. During the middle of the session, issue stunguns or cattle prods to the participants and watch hilarity ensue. I mean, just how much ordering around do you think REAL celebutants are going to take before they start shocking Jon or Kate?

Or you could make Jon go live with Hulk Hogan and his brood for a month. Let Hulk show Jon how to be a real man in the face of divorce. Since both Jon and Kate are the new breed of reality celebs, make them hangout with members of reality shows past and present, good or bad. Sort of like a purgatory of reality shows. Just make sure that random reality star Flavor Flav plays a major role in this endeavor.

You'd have to do most of these shows without the kids around. You'd have to find some good stand-in parents to actually be responsible and take care of those children and make sure those children are being loved, educated and nurtured. But you wouldn't want to make a show about that. Because with the circus that has become the life of Jon and Kate, it seems no one cares about the kids. If they cared about the kids, they would have ended the show long ago.

Maybe Jon and Kate need to have a sit down reality check with a set of celebrity parents who have a ton of kids but actually appear to be doing a stellar job of being parents. Brad and Angelina. The Pitt family seems focused on taking care of their kids. You don't hear about Brad running the streets with some teenaged chick while Angelina is home raising the kids. They both are working their rear ends off in the movie business and when they're not, it sure seems like they are always with the kids.

Taking the kids places. Doing things as a family. Making sure the kids are having a good a decent life. That's the things you see Brad and Angelina doing when they're not working. They're TCB-taking care of bidness.

On final reflection, maybe Jon and Kate just need to grow up and accept responsibility for the children they bore. Gut it up, like my friend Arthur Seaton used to say. You've made your bed, now sleep in it.

FENDER AMPLIFIERS: BRING BACK THE EARLY 1980'S SUPERCHAMP

I know that google alerts and the like are sometimes monitored by corporate types to see what kind of talk goes on about their products. Witness the response from Orvis about my post detailing my 20 year satisfaction with one of their fly fishing rods.

So maybe Fender does the same. If I could bend the ear of a Fender executive with the power to re-introduce a discontinued product into commerce, I'd beg them to start making the Fender Super Champ amplifier, the Paul Rivera designed model.

I've been "playing at" guitar and bass since before I could drive. I'm not much better now than I was in my teen years when I had lots of practice time. I can actually play a few songs and a lot of riffs, but playing guitar never came easy to me like playing drums did. Hell, playing piano and keyboards has always been easier than guitar or bass for me, and probably because keyboard instruments are also, in their original form, percussion instruments.

But no matter. I will not be deterred on the guitar and bass. The advent of Garageband has made me a much better guitarist, thanks to GB's ability to loop rhythm tracks and import/export data from a song. I'm not trying to fool anyone with my musical compositions, but I do like them to sound the best they can, which frankly, like my guitar/bass playing, is still a pretty raw edge garage band sound.

Just last year, Fender introduced a new model called the Super Champ XD. It's a plenty nice amp for the money, especially if you bought one last year before they nearly doubled in price. It's a tube/solid state combo with digital effects and amp emulation. It's a cool amp, but it's not what I want.

The clean Fender sound on the Super Champ XD is about as close as you're gonna get with a mostly solid state amp to the classic Fender tube sound. I'm talking the beloved sound of the Harvard and the Princeton from the 1960's and 1970's. Some of the greatest rock and roll albums in history were recorded with tiny tube amps, and many fine current day albums are as well.

What middle aged guys like me who like a good guitar sound in their home studio or jams with friends want is an excellent sounding amp that weighs about 25 pounds. I want an amp to play blues and blues-rock on. We've got the expendable income to buy an amp in the $800 to $1,000 range.

The great thing about the Rivera designed Super Champ is the sound. For only having 18 watts, I'd swear it was almost as loud as a Fender Deluxe Reverb. It has a unique tube configuration that was peculiar to this Fender amp, and some writers say that's why it's such a great amp. This site here tells you about the amp better than I can: http://www.geocities.com/soho/studios/6694/superchamp/.

But what I know about the Super Champ is this: It sounds marvelous and is big enough to gig a band with. In one of my old bands, we played some smaller places where they didn't want us to be blasting. Both of the guitarists, who had many, many amps of all sizes, chose to use these Super Champs as their amps. I played a jazz bop drum kit with smaller cymbal sizes to try to keep the level down, and the bassist used about a 200 watt Ampeg. So we were still able to wail on our axes but just at a reduced volume.

But the Super Champ keeps up with my full sized drum kit as well. I've played many gigs with the fellows and was always amazed at the volume coming out of that 18 watt amp.

So come on, Fender. I've seen the latest reissued, a vintage reissue Champ 57. It's selling here for $1,000 and that's a bit much for a 7 watt amp with a 8" speaker.

Give us something worth that kind of money. I can buy a REAL vintage 1950's champ in excellent condition for the same or less than you're selling the Champ 57 for. Class A. Hand wired point to point.

The point is, guys like me are willing to pay for a cool product. Give me something like a real all tube Super Champ, an absolute reissue of the Rivera model. Make it hand wired. Put a good speaker in it, not a cheapie like the one in the Super Champ XD. Once I changed the speaker out in the XD, it was a different, and far better sounding amplifier.

So here's what I want for my thousand dollars, Fender:

-A Rivera reissue Super Champ with the only changes being:

-a footswitch for channel switching that's not funky like the original;

-a direct out so I can connect to my mac via an interface.

-an excellent 10 speaker

-a cover.

I stumbled across this post about Houston Musician Herschel Berry http://open.salon.com/blog/renee_smith/2009/06/25/full_circle_im_a_native_shes_a_native.
The blog is called She Won't Cooperate or I Want to Be the Girl With the Most Cake and is written by Renee Smith. She writes well and lives in Houston.

I liked it. It reminded me of when I used to see Herschel a lot, back in the 1983 to 1986 time period. Back then, during most of that time, Herschel had the timeless lineup of Wiley Hudgins on drums, Kenny Cordray on guitar, and Karl I can't recall his last name on bass. They were a tight unit, with Herschel handling rhythm guitar and lead vocal duties. All the other fellows sang backup quite well.

Cordray had co-written ZZ Top's hit "Francine" with Billy Gibbons. It was not unheard of for Billy to drop in on a Natives gig during this time period. Once I saw him with a couple of huge guys that were supposedly hockey players friends of his. They was BIG.

In any event, those were fun times. And the music just couldn't be beat. I often saw them at the old Ale House on Richmond, and there were times when the energy of the dancing filled-to-capacity crowd would shake the upstairs of the old house converted into a bar. The bandstand was upstairs and some heavy duty dancing could literally get the structure to rocking. I never was too keen on the way the whole floor bounced several inches, it just didn't bode well.

But I again digress, as I am want to do.

I'm glad to see Herschel is still making music. He was one of the busy local cats when I was coming up, along with folks like The Shake Russell-Dana Cooper Band. Herschel as well as Shake always took the time to talk to me about my musical projects and Herschel used to throw me the occasional bone with sub-gigs for other folks bands.

At the time, two brothers that were friends of mine ran a sound company that did the gigs for the Natives. I got to know the fellows pretty well for a time there, and they were all just fun loving guys and great musicians. They could generate an energy that no crowd could resist. The whole joint would be rocking, no matter what joint they were playing in.

I visited with Herschel on several occasions during that time period. I remember when he used to live in a really cool two story home in lower Montrose, on one of those huge oak lined and shaded quiet streets. I remember he had a tiny drum kit for his son there in the living room.

I got to play some with Herschel at some of the jam nights around town. It was always a lot of fun.

So anyway, Happy Anniversary Herschel. You rock, dude.

Armageddon: The Band

I'm talking about the 1970's one album band fronted by ex-Yardbird Keith Relf, whose untimely electrocution after the band's first album ended what was sure to be a promising career.

The ultimate Armageddon page, which was in existence wayyyyyy before wiki is found at http://www.alexgitlin.com/npp/armauk.htm. It's not an incredibly long read, but then again, it was an incredibly short-lived band.

There's some Swedish band who now goes by the same name, and no offense to them or their heavy metal fans, but I'm talking about the other Armageddon.

I clearly remember the first time I heard the band's first album, pictured above. My good friend Mog had just installed a Pioneer Supertuner and some great co-axial

6 x 9 speakers in his early 70's Duster, and we were on our way to some kind of high school Friday night party and he told me he had discovered a band that played with the intensity of Led Zeppelin but yet was different.

I'll mention that this same comparison to Led Zeppelin was made by me many years later in response to the style and tenor of Jane's Addiction 1986 at about the time of the release of their first album, Triple X (XXX). I think we were both right.

But so back in '75 or so, I had never heard of them and Mog had picked up the cassette tape at the local Evolution Tapes and Records. It rocked big time. It's still one of my favorite hard rock albums, yet even my hard rock maven friend Billy Ray isn't that big on them. Of course, it took Billy Ray about thirty years to realize that the Inner Mounting Flame album by The Mahavishnu Orchestra was an absolutely kickass album as well, so there's hope yet.

The party was a bore, and we ended up taking the long way home from the party so that we could listen to the rest of the tape. The Mog-ster was a musician himself, being a trumpet player, but he had a fine appreciation for blues based hard rock guitar music.

He was right, and years later, at one of our infrequent gatherings over the years, I gave him a copy of the above album on CD, an import I had bought from some small record store in San Francisco. He had forgotten all about them, but since I had bought the album I was able to listen to it every few years. It's one of my go to road trip cd's, keeping company with other road trip cd's like one of Santana's first three albums or the first three albums by Mahavishnu Orchestra. Strong stuff.

In any event, the Fishing Musician highly recommends this album. If you like Zep and some of the harder edged psyche0delic rock of the 70's, you're probably gonna like these guys. The guitar work by Martin Pugh is just amazing and Relf's vocals are over the top. I'm not such a big harmonica fan but I have to say Relf pulls off the harmonica riffs pretty well. Having heard the harmonica on the album, it just wouldn't sound right without it.

One of my main reasons for liking this band is the drummer, American Bobby Caldwell. I first heard of Caldwell through his excellent work with both Johnny and Edgar Winter, but his drumming on this Armageddon album is just awesome. He's working his rear off and, along with bassist Lou Cennamo, driving the hell outta that band.

Caldwell is living in Florida and a good friend of mine from high school who works for NASA sees Caldwell on occasion playing with the reunion version of Captain Beyond. Caldwell also played skins on one of my favorite songs of my tortured youth, Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo.

Wiki says:

"Prior to these projects he played in some of Johnny Winter's seminal albums like Live Johnny Winter And and also on Saints and Sinners. Bobby was also the drummer on Rick Derringer's All American Boy which produced the classic-rock radio staple Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo.

He is still active and living in Florida and is currently playing in the new lineup of Captain Beyond which includes original guitarist Larry "Rhino" Reinhardt who also played with Iron Butterfly on their Metamorphosis album. Bobby has 1 daughter, Ashley Caldwell Kincheloe."

So if you like old rock, particularly guitar oriented, blues derived hard rock and roll that is somewhat original and not formulaic, get ahold of the Armageddon album. Chances are, if you're a fan of this era and genre of music, you'll really like this album.

They're not Led Zeppelin, but there are some parallels between them. I'm a massive fan of Led Zeppelin and can't say that I think Armageddon was better than Led Zep, but they were different and they rocked just as hard in their own way.

My Fishing Lanyard

THIS IS THE ORVIS LANYARD FULLY EQUIPPED WITH EXTRA TIPPETS, A FLYBOX, AND A DRY FLY FLOATANT BOTTLE AND A PAIR OF HEMOSTATS.

THIS IS THE MORNING STAR LANYARD FITTED WITH EXTRA LEADERS, DRY FLY FLOATANT BOTTLE, SOME HEMOSTATS, A FLY PATCH AND A PAIR OF THE INDISPENSABLE NIPPERS.

HERE'S ANOTHER MORNING STAR LANYARD PICTURE, THE BOTTOM ONE SHOWING A FLY PATCH AND A RETRACTABLE REEL TO ATTTACH ITEMS.

A couple of years ago I discovered this great device and ended up buying the Morning Star Lanyard because I liked the way it felt. I outfitted it with a combination of Orvis and other accessories from other folks.

I don't have a picture of mine, but it's like the one in the middle, except I have:

---a small green Orvis flybox as shown in the top photo.

---my hemostats are the traditional chrome as shown in the top photo.

---I have a small rubber pad that is for straighting leaders.

---I carry a black spool like the one in the middle picture that holds several complete and ready to fish leaders. I use knotless leaders so changing leaders instead of adding (and tying a perfect knot with tiny line in a running stream/creek/river for a new tippet is not worth the trouble. It takes up valuable fishing time and I can repair the other tippet at my leisure.

---a bottle of upside down floatant on a reel. I can pull it and apply it to the fly very easily.

---a pair of nippers with the small protected needle on the end for clearing the eyes of hooks. Nippers are great because unlike fingernail clippers with a nail file, you can carry them on an airplane for a travel fishing trip. They are just simple clippers.

With these items, I can handle most of the fishing issues you might encounter standing in the middle of a moving body of water. I often use it when fishing in a boat, whether canoe, kayak or larger boat. It has most of what I need to change lures or leaders and the hemo's come in handy when trying to get that hook out of that wiggling fish mouth.

They are even handy for the bank or wading fisherman. But I think they really shine when it comes to boat fishing, particularly the smaller craft like canoes and kayaks where mobility is limited.

It's also a lot cooler than a vest. I normally wear a long sleeve UV fishing shirt in the daytime hours, and to add a vest, even a mesh vest over a longsleeve vented fishing shirt is a bit much, and frustrates the whole purpose of the back shirt vent.

I often use this item when I'm not fly fishing. I filled one of the mini green Orvis fly boxes with ultra light spinner baits, jigs and beetle spins for when I'm ultralight fishing, and found that even with two Orvis mini boxes on the lanyard it's still real easy on the neck.

The coated steel cable that Morning Star uses is "starchy", meaning it keeps its shape and doesn't sag under the weight of attachments, even when loaded as I occasionally do when I put both Orvis fly boxes on the lanyard. You can find the Morning Star website here http://www.mslanyards.com/.

Orvis makes a dandy outfit too, and if you're keen on buying a ready made, "RTG" outfit, that's the one I'd go with. "RTG" means READY TO GO. You can find the Orvis lanyard here http://www.orvis.com/store/productchoice.aspx?pf_id=03RC.