"I just play, just you know? If I just sit down with the guitar and just do whatever for, you know, a half an hour or an hour, whatever. That’s pretty much, that should do it for me."
― Slash
The Fender MOD Shop recently added Texas Tea to their color library, so I went to work designing a guitar around it. Rather than another noiseless setup, I went with Fender's Pure Vintage '59 pickups. Built to evoke the original era of the Stratocaster, these single-coil pickups produce warm tones with a sweet edge. Add a little reverb and gain and you've got a serious blues-rock screamer. The CBS-era headstock might seem anachronistic with these pickups, but I think it balances out better.
The Fender Mustang GTX 50 Amplifier is also new. This modeling amp has 200 onboard presets and a a 12-inch Celestion speaker to produce a strong, powerful response. I keep talking about recording more, but I still use my gear simply to play whenever I'm in a creative mood. Usually I use headphones, but on occasion I give my neighbors a taste. No complaints so far, but I've gotten a lot better. In fact, I think I'm playing better now than back in my gigging days. I've improved on employing more melody with the pentatonic scale with help from a number of YouTube lessons and jam tracks.
Depending on the angle of light, Texas Tea reflects brown to olive sparkle.
I've gotten somewhat better about Gear Acquisition Syndrome (G.A.S.), but I still have another Stratocaster on order from the Fender Custom Shop that should get to me sometime in September. That'll be twenty Strats, a Jazzmaster, my Martin, and the single PRS hollow body electric. There's no compelling reason why an amateur musician like myself should own so many guitars, but I did sell several firearms and my Boss Katana amplifier in order to procure this recent round of gear. For the most part, I kept the firearms I use at work and sold the rest.
All images © 2023 Mike McDowell