Chubby Racer

I am far and away better at spending money on stuff to make new and different sounds than I am at actually playing the guitar.  FAR AND AWAY.  Case in point: for the longest time I had an amp so loud it could blow women's clothes off, and because of its vacuum tube design it didn't really sound its best at a volume I could stand to be in the room with.  I actually spent significantly MORE MONEY trying to put the volume on a leash while simultaneously keeping it cranked for the best sound.  Ridiculous. That amp is a mesa roadster.  Originally I bought it for the dirty tons as it turns out that most of my favorite guitarists use a mesa rectifier amp.  This roadster is like the swiss army knife version of a rectifier.  One of the biggest differences is that roadster sounds really good clean.  Mesa lifted the clean from their lonestar line of amps for this particular amp  In fact, as far as I'm concerned, it's the best clean.  However, thi...

I've been doing crossfit for about a month and a half at the suggestion of my girlfriend.  I was pretty bored with my normal gym routine, was pretty stagnant so I should..sure, babe, I'll humor you and try this for 6 months.  Below are some of the points worth mentioning. 1. It might be better training for what you're really trying to do I'll get this one out of the way first because it probably applies to the fewest people that would read this.  My "primary" hobby is sportbike racing.  I'm pretty awful at it for one major reason: take me and any other racer, give us the exact same amount of practice time, and because I can't stay on the bike long enough...he'll get 2x the amount of practice and be faster in short order.  For YEARS I kept trying to build leg strength by doing high weight squats and deadlifts.  It didn't work, I STILL can't survive a 6 lap race at 100% of my best pace. Then I tried crossfit.  Turns out: moving somew...

I've been playing guitar again consistently for about 6 months now.  And by consistently I mean...not consistently.  I left citi to have more time for things like guitar lessons, which I've managed to accomplish and stick with, but outside the lessons my practice is a lot less consistent. What I have done, in typical Blake fashion, is buy the FUCK out of gear.  I think I'm sitting at a dozen guitars right now with one more to arrive in late January.  Initially I was of the mind (go figure) that guitars are like Pokemon: gotta catch 'em all.  However, now I'm not so sure.  I'm starting to figure out exactly how I want a guitar to feel in my hands, and what it needs to sound like.  To that end, I'm really grooving on this PRS SE Custom 24 I've recently acquired.  I think it hits a sweet spot of tone, weight, and feel.  It's crazy because I have MUCH more expensive guitars, and this is the one I'm spending the most time with because it just f...

Several months ago I signed up for what I believed to be my last chance at driving a car at Texas World Speedway.  As it turns out, they're STILL not closing...which is good because I more or less didn't get to drive. After the first session the front end was making a slight grinding noise off the brakes, and a HORRIBLE grinding nose, that could even be felt through the pedal, on the brakes.  As I'd been using the same front pads for several trackdays, I assumed I'd hit the wear indicator (aka "squealer").  I didn't have the money to replace them that night so me full-weekend track event was cut short after 20 minutes. Today I replaced the pads with some EBC yellowstuff pads.  These are, in theory, and upgrade as I was running the pads that came with my BAER 6 piston/14" front brake kit.  Baer calls their pads a "street" pad, and doesn't give any more info than that.  I got several compliments on the front brakes on this car so for a...