Strings
Honestly, I suck at stringed instruments. The muscle memory from drumming overrides my pee brain ability to strum correctly. In other words, I don’t practice enough.
Epiphone Elistist Les Paul
Great tone. Wonderful feel. Solid. Nice top and burst. It’s a great guitar from the Japan Custom Shop, which is what the Epiphone Elitist series really is, Japanese custom shop units. If only I could really play it. LOL.
I run heavy strings to get the tones I love. The downside is the amount of force required to bend notes. Still, I gotta have that thick tones ala Zakk Wylde.
I picked up this guitar from Five Star Guitars. Actually, I bought the Spider head and Marshal cab as a three piece package. They sounded so good together. Rammstein Ashes zu Ashes just feels right through this combo. I can still play my Megadeth rifts.
Steinberger P Bass
This bass sounds so good. I used to have an Epiphone Korina Explorer bass. The day the ‘berger showed up, I sold the Epi. I still lust for a Gibson Blackbird. Until that day, the Steinberger will be my bass.
Goya Acoustic Guitar
This guitar is a nylon string acoustic. My mom used to pay it in Alaska before I was born. It’s seen better days. The top has spidered because of the lack of moisture when it was in the far North. It’s almost impossible for me to keep it in tune. I keep it around for sentimental reasons.
Gibson Mandolin
This was my fathers. It’s probably worth a fair amount, at least that’s what Ken @ Five Star told me when I needed a new case for it. Another instrument I can’t play but hold on to for sentimental reasons.
Amps
I’ve got a Line 6 Spider II head with a Marshall 1960 A cabinet for my guitar and a Gallien-Krueger 410(?) bass amp. I picked up the GK from Guitar Center as a scratch and bent model. It had been crunched in shipping with all of the corners guards broken. I emailed GK and they sent me new covers for free. It’s a great sounding bass amp. Someday, I’d love to get the 15” extension cabinet, but that is doubtful because I rarely play my bass these days. I’ve also got my mom’s old keyboard amp, a Peavey with a 15” speaker. I’ve been running my Rolands through it.
I’ve also owned and sold:
Jackson Kelly 2 USA
This was my Megadeth guitar. Marty Friedman played the same model. It had great tone. Being so very lame on guitar, struggled with the bridge. The Floyd Rose worked perfectly, but my palm would always fined the wrong spot to rest on the tail pushing it out of tune. Again, I never practiced enough.
In a perfect world, I’d like to have another one with a fixed bridge. An alternative would be a Gibson/Epiphone Explorer with a fixed bridge and a pair of EMGs. 
Parker Fly Classic
I loved this guitar. But is was always lacking something. This was the guitar that I would practice on late at night. Sitting in my bed, working through chord progressions… The problem was the depth. The body is super thin on this Parker. As a result the pickups were really shallow. This reduced the number of windings around the magnets in the pickups which gave the guitar a thin sound. I loved the way the guitar felt in my hands but I always wanted more tone… Oh well. The newer models have resolved this problem. If I start playing again, maybe I’ll buy another one.
Parker Fly Standard
It looked like the classic but with a solid silver color. It got ripped off by a “friend.” He paid most of the agreed price and when he wanted to borrow it for a church gig, I agreed. I never saw the rest of the money. When I confronted him about it. He had already sold the guitar and spent the cash. Nice guy. Never trust Jeff Dennis from North Plains, OR.
