Hello from FL...

First off....let me say that you are MUCH MORE organized than I am. Most of my gear is in cases in my spare room closet, the amps are on the floor against the wall, and my cables + recording gear are in boxes (milk crates + duffel bags). My desk is embarrassingly cluttered with expense reports, cables, magazines, chargers, different sets of monitors, and recording gear. If I unpacked it all, there would be no room to move.....I even have gear taking up room in other parts of the state when I gig (PA + live stuff in San Francisco + LA)

Your guitar collection is awesome. Love those Gibsons you have, particularly the Antique Les Paul and CS-356....and wow, those are quite some pedal boards. Your church must rock!

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haha, have a child, and you'll clean that stuff up in no time!

Don't be fooled by the photos... my desk is a mess and right now the middle of the room is piled up with boxes of stuff for eBay, I've got 2 computers sitting here that I need to finish building out, etc.

As for my church, we run about 1400 each week between 3 services. We're building a new campus that will seat 1200 in the main sanctuary. When it is done next year then we expect to grow to the 2500-3000 total range over the 3 Sunday services we offer each week. The new campus will have separate rooms for the high school, middle school and elementary age kids. Each of these rooms will seat 200+.

Yes, we can rock out... we used to use a bigger band but have found that having more people on stage at once tends to muddy up the mix too much. We now run a 5-piece band (drums, bass, piano, acoustic, electric) and 4 singers (leader plus soprano, alto and tenor). This means I don't play as often as I had been (when we had 3 guitars - acoustic, clean electric, dirty/lead electric) but the sound is better and that is very important in our role as an aid to people making a connection to God (i.e., the band/singers are NOT the important thing on Sunday). But we can still ROCK pretty strong when we want to.

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Rock, Blues, Christian player - mmcquain@mcquain.com
http://www.mcquain.com/lespaul - http://www.myspace.com/mmcquain
Gibson Les Paul Classic Antique & CS-356, Fender Stratocaster, Hamer Flying V, BreedLove AD25/SR
Peavey Marshall Behringer POD Tech21 Boss MXR Dunlop Danelectro Digitech Dean Markley D'Addario

I already have one.... you should see his playroom most of the time... like father like son.

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that must make you proud!

good to hear! I play in my church band too, but we're much smaller. My church is in a small community. We started the night service probably three years ago and have grown from about 20 to about 50, which is awesome for us!

The cool thing is that as we've grown, we've had a great drummer join the band, a great keyboard/piano player, and some of the younger girls are growing up to be talented singers.

The drummer is going overseas next year for a bit of travelling though, so we're back to 14 year olds who can play a 4/4 beat that speeds up and slows down ... which is fun in it's own way, even though it sounds like a learner driver driving a stickshift for the first time!

It ain't just the kids that speed up/slow down... we've been using a click track in our IEM's for about the last 6 months to try to get better at this. We have 3 drummers on rotation and at least 2 of them have improved due to the click (as has the whole band gotten tighter).

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Rock, Blues, Christian player - mmcquain@mcquain.com
http://www.mcquain.com/lespaul - http://www.myspace.com/mmcquain
Gibson Les Paul Classic Antique & CS-356, Fender Stratocaster, Hamer Flying V, BreedLove AD25/SR
Peavey Marshall Behringer POD Tech21 Boss MXR Dunlop Danelectro Digitech Dean Markley D'Addario

Howdy again...
Since I last checked in here I've sold 3 guitars (LP Custom, R0 and Taylor T5 - these sales were to pay some bills after being laid off). Now my T5 had been my only "acoustic" guitar for several years and so I still needed an acoustic from time to time and so I've been looking around for something that wasn't as expensive as the T5, but kept some of the features I liked about it - low action (I mainly play electric and am spoiled I guess) with a nice neck.

Well, I spent most of today playing guitars and price shopping (after doing a lot of research last night on the Internet). I almost got a Larrivee LV-03E (really liked the action, tone, etc.) but ended up find a great deal on a Breedlove AD25/SR PLUS that I really liked. It has the Fishman Classic 4T pickup system with onboard tuner. I also like the solid neck and the neck profile better than the Taylor I played on (I was thinking of another Taylor since I had a T5 before). The Taylors tend to have more of a V-shaped neck and this neck is closer to a C or D shape (which feels better to me since I mainly play Les Pauls). I have also never been crazy about the idea of a separate headstock like the Taylors (although I've never actually heard of any problems with the Taylor design).

The action is as low as the Larrivee and I ended up saving a few hundred bucks compared to the best price I'd found the LV (very nice since being laid off). Unplugged the guitar has a nice warm tone that isn't too bright and yet not too bassy. I'll be playing it twice per month with a church group at a local nursing home and it should project much better than my Taylor T5 ever did (thanks to the full body). The rest of the time I'll use it going direct to the FOH mixer at church. I tested it through a Crate acoustic amp with the amp's EQ set flat. Using only the 3-band EQ and Brilliance controls on the guitar, I was able to get some very nice sounds out of it. I still have to see how it sounds in the 800 seat room at church but I feel sure it will meet my needs just fine.

So that's my Day 1 report on the new acoustic/electric. Sure I tried a few nicer guitars, but for no more than I play acoustic, I can't see spending over $2000 vs. well under $1000 for a very nice guitar that will be just fine for all of my needs. If you're in the market for a good acoustic/electric then I highly recommend you check out both the Larrivee and Breedlove lines... both are great guitars!

Here's a few pics...

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Rock, Blues, Christian player - mmcquain@mcquain.com
http://www.mcquain.com/lespaul - http://www.myspace.com/mmcquain
Gibson Les Paul Classic Antique & CS-356, Fender Stratocaster, Hamer Flying V, BreedLove AD25/SR
Peavey Marshall Behringer POD Tech21 Boss MXR Dunlop Danelectro Digitech Dean Markley D'Addario

And the rest of the pics...

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Rock, Blues, Christian player - mmcquain@mcquain.com
http://www.mcquain.com/lespaul - http://www.myspace.com/mmcquain
Gibson Les Paul Classic Antique & CS-356, Fender Stratocaster, Hamer Flying V, BreedLove AD25/SR
Peavey Marshall Behringer POD Tech21 Boss MXR Dunlop Danelectro Digitech Dean Markley D'Addario

Nice... I'd say unless you are spending over $2000, try to find a vintage instrument. Acoustic guitars are such that age makes a pronounced difference in sound. My 28 year old Larivee sounds better than ANY new guitar I've compared it to....including high end Taylors, Martins, and Gibsons and it smells fantastic I've even recorded the difference. Granted, if electronics are your thing, you won't find a good system factory installed on a vintage acoustic.

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