I guess I should introduce myself...
My name is Rogier, and I'm from the Netherlands
I've been playing for 7 years now, but had to take a 2 year intermission due to RSI. Gladly I recovered, mainly from starting weightlifting. Keeping your muscles in good condition really helps to keep everything in working order!
My first guitar was a brandless acoutic ( 3/4 size ) I saw it at a friends house and thought "hmm,.. playing that might be fun.." and bought the guitar for about $10,00
From there it went onwards pretty fast...
A month later I acquired my first electric, an epiphone SG it cost me about $200. I got a small
practice amp from a friend for free and bought a hughes and kettner tubeman ( old model ) to go with it. I did some recording with it (nothing special, I could just play chords back then)
Soon I realised I was never going to sound like Petrucci (my newly acquired hero at the time) without reverb, chorus delay etc.
Back to the guitar shop, I bought a digitech RP7 for about $500
I actually still use the tubeman-RP7-practice amp "rig" in my living room.
The guitar was holding me back when I started a band for 3 gigs with a dreamtheater cover (surrounded). A friend that heard me playing was very impressed and gave me his bird acoustic. Back to electric I realised I didn't have a tremolo bar and I needed more frets. For a while I was tempted to buy a different SG with a trem, but I soon came to my senses.
about 3 months of saving after the gigs I ordered a JPM100P1, unfortunately, it was sold out and I got a P3. It costed me about $1000. A nice price I got by ordering through a good friend of mine with his own studio.
After falling in love and
playing guitar in every free hour I had my left wrist and forearm cramping up and eventually this got out of hand and I realised I had to stop playing if I ever wanted to enjoy the guitar again. I took about 2 years off, and sometimes played for a couple of minutes.
I had realised that I had to change my lifestyle to and started to lift weights. Making my muscles stronger made playing the guitar relatively less heavy. And in combination with a healthy diet and things like that I recovered.
To mark my coming back to one of the greatest joys in my life I bought myself a decent amplifier. A carvin legacy. At the time there was only one legacy in my country. It was the 100watt head and a non-slanted (I which it was though) cabinet. I tested it (along with a lot of other amps) and treated myself to this wonderful amplifier. ofcourse, I had to have a DS-1 to go with it.
Quite recently (about six months ago) I thought it was time to upgrade my effects and preamp (keep using the legacy!!)
I acquired an ada MP-2 and a digitech TSR-12(nothing much). At about the same time I spoke to a friend of mine who studies guitar, I recalled he had a JEM7PBK and asked him about it. He said he didn't use it anymore because he was playing mostly jazz now. Some negotiations and I bought it for 700,77 euros. about $555.
Right now,.... I'm a happy camper!
