8% Of all the guitars in the world have been owned by me!

Well, not quite - it is true though that I have owned 8% of one model. The Yamaha SA2000 blew the guitar world away when introduced in the late 70's. It carried on where the SG2000, SG1000, SG800 and SG500's introduced in July 1976 had started to give Gibson's Les Paul a kicking - earning the nick name 'Les Paul Killer'. This time it was the Gibson ES 335 and what a glorious beast it was too. More akin to a 345 or 355 but without the Varitone it killed them dead, prompting many name players to defect and not come back. 1980 saw just 25 SA2000S's made in Natural finish - what was special apart from the sumptuous ebony board, split fret markers - well how about a carved, solid spruce top; all were made in September 1980 and have never been made again. Most are in Japan or the USA and I am lucky to have owned 2 of those 25, buying my second just a few days ago.

 A new set of 11's and a few tweaks including dropping the action and it played a blistering set on the day I bought it. I'll tell you what else, having two blondes next to each other makes me feel like Robert Palmer in 'that' video - I know the lasses were dressed in black with black hair and the guitars were white, but you know what I mean!

It looks as though the USA dates have been put back to Spring as well - complicated story involving pit bulls, police, contract disagreements and a few other reasons. Same States will be visited and most likely the same venues so watch this space - the gig list will be amended in due course.

 Bye for now,

 Steve