Today's Birthday Greetings go out to Chrissie Hynde.

I realise that it's not considered to be polite to dwell on the subject of a lady's age, but she's still looking good at 52.

Happy 34th Birthday to Dweezil Zappa. How soon before he tries selling that ex-Hendrix Strat again, I wonder?

At PRS Guitars, a Second Golden Age
I thought I'd include this link for all of you who like that sort of thing. Personally I think PRS guitars are vile.

This guitar, built for Rudolf Schenker of the Scorpions, claims to be the World's first acoustic Flying V.

But what of the Takamine Flying A which dates back to the early 1980s?

Today I got myself a Danelectro e-15 eStudio, which is a neat little headphone amplifier with built-in echo and distortion. It's quite an impressive little device: powered by a single PP3 battery (which is included, by the way) it delivers an enormous sound into the phones. It also has a line-out for recording purposes or for driving a larger amp. Check it out.

John Birch guitars proudly present the Superyob, a reissue of the now legendary guitar played by Dave Hill of Slade. This new version incorporates LED dot markers in the fingerboard and also features a laser built into the headstock which no doubt enhances the sci-fi laser-gun appearance of the guitar.

By the way, I believe that the original Superyob guitar is now owned by Marco Pirroni (ex Adam & the Ants).

Clearport guitars - featuring "Thurman Multi-dimensional Sound Ports" these acoustic guitars offer "unsurpassed acoustical and ergonomic performance ... with greater sustain, a faster attack and a broad dynamic range". (See also Augustino Loprinzi Guitars whose Nova Futura model classical guitar also features Thurman Multi-dimensional Sound Ports in their design).

I'm reminded of the FUNNELBody guitars that I mentioned last month on this blog.

Guitar recycling hits a chord with musicians
A GUITAR engineer is hoping to bring new life to old instruments by setting up a recycling workshop. Jon Dickinson, 34, who has been an engineer for eight years, has set up his own workshop in Crystal Palace to customise stringed instruments and renovate old guitars.  More...

Manchester Guitar Tech - Now here's a useful site, very clearly laid out and with lots of helpful photographs. The section on Building from a kit looks particularly good.

A friend sent me this picture of his Vox semi-acoustic bass guitar.

Does anyone out there know anything about these lesser-known Vox instruments?

Apparently the guitar is labelled as being "Made in Japan". Does anyone have any idea of when this might have been made?

However, it's a real beauty, isn't it?

Update: It does look a little like the Vox Cougar bass with several differences: the pickups are not the same, the tailpiece is comletely different, the Cougar on the Vox website has a scratchplate (sure, this could have been lost), the headstock is a different shape, and the VOX logo isn't quite the same.