I did thank you very much. I even got some more music gear which I was not expecting. Kind of poor right now as business is slow so all the friends and I decided not to buy for each other this year. Well, apparently that was a ruse because I help them all out with their house stuff [plumbing/electrical/drywall etc]. I got a pretty good graphic eq for my PA, a 7 pack of harmonicas in popular keys, a ukelele, and some new strings for my bass.

Glad to hear it! How's the new studio coming along?

The studio is most excellent. "New studio", coming up on 5 years in the making. I'm down to just needing to install trim and I will be good to go. Business is still slow and I've been searching out other part time employment but the job market here is a barren market. I have however been working on other guitar related projects, such as a jukebow I've been designing and will start to build [the jukebox is an old guitar with a PC inside and some buttons for controlling the software, and the audio output jack on the guitar runs to my home theatre soundsystem]. Today I may wire up the lights in my drum riser - I need to pull it out and clean underneath anyways. Other than that I've been working on some video game soundtrack [an indie game, probably won't make any money off of it] and a radio play soundtrack - Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. And of course I am working on my album, I hope to release it in 6 months.

It's good that you are keeping busy despite it all! More recent pictures when you get a chance and let us know when the album is ready... you have one pre-sale already.

lol ok but here are what the critics are saying - "sounds dated", "Nobody plays guitar solos anymore", "wtf"

I'll take some pics today and post them in the studio build on the recording forum

Well, some of us are "dated" and still like guitar solos (I am old enough to have had a heart attack during the holidays - true)... lol... wtf?

I don't pay much attention to "critics", so I'll be looking forward to it.