The other day I was in the local goodwill-esque store, and found a 3/4 size classical guitar sitting on the shelf for $39. It was pretty beat up, and badly needed a new set of strings, but it sounded pretty decent, and so I took it home a put a new set of strings on it. My daughter wants to learn guitar, but she's 11 and has small hands, so I thought this would be a nice cheap practice instrument for her.

I must say, I got a great deal on this thing. After Cliff at Mesa Music fixed my lame re-stringing job (this was the first classical I've ever restrung), it tuned up nicely. It has a nice action, good resonance, and flat out just sounds great for a $39 instrument. I've been playing it exclusively since I bought it, in fact, in preference to my steel-string acoustic and my two electrics, one of which is a Schecter C1.

The maker's label inside the case reads: "La Primera Model # L12N". If you happen to spot one of these for cheap, it's probably worth the price.

The Mesa Music Myspace page is here: http://www.myspace.com/mesamusictx. Cliff, the proprietor, has never failed to make me happy with any guitar I brought to him for setup, even my totally crappy Korean solid-body (which is now pretty much my fave guitar).

I just wanted to mention that my absolute favorite record of all time, without any real competition other than a couple of other albums in the same artist's ouvre, is The Dreaming, by Kate Bush.

Apparently a lot of people, even Kate's fans, don't particularly like that record. I'll admit that on first listen, it was a bit off-putting, but having heard it several hundred times now, it would definitely be the record I'd choose to take with me to a desert island, if I could only choose one.

On another day, I might choose Kate's Hounds of Love or Aerial as my favorite record, but today (and most days) it's The Dreaming.

I was bidding, today, on a DigiTech TSR-24 on eBay. This is an amazingly flexible digital effects processor; its main feature that's hard to find on other modern multi-effects boxes is its routing ability: you can connect and mix the virtual effect modules in any way you please. I know of no other effects unit in my price range that permits this.

But after I placed my $100 bid, I began to feel guilty.

I'm a music hobbyist of many years. Definitely not a professional, though. I have been playing guitar for around 15 years, and can play lots of songs, and can often pick up a song by ear. But I have never learned to read guitar music. (I can read tabs, though.) I also play a bit of keyboard, and while I'm not that good at it, I can sort of read piano music. In much the same way that a five-year-old could read Dickens, by puzzling out the sound of each letter. But the mapping from staff to instrument is much clearer for keyboard than for guitar, so I can usually be pretty sure I'm doing it right.