Category: New Arrivals

We live in a golden age for guitars and gear, and I’m on a mission to explore as much as it as possible.

Posted on

New Arrivals: November 2020

November 2020 is mostly about what didn’t arrive this month, alas.

I ordered a couple of cool pedals from Italy at the end of October, and they only just didn’t make the cut (they arrived 1st December 2020). They’ve both awesome pedals, and I’ll have a lot more to say about them soon.

Another shipping target for the Neural DSP Quad Cortex has been and gone. Both the first and second batch were expected to be in backers’ hands this month, but once again that didn’t happen. With Christmas right around the corner, this is surely going to slip into 2021 now.

The other thing that didn’t arrive? This post. It disappeared without trace from WordPress. Twice. That’s happened a few times in recent weeks. Not yet sure whether it’s WordPress or my new hosting arrangements.

So what did arrive? I got a couple of cool things. Oh, and the world got several COVID19 vaccines too 🙂

Continue reading “New Arrivals: November 2020”
Posted on

New Arrivals: October 2020

This month is mostly defined by constraints.

I had to replace the car last month. Unfortunately, with everything that’s going on in the world right now, there’s a lot of unusual shortages, and I just couldn’t get replacement parts to keep my car on the road. That puts a significant limit on how much I can spare to spend on hobbies for a bit.

Secondly, we’re back in lockdown. We can travel, we’re just very limited on where we’re legally allowed to travel to. [By the end of the month, the local lockdown had become a full lockdown once again – Ed] Normally, this time of year, we’d be visiting far-flung guitar shops to hunt for unusual items and surprises. That’s just not an option right now.

Finally, there just isn’t that much interesting (to me) gear hitting the second hand market right now. All too often, the items that do catch my eye are priced optimistically, and I’m not yet sure if this is a temporary thing, or whether prices are going to remain this high in the long term.

Continue reading “New Arrivals: October 2020”
Posted on

New Arrivals: September 2020

I think this month is mostly going to be defined by what doesn’t arrive.

  • I’ve cancelled the PRS S2 McCarty 594 SC that I ordered back in January. It’s probably not going to arrive until 2021 now, and I can’t be confident that I’ll have the money to pay for it when it does finally turn up.
  • After months of insisting that it would ship on schedule, Neural DSP has finally admitted that the Quad Cortex is going to be delayed after all. Given the current state of the world, it’s not a surprise. Delivery dates have slipped twice in the last two weeks alone. If this arrives for Christmas, it’ll be quite an achievement.

It’s a good job really, because the car needs some repairs. Whether or not those parts arrive this month or not remains to be seen. [They did not – Ed.] Right now, it’s a really bad time to be repairing or replacing pretty much anything.

Continue reading “New Arrivals: September 2020”
Posted on

New Arrivals: August 2020

Going into August, it was shaping up to be another quiet month for new (to me) gear.

While the second hand market on eBay UK has picked up (a bit) in the last couple of weeks, I’m just not willing to pay what’s being asked. There’s a growing trend of sellers listing second hand gear for more than it originally sold for brand new. I’m still seeing buyers piling onto the same items that I’m interested in, too.

Did I get anything at all? Read on to find out.

Continue reading “New Arrivals: August 2020”
Posted on

New Arrivals For May 2020

It’s been the second full month of lockdown. eBay remains quiet, partly because sensible folks are reluctant to head out to post parcels, and partly because eBay has been limiting their discount sales fees to once a month.

The blog’s been quiet too. I’ve had some other things in life to deal with. So many basic, run-of-the-mill things are difficult-to-impossible to resolve when most of society has shut down. It’s one thing to know it, it’s quite another thing to experience it first hand.

Here’s what’s arrived this month. Spoiler alert: it’s all really good stuff, and there’ll be full First Impressions blog posts for each of them soon.

Continue reading “New Arrivals For May 2020”
Posted on

New Arrivals: April 2020

I wasn’t planning on making any purchases this month.

With the UK firmly in pandemic lockdown, the second-hand market has massively shrunk. There’s not a lot of gear on sale right now, and some sellers are going to find it difficult to ship gear out to buyers.

The plan was to concentrate on actually putting my gear to use. When I tried, it was clear that a couple of things needed sorting. That, and conversations about gear helped convince me to pickup a very special indeed.

Continue reading “New Arrivals: April 2020”
Posted on

New Arrivals: March 2020

This will be the last regular “New Arrivals” for the time being.

Partly thanks to the UK Government following scientific advice that was based on an outdated model of the wrong disease, Britain has failed to contain the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus before it became widespread. We’re heading for a lengthy social lockdown (at best), with the serious economic hardship that inevitably follows.

Don’t worry, the blog’s not going anywhere. It’s just that there’s more important things right now than buying guitar gear.

Continue reading “New Arrivals: March 2020”
Posted on

New Arrivals For February 2020

Winter NAMM 2020 has been and gone, and now we wait for announcements to become shipping product … and then to reach the UK, which can sometimes take months longer.

I’ve pre-ordered a couple of things that were announced at (or around) NAMM. They’re going to take up most of my gear budget this year. The PRS S2 Singlecut McCarty 594 might arrive by the summer. We already know that Neural DSP’s Quad Cortex won’t arrive until the autumn at the earliest. At least I don’t have to wait as long for the Lark (Rhett Shull’s new signature pedal from Mythos Pedals); that should ship in March.

I’m still keeping an eye out for interesting bits of gear, but it’s got to be pretty special – and at a special price. By and large, I’m only looking to pickup pedals to help me fill in the gaps in my collection, or provide complementary tones for recording with.

Finally, I may have finished my planned revamp of the home studio, but now I’m sitting down to use it, I’m finding that a few things need sorting out, and that there’s a few gaps that are nagging at me a bit. I’m going to be tackling those, but not all in a single month 🙂

Here’s what arrived this month.

Continue reading “New Arrivals For February 2020”