NGD!! Epiphone Les Paul Deluxe in Sparkle Blue with Mini Humbuckers

From 2000 in a very rare Sparkle Blue (close to LPB). Made in Korea. It was missing it's original pickguard but I'm having one made now. Thinking of changing the plastics to black and knobs to black top hats. We'll see. Maybe it looks better, more "retro" with the cream all over. hmmm. Got it for a song at $249 at my local Guitar Center. The the guys up there wanted it and said we had to set up custody arrangements for them to play it from time to time. I don't think they wanted to sell it to me as the Manager had it in his office! But they know me pretty well up there. It's probably the weirdest looking guitar I've ever bought but DAMN it plays well and those Mini Hums are great!

Favorite Products: Bolo Pick

Bolo Pick

I love to have a pick on me wherever I go, especially MY picks, what feels comfortable to me. I avoided buying the others that I've seen about, usually made from leather or faux leather. And bulky too!

Bolo Pick is nice and compact, lays flat on my keys and therefore more comfortable in my pocket, and holds three to four picks, depending on thickness. I've had mine since October 2010 and it seems to be holding up to daily usage.

They come in several versions: multi-pick keychain, several versions of a single pick necklace, & carabiner multi-pick keychain.

I found mine at Conway Music, downtown on Oak St., the only place that sells them in the entire state of Arkansas. I've been back twice now to purchase more to give away as xmas gifts and to other guitarists that I think will appreciate them.

Another website design project finished! Well, almost...

Tecumseh Cabinet Company, located in Missouri, is owned by our friend Tim Corbin. In exchange for some new built-ins at our home, we've been working together to get this site produced.

He's extremely happy with the look and results. We still have a few pages to fill in but it's close and as I tell all clients, websites are evolutionary, not revolutionary!

Tim has been in business 17 + years and makes some amazing cabinets and furniture using solid wood, superior finishes, and expert installation.

The Ever-Changing Wish List

There is a long list of lustful items but the prices are just too far from my reach....ever!

Hamer Newport Vintage Natural with Bigsby
I saw this one while in Hot Springs at Ronnie’s Guitar Shop. It is super lightweight and has Seymour Duncan Phat Cat P90s, Bigsby Vibrato, and just feels and sounds great! $2200 :(

Hamer Newport Vintage Natural, Spruce Top, Mahogany Hollow Body

Guido's Hot Springs Music Company

I finally had the chance to get by this well recommended place yestereday! WOW! I had to stop after walking in the door and take this picture (above). And that's just the front room!

This place is chock full of vintage and used instruments from every maker you can think of. They also have basses, amps, an amp tech and guitar tech on board!

I had a blast meeting their amp tech, J.D. Black, who after I mentioned my name, knew my Grandmother Maudie Burnett. She gave him his first job in electronics in 1972 at her TV & Appliance shop Southern TV & Electronics. I used to play there in the basement in houses she made out of refrigerator boxes for us. She was a wonderful and strong woman that was and always will be an inspiration to me. Turns out he remembered her well for the same reasons as well! He's also a pretty good guitarist too!

Rodney Herrell is nice guy and also an excellent player and very knowledgeable about guitars and tech. I could easily recommend taking your equipment here. I know it's nice to know I have more options.

My friend, Marshall Dunn, Guitar Tech at Guitar Center here in Little Rock is the one who recommended that I stop in. I both hate him and thank him now! :)  It's not good to know there is such a treasure trove of cool to someone like me that has serious gear lust!

I'm looking forward to getting around there again and see what they have in stock next time, but be prepared, there are no price tags on anything in the shop! Pricing is all off the top of the owner's head. That said, I will say that the prices I inquired about sounded very fair for the quality and vintage of the equipment. I'm sure that cash is king, so bring it to deal. With my inevitable taste, I'll have to see about layaway!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope all had as wonderful of a dinner as me and mine did! Have a great holiday weekend!

Speaking of RecycledSound.net...

Someone on Strat-talk.com today was wanting to get a larger tube amp but feared living in an apartment he couldn't or shouldn't. I passed along the info on the Power Plug 6/12 Attenuator.

This thing has saved my household volume levels! Plus it cuts some AC Grounded Amp hum/noise while it's at it. Doesn't suck tone or change your tone at all. The video from Greg says it all. 

I've bought 3 of them from him but only use one right now. My Super Sonic doesn't like to attenuate past -12db but that really does the trick. I've sold the other two to friends who love them as much as I do!

For example, my Super Sonic was too loud for the house at volume level 1. I can now easily play at volume level 4 and have my tubes working a little harder, getting the most out of my 6L6 power amp tubes. Drives it nicely but doesn't flub up my sound either.

Greg is a great guy to work with. Check out his amps too! RecycledSound.net

Jensen 12" Electric Lighting Speaker

I also picked up one of these today. Greg at Recycled Sound (recycledsound.net) had a slightly used one for half price. I tested it in my Fender Super Sonic 112. A great sounding speaker. It's not yet broken in, so it's hard to compare to my Weber 12F150B that I'm currently using. I would say that it's a great effort by Jensen to combine that classic Jensen/Fendery tone with a modern speaker for high gain amps of today.

Update: VOX Wah & Little Big Muff

Tested both units this evening. The VOX Wah is very sensitive but with some getting used to, works great. Not a tone sucker as the reviews said. Introduced NO extra noise.

The Little Big Muff (LBM hereafter) is just that...Little. :(   Compared A/B to my old one (NYC hereafter) it's tinny & metallic sounding. Not what I'd really call a fuzz but more of a thin metal sounding distortion. NYC is full, lush, fuzzy but not fizzy. A gorgeous fuzz and it just loves to be in front of that wah! I guess I didn't know how good I had it....but still...IT'S JUST SO BIG!

So,  the LBM goes back to Guitar Center and the VOX is a keeper. I guess I'll just have to design a bigger pedal board, huh?

Gotta love the Guitar Center used website!

I have my RSS reader check the newly arrived items daily for me! I spotted these two things at my local store and just picked them up.

Little Big Muff
I love my Big Muff NYC. It's a real big boy too! Takes up tons of space on my board but sounds oooh sooo good! I tried out the Little Big Muff Tone Wicker back in September but sent it back. It, strangely, sounded different from the original. So, I've heard some good things about the regular Little Big Muff. And for $40, I thought I could give it a try. I'll test it out when I get home today and update later.

Vox Classic Wah Pedal
Next thing I found was this dedicated wah pedal for $40, as well. I've really enjoyed playing with a wah for the first time with my M9 but would prefer to have my wah before my fuzz. So a dedicated pedal should take care of that. Lot's of mixed reviews on this unit. Some say it's noisy or spiky at the toe position. We'll see. Might be the sound I'm looking for, might not me. I'll test it later, as well!

I hope my friends at the Guitar Center Little Rock don't mind that I nabbed these photos they took of the units. :)

A great new photography product that needs your help!

C-Loop Single Strap adapter




For years I've had a love/hate relationship with camera straps. Mostly hate. They get in my way so much. Never where I need them, but necessary for peace of mind. I really like this idea and it's build quality. I hope to be a contributer soon.

Check it out, contribute, help out budding inventors!

My Adventures in Effectsville, Part 1

After years of simply plugging a guitar into a tube amp, I decided to finally, really try finding effects that I liked and wanted to work with.

It started last year buying a Danelectro Cool Cat Fuzz v1. Nice fuzz, cheap. Being a novice to effects, I thought it might be best to just get some kind of multi effects unit. Being strapped for cash at the time, I bought a Zoom G1.n. It got used for about 2 hours then found it's way back into the box. I hated it! Awful sounding, hard to edit/configure. But you get what you pay for!

I then decided I would start buying analog pedals. I loved my newly acquired MXR Dyna Comp & MXR Phase 90, so I thought "Hey, why not build a pedal board with JUST MXR pedals!"

My first design via Adobe Illustrator that included the Cool Cat.

My next edition succeeding with ALL MXR.

Almost famous! I'm on Premier Guitar's website today! Hee hee

Well, at least my pedalboard is! :)
Premier Guitar Magazine

“To all the (guitars) I've loved before...”

I thought today I'd make a list of all the guitars I've owned since I was 12. Mainly just to see if I can remember them all. I have had a long history of buying, selling, buying, selling. I love buying them, but can't seem to justify having a huge collection of instruments I don't play. Regretful? Of course! If I had the money, I'd try to buy back several. So here it goes, by the year:

1983

Lotus 1979 LP copy, Rosewood, Red Metallic (Traded)

1984

Ferrari Strat copy, Rosewood, Black on Black (Traded)

1985

Kramer Striker 100ST Black with Rosewood (Traded)

Banana headstock with original floyd rose non-locking trem
REGRET!

On the graphic design side of things...

Just finished putting together a website for Children First, Inc. A local daycare here in Little Rock. They are extremely happy with their new site.

childrenfirstinc.com

The entire site was designed in Adobe Illustrator, assembled in Apple's iWeb application with the addition of some "bend-the-app-to-my-will" hand coding. I find iWeb to be a great visual web design app. I can copy and past graphics directly from Illustrator with great results. 

Actually, the BurnettGuitars.com site is also designed and assembled this way!

Sure helps having support...

I love that my wife is not only brilliant with sewing, quilting, crocheting, not to mention successful professionally, but she's also pretty good with a guitar and a lover of music, too!

My wife and I with our '69 Thinline & Custom Teles (resp.)

The guitar she's holding is one that I built for her. She picked out the prefinished 1 piece swamp ash body with a blue burst paint job. That thing is heavy too! Close to 8lbs!

I loaded it up with some Am. Deluxe Tele pickups, vintage brass barrel bridge, standard wiring, electrosocket jackcup, and a 2006 Custom Telecaster Fender rosewood neck.

Sounds wonderful! I'm a lucky man!

"The Bastard" – the little tele that could (maybe!)

The first time I saw the Fender Custom Shop "La Cabronita Especial" I fell in love. With it's looks, with it's sound, all of it.

But for $5000....hrm....nope!

So I found Marc Rutter (Rutters Guitars) on tdpri.com selling custom sugar pine bodies. I had him make me up one based on the blank I chose with routing for Filtertrons, tele style, rear control rout, chopped bridge mount, forearm contour and a belly relief (like a strat). It's gorgeous and only cost $90!

Mobile blogging: ENABLED!

Just added an iPhone app to be able to blog from anywhere!

Welcome to my new blog!

It’s been a long time coming. I’ve been so busy doing other people’s projects, getting married, moving and much more to get around to creating a new site. 


Along with my major life changes, professionally I’m no longer concentrating soley on graphic design and photography. My musical self has re-emerged! 


Some time around the end of 2008, I decided it was time to head back to playing guitar. I started when I was 12, played in several bands in my teens and early 20’s, worked at recording and then headed long into a career of advertising. Only stopping to play at the lake or for a few friends but not actively pursuing it as a stress relieving, happiness invoking hobby that it is today.


I started it off by the notion that I should own a “proper” Fender Stratocaster for once! I shopped around but eventually fell in love with a 2006 60th Anniversary model Powerhouse Deluxe Strat in Caramel Metallic from Jacksonville Guitar in Jacksonville, Arkansas.

Since then, I’ve purchased a few more, built a few, in the process of building more and experimenting with tube amps and floor effects.


I hope to talk a little about all the equipment as well as document my projects here, uploading pics to the portfolio gallery. Also, along the way I’ll be doing graphics projects and adding them to the portfolio galleries, as well.