Well, here she is. My trusty Mexican Strat that is about to become my “project guitar”. After thinking about this for quite some time, I’ve decided to try my hand at some much-needed modifications.

The first changes will deal with what I hope will be some solid tuning improvements. This includes a set of locking tuners, a graphite nut, and removal of the string tree. At the same time, I will be departing from the stock fender bridge by installing an L. R. Baggs X-Bridge, to add some variation to the tonal palette.

Phase II, Lord willing, will involve replacing the bridge pickup with a dual humbucker. I haven’t decided for sure what it’s going to be, so at this point I’m open to suggestions!

Returning visitors have undoubtedly noticed a major overhaul to the site. I think the old one was just a bit too cluttered, so I’ve tried to remove the fluff and go for a more minimalist approach. Take a look around and let me know what you think…

I’ve finally been able to rid my site of all traces of FrontPage! Whoo Hoo! What’s the big deal, you may ask? Well, here’s the thing. WordPress has proven to be a powerful - and flexible platform for my websites in a way that simply blows FP out of the water. And it’s so much easier to manage as well. No more extra directories being put all over the place to keep things in sync and clutter up my domain. No more worrying about hosing up the FP web if I FTP something that it doesn’t like. And with it’s use of Cascading Style Sheets and PHP scripting, I can customize to my heart’s content.

Okay, that’s all I’m going to say about that. I’m trying to keep nerdy topics to a minimum!

Yes, I’ve joined the ranks of those who have left Blogger (a.k.a. blogspot.com) behind in favor of WordPress. Why? Perhaps I’m a bit of a control freak, or maybe I just can’t be hemmed in by someone else’s idea of what my blog should look like. Suffice it to say that I’m pretty impressed by this free blog tool and weblog platform and was pleasantly surprised to find that my web host supports the application.

So, don’t be surprised if the look and feel goes through a whole slew of changes as I try to settle in on a style and theme that I like.

So, here I am, joining the millions of bloggers around the world. Another voice to add to the cacaphony (sic?). Is it realy necessary? In the grand scheme of things, probably not. But it may be cheaper than therapy. I guess I’ll start with a shameless plug of my website, http://www.johnwatilo.com, where you can go listen to some of my songs. Stay tuned…