Welcome to my blog and I hope you enjoy my light-hearted look at guitars and cars. The plan is to post a few interesting internet finds that have caught my eye, the odd news snippet, some multimedia and stir a little.
The Ipswich council is tipping in 52.3 million dollars of their generous rate payers hard earned money to upgrade facilities and extend the track at Queensland Raceway. This coincides with their new ten year deal with Supercars to host the Virgin Australia Supercars Championship through to 2028.
With a front to back textbook drive ol' Blingy equalled the great Jim Clark's and Alain Prost's record of five BGP wins. With the streets of London to (possibly) replace the Silverstone circuit in the future a sixth may not be such a dream drive.
Well the Washington Post seemed to think so. I've reposted this interview video by The Tone King with the CEO of FMIC Andy Mooney in defence of his product and the electric guitars place in the world.
The shocking stat that really got me was that their research showed that 45% of all guitars (Fender) are sold to first time players, of those 45%, 90% abandon the instrument in the first year if not the first 90 days. Shock horror!! So what does that say? Smoke On The Water can get pretty boring very quickly or playing the guitar is much harder than playing the Play Station? Fender seem to think the answer lies in lessons. Mmm? pretty obvious I would have thought.
It may have been Miss Lizzy that made the Beatles dizzy but it was the controversial 'shield' that made Sebastian Vettel dizzy this week. He had been booked to test yet another version of the protective shield this week at Silverstone. However through a bad case of dizziness he only ran one lap, the installation lap. This shield wasn't optically compensated for as on fighter aircraft (how stupid was that) hence Seb was seeing double double. From the sounds of things the FIA are pretty concerned about driver safety and if we don't see a suitable shield we will be seeing the dam awful halo next season.
Fender have copped quite a bit of flack from several of our budding YouTube reviewers. In particular the baby Mustang GT40. I must admit when I tested the GT40 I too thought it sounded as if it was under a doona. I wasn't sold on it but not to the extent of some reviewers that actually made a thing of it sounding dull and making a public video of their re-boxing.
In practically every race a driver takes a hit for the team. This week in Austria Lewis, ol' blingy himself, took one for a gearbox replacement. So where is the fairness? Lewis was pinged five grid positions and as a consequence with it, drivers championship points. It wasn't all bad for HAM44 as it could have been. Lewis clawed his way from 8th on the grid to finish in 4th nursing a shredded set of boots, that's tyres.
It was tipped several months that the new ute class, SUPER UTE'S, were to have been racing at Townsville on the weekend. Unfortunately through some excuse only three have been built and truth be known they only had the regular old tradies donk on board. I can't say they have me jumping yet but I do love the fluffy tails as seen in the above snap. (thanks to Wheels magazine)
You get what you pay for. Clichés clichés everywhere. Of course you get what you pay for but the one that really irks me is: it's good for the money. I see this everywhere in 'user' guitar reviews. Guys buy a guitar at a bargain price and the first thing they think and want to tell you is that: it's good for the money. Surely it's either good or not good and the price they paid for it doesn't really make it any better, or worse. So I decided to take a close look at the new Squier Affinity range from Fender and this Telecaster caught my eye.
Our Mark Webber is never far away from F1. He recently shared his thoughts at the FIA Sport Conference in Geneva where he suggested that grid penalties are a bit harsh and generally not good for the sport. I'm inclined to agree Mark. For a mechanic to replace a gear box it's currently the driver that cops the penalty where it should be the team. Mark has suggested the penalty should be paid in manufactures championship points instead and not by an innocent driver to be pushed back down the grid. With logic like Mark has, I don't see why the FIA haven't given him a behind-the-scenes gig. Hang on, it wasn't Mark that suggested introducing fake rain was it? No dummy, that was old Bernie, The Colonel Tom Parker of motorsport.
