Oh damn, still in this dream.

Gigged near Southampton on Saturday night. Dance band in a nightclub; two forty-five minute sets ending around eleven. I've started including back-up kit on my travels, just in case. My Helix (serial number 00003) has worked beautifully since I first got it, but it is getting nearly four years old. As an aside, I'm still waiting for Line6 to update the firmware to Helix 2.8 - I'd prefer to be able to do this between gigs to give me time for testing, etc.

Anyway, folk danced. Grooves were laid down for folk to get down (and boogie) and so they did. We all played rather well but the arrangements were much more open than previously, which means we all had to listen more to each other. (This is muso-speak for slightly chaotic beginnings and endings.)

I need either: a new neck on my Strat, or a complete refret. I'm inclined to the latter as it will only be around £500 if I opt for stainless steel frets, and a complete neck fettle (dead spots etc).

There's a nice luthier's place near me: Feline Guitars. The chap who owns it worked with Neil in Denmark Street for a few years around the millennium, and remembered folk, though he and I were unknown to each other. We spoke of luthiers we remembered from the past: Ashley Pangbourne, Bernie Goodfellow, Hugh Manson et al.

More importantly, I looked at the work. The attention to detail and finishes on Feline guitars are really second-to-none. I don't play LP types, being a Strat player, but if I did, I'd prefer Feline's single-cuts to any other boutique manufacturer's version I've played up to now. I think I want him to either build me a new neck, or refret my present one. A new neck may be around a grand, or maybe a little more. In the old days I would have had a new neck made, and then after fitting it got the old one refretted and fettled anyway. I no longer have those resources, alas. Such is.

Anyway, I'm not assuming that a single swallow makes a summer; but I'm feeling good about my playing. After a decade of dormancy, I feel I'm getting back there in terms of enthusiasm; and that means I'm practising more. Technique is beginning to return. My hands are getting fitter for more practice and more playing. Now to see if anyone wants a miserable old bastard who can really play. :)

And since I have gotten it, I've been doing an awful lot of playing. :)

I can get my Marshall JCM800 50wt single-channel-no-reverb head and my c.1968 model 1968 4x12" cab sound to about 99% of the real thing, even through my stupid powered monitors. Through the Dickinson 2 x 12" combo, well, it sounds pretty damn amazing.

Last night I went out with chaps from a band I was in at the turn of the millennium.

I'd met Paddy, the drummer, on the tube a few months ago, and we exchanged phone numbers. So I met him and Phil, the pianist/singer, in a pub in Battersea.

We all have partners and children now. Nannies and school fees are things with which we are all familiar.

But more importantly, everyone was itching to make music.

So...

Anyway, I'm still waiting on my Line 6 Helix. GuitarGuitar in Epsom have had my deposit since October. I rang them today and they prevaricated. Not impressed really.

Last week was, for me, the end of an era.

I took my Marshall Halfstack and my 'Blackface' Twin home from Tin Pan Alley Studios.

Steve has been bought out of his tiny remaining share of TPA Studios and is now looking for a long-term engineering position somewhere in his locale. For more than a decade he was Mr TPA, or at least, Mr TPA Studios. He took his eye off the ball and the business went under as his marriage broke down, but who in such a position wouldn't? Some lesser person than him who didn't care as much about his marriage, probably. Oh well. Still there was a time when he owned a bit of the collective Rock 'n' Roll history of London, and a place where The Stones, The Kinks, Jimi, The Who, and countless others recorded or rehearsed.

Anyway I also brought home my old-fashioned pedalboard, which appears to be malfunctioning. If I go back to playing in any serious way I suppose I shall have to replace it.

Rehearsal tomorrow night. I shall have to reacquaint myself with the instrument.

So I've been 'getting stuck into' the Pod X3 Live.

The features, configurability, and versatility of the unit are phenomenal, and it is just about possible to get a reasonable sound with much programming and using the X3's 'Dual Tone' feature which puts your original guitar signal through two separate amplifier models and indeed two completely separate signal paths, before linking them both to a single output.

In comparison to my old Digitech GNX3 the amp models sound more accurate, but in some strange way (at least to this subjective analyser) less usable: because although slightly more accurate, they still aren't the real thing and they don't flatter my playing in the way the GNX3 modelling does.

The 'Dual Tone' feature is pretty cool, though the architecture of the output routing means that the blend of tones when outputted into a single amp makes it sound not entirely coherent, inasmuch as one can certainly detect both components of the tone produced. The Gear Box editing on the computer is very cool too.

Sometimes it seems that I can also detect anomalous digital audio artefacts buried in the sounds.

The X3 Live does show up the limitations of my old GNX3, but as of now, neither satisfies. I may just have to go the whole hog and buy the Axe Fx Ultra and dump both the others on ebay. We shall see.

Today I went to Jon Dickinson's workshop in Crystal Palace to get my No3 Strat that he was fettling, my fixed 'Blues Deluxe' and a custom built Dickinson 45Wt 2x12 combo made in the chassis of an old Selmer type vertically stacked 2x12. The Celestion 12's have been reconed, and the amp itself is hand-wired with no PCB's (printed circuit boards). I might get around to taking photographs, but I've never sorted web-hosting for that sort of thing....so maybe not.

It has 2 inputs (1 guitar, 1 line), 2 switches, 1 green light to show it's working and ONE volume knob.

No bass, mid, or treble; no presence; no master volume; no anything else. It sounds amazing straight through: big, brash, and with real 'weight' and a certain amount of 'thud'. Putting the Digitech GNX3 into the line input and the amp is just awesome....and how often have any of you known me to use that word? The Marshall emulations sound like a good Marshall (and almost as good as mine); the various Fender models sound extraordinarily close to the real thing. This could also be because I've tweaked the programs over the years to suit my ears and understanding of the actual sounds being emulated.

The Line6 Pod X3 live arrives tomorrow. If it is any better than the GNX3 I may have found my perfect rig: and not just for the function band. Of course I won't sell my Marshall half-stack or my 'Blackface Twin', but even so it is phenomenal that a combination of digital modelling and old-fashioned valves and point-to-point wiring can fool these ears: I must be getting old and decrepit. Either that or finally we can has nice things at a reasonably affordable price (for a given value of 'affordable' obviously).

Dickinson Amps cost a heap of money for the main aluminium-bodied range: which I didn't audition as I only really approve of shiny in the bedroom. A few big names use 'em and rightly so. Apparently some chap called Matt Bellamy who is in some pop group or other swears by them: and I can now agree that the amps Jon Dickinson makes sound really very good indeed. Now to road-test the beast for reliability: I shall report back as and when.

It looks like we may have a dep for the function band. felephant was kind enough to offer, but he's in St Andrews, which is quite a step from Wimbledon, where the gig is.