This afternoon I had the house to myself so I took my Jimmie Vaughn Strat,Tech 21 RotoChoir (Leslie Simulator) and plugged them into my new Vox AC-15.I played for almost 45 minutes before I had to put the guitar away because of pain.I managed to play "Angel", "Little Wing","One Rainy Wish" and bits of "Machine Gun" and "If 6 Was 9" plus a bit of Buddy Miles' "Changes" and all of The Beatles' "I'm Happy Just To Dance With You".

I was surprised that I held out so long but I had to switch from rhythm to lead a lot as when I play chords-especially barre chords for any length of time the fleshy part of my left palm directly below the thumb cramps up and starts hurting like you wouldn't believe.

BTW: The J.V. Strat sounds incredible through the AC-15,especially with the RotoChoir,"Angel" and "Little Wing" sound just incredible through the full clean sound of the AC-15,it's phenomenal.I'm beginning to get used to the EQ of the amp,but they are so touchy and interactive with each other that if you adjust one just a tiny bit you most like will have to dial in the other a bit to get your desired tone.These are absolutely incredible amps.

Over the next few weeks I have more tests and specialists appointments to try and get some kind of prognosis about my hands but Raynauds Syndrome is becoming to look more and more to be a likely candidate.That speculation came from an esteemed member of the forum who is a medical professional and when I have put it to other doctors they are quite receptive about it.If this ends up being Raynaud's I will be forever indebted and grateful to my forum colleague.

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'65 Strat,65 Mustang,65 Jaguar,4 more Strats,3 vintage Vox guitars,5 Vox amps,'69 Bassman with a '68 2-15 Bassman cab,36 guitars total-15asst'd amps total,2 vintage '60s Hammond organs & a myriad of effects-with a few rare vintage ones.

Good news guitslinger! Hope the hands keep feeling good and you are able to play more often.

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Keep it goin, guitslinger! The more you play, the better off you'll be. If the pain never goes away completely, you could at least get used to the pain and learn to play through it (of course I don't know exactly how it feels, but it sounds pretty bad from what you describe). Just do the best you can and keep rockin'.

I truly hope it gets better, and I hope you get a prognosis soon. Whatever you do, just never stop playing as long as you enjoy it. Music is one of the best kinds of medicine.

Best of luck.

-Jake

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"I don't care how good you are, how fast you are. You ain't good enough no lessin' you got the soul." -Hubert Sumlin

Great to hear you're enjoying the new Amp Derek, as for the medical side I'm sure we're all touching wood also ( maple in my case), best of luck
ps perhaps digging out a slide will help you to enjoy that amp a little bit longer

Good to hear some good news I hope this is a sign of things to come.

Guitslinger...good news, seems like not too long ago, you couldn't get through one song so congrats on the progress! And sounds like a fun time!

T2

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What time is it? It's Fender Time.

Good to see that you've gotten some quality time in with the new rig Derek, keep getting better Bros.

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you can save the world with your guitar one love song at a time it's just better, more fun, easier with a fender solid body electric guitar or electric bass guitar.

Thanks so much guys,you have no idea how much good these inspiring words do for me.

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'65 Strat,65 Mustang,65 Jaguar,4 more Strats,3 vintage Vox guitars,5 Vox amps,'69 Bassman with a '68 2-15 Bassman cab,36 guitars total-15asst'd amps total,2 vintage '60s Hammond organs & a myriad of effects-with a few rare vintage ones.

+1

cheers

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It's the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting - paulo coelho

Wonderful news! Glad you were able to knock out some tunes, and of course I hope the progress continues

Damned embarrassing, you suffering so long with this ailment, and having to bounce your own suggestion off the walls of those treating you and receiving a 'that's a strong possibility' in reply. Have they been off-planet somewhere??? You've had some gnarly observations about the quality of medical care up there and it's becoming clearer why you feel that way. Uff!!

I once got into a discussion with one of my Yorkshire Terrier's vets, a surgical specialist no less, regarding an approach to answering a question in a pending surgical procedure for the dog that morning. The vet's response was 'good idea!!' Not only was it done, but yielded a positive result.

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"Another day in paradise!"

Have you tried that ^^^ ? Grab a slide, tune to open G and off you go. It might allow you to rock out a bit longer on the days your hands are giving you most grief. Either way, I hope you get a proper diagnosis soon fella.

Hello Doc,Another category that our doctors are woefully behind the rest of North America and probably the rest of the world in is dealing with a patients' pain especially chronic pain. This sounds unbelieveable in this day and age but students in our local med school are only given 1/2 a day during their entire course on how to treat pain,whereas vets get 3 weeks of intensive training in dealing with pain.The chronic pain support group that I was Vice-Chair of(until recently when I had no choice but to resign because my pain had ramped up so much)held a protest during Pain Awareness Week,in front of a large vet's office along with their pets.They all had signs proclaiming the incredible difference between a vet's training for dealing with pain and that of a doctor.Some signs said that pets get better treatment than their owners in this province.Others were pleas to change the med school policy.The protest garnered considerable media attention and our chair person was called upon to do several interviews.
It's obvious that our government has to be publicly shamed before they act on anything.We have lobbied the minister of health and the dean of the med school to increase the time spent on dealing with the subject of pain-all of this to no avail-the dean of the med school won't even speak to us even though we represent 100,000 Newfoundlanders who are dealing with some kind of pain.

Our network of pain groups is province wide yet a lot of the powers that be don't even give us as much as lip service in a lot of cases . I have to admit that the current Minister of Health is the most receptive one that we've had in years and she has made sure that we have enough funds to reach out to people in pain province wide,plus she has started a program bringing support groups dealing with 7 chronic diseases together.Our Pain association is one of them.I wouldn't go so far as to say that our future looks bright but it certainly isn't as dismal as it was.Now if we could only remove the ear plugs from the dean of the medical school.

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'65 Strat,65 Mustang,65 Jaguar,4 more Strats,3 vintage Vox guitars,5 Vox amps,'69 Bassman with a '68 2-15 Bassman cab,36 guitars total-15asst'd amps total,2 vintage '60s Hammond organs & a myriad of effects-with a few rare vintage ones.

Re using a slide: I have considered moving on to playing slide but I really don't want to do that unless it's absolutely guaranteed that I'll never be able to play lead or chords again. I don't want to sound superstitous but I feel that if I go to slide now I may be jinxing myself-so I guess I must be superstitious to a degree.Besides all of my guitars have incredibly low action and are not suitable for slide.I spent so much time doing the set-ups of these guitars to get the action so low that I'm very reluctant to change anything.

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'65 Strat,65 Mustang,65 Jaguar,4 more Strats,3 vintage Vox guitars,5 Vox amps,'69 Bassman with a '68 2-15 Bassman cab,36 guitars total-15asst'd amps total,2 vintage '60s Hammond organs & a myriad of effects-with a few rare vintage ones.

excellent news derek , glad to hear things are looking up mate , lang mae yir lumb reek (long may your chimney make smoke cheers
Alan

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