I'm really enjoying my sporadic digs through the issues. Some random thoughts before I stagger off to bed.

(1) Can you reduce the "splash" page behind the articles? I'm an old newspaper guy, & that "above the fold" area is PRIME real estate. The head, subhead, byline, & first few lines should show up in most browsers in order to get reader commitment.

(2) Loving the "tube vs. transistor" stuff. As much as I have stood in awe at the rise of simulators, I still have two non-chip solid-state amps I'm reluctant to part with, so I guess it's a three-way fight. As someone who's humped big tube amps up steep fire escapes (not to mention plywood JBL "Voice of the Theater" behemoths), I'm big on diffuse PA & small amps fed to the board. Tube components can be wonderful, but the fact is that glass tubes break at the damndest times. And, sadly, most of the audience even in the 1980s couldn't tell heavenly overdrive from Radio Shack fuzzbox, & some wouldn't have the first clue if everyone on stage was out of tune -- they're there for the show. Now that they're raised on mp3, why should we drag a $3,500 studio-quality stack up those damned steps?

(3) A few more long, in-depth articles would be great.

(4) How about more tutorials? Sure, there's great stuff to be had on the Web, but why not have your site more as destination? Your audience is growing, so there's (hopefully) going to be new readers showing up all the time. How to set up your guitar. The best order to put the most common stompboxes in. How to shop for a good used guitar or amp. Variant tunings. Slide basics. Why stuff like fingerboard radius & neck shape matter. Overview of pickup types, working toward some of the cool variants. What the heck an "ohm" is & why it matters.

And, with that, I'm off to wind down the first workweek of 2010....

You could always reach out to The Guild of American Luthiers: http://www.luth.org/index.html

At first blush, that may look the exact wrong thing! After all, a big chunk of their membership is people trying to make a living from lovingly-constructed four- & five-figure instruments. But, trust me, there's a madness to my method. Admit to them that (in your opinion) there are millyuns & millyuns of people who think they want to play guitar, so they go & plunk down cash for whatever looks cool, has the right number of strings, & the sales clerk is trying to dump. And often, it's questionably made or poorly set up or both, but the poor schmoes are made to feel it's their fault for not being dedicated enough, so they put the axe out at the garage sale & never try again.

You want to fix that. The GAL wants to fix that. And if people like you can get more people savvy about what's really going on, then that'll increase the pool of dedicated guitarists who'll work their way up to really excellent high-end guitars. In other words, everyone who loves guitars is all on the same page.

You want to put out good information for the masses, selling nothing beyond a successful magazine. And you'd like to give experts a chance to strut their stuff.

Have a trudge through their "Links & Resources" pages, particularly Instrument Makers: http://www.luth.org/links/makers.htm. When you contact these individual shops, offer to publish an article, & mention some specific questions that're on your mind that they might enjoy answering. Some of the Luthiery Schools listed might be interested in showing off what students have done, especially if they get a clickable mention.

Anyhow, let it percolate. The good stuff will occur to you.

Well...it's a balancing act. The question I have is if 20 small companies are selling strat and tele clones, there's maybe a handful of actual manufacturers behind them. As such I'm really only reviewing a handful of instruments over and over again with the only difference being the headstock logo...which is why I'm trying to focus on more unique instruments or companies which have control over their production process.

Regarding reviewing some of these lesser known models, I'm doing my best. But the reality is they don't generate many more visitors as the companies behind them don't effectively market their product so there is very little knowledge that they actually exist, and therefore not very much interest in them or reviews about them.

All that being said, got a review of the redesigned Arbor AS310 coming up real soon...

I understand that. But maybe if you do something like than then you can list names of other guitars made by the same manufacturer. Then we would assume that product with be very similar to the models you listed. For those of us like myself, we know there are all kinds of different companies making copies, but we don't know which ones are made by the same manufacturers.