When I began playing guitar at 14 years old I didn’t have much knowledge (or money) to buy gear. I somehow knew I preferred the look of stratocasters because it was the closest thing to Eddie Van Halen’s guitar but I didn’t know much else about guitars, amps, or that effects even existed.

My first guitar was a cherry red strat with a white pickguard from a company called Rocko with an amplifier by the same name. I believe we paid $300 for both.

I haven’t been able to find an image of my amp online however here is an image of my first guitar. This is an actual image of ‘my’ guitar as it was taken by the person I sold it to. I did have to modify the color as the guitar had been painted since I sold it however it is the actual original guitar.

Once I started making some progress I did begin to understand the role of some guitar pedals so I purchased an Ibanez FC10 – FatCat distortion and the DOD FSB-75 Flanger pictured below:

When I turned 16 years old my parents gave me my first real guitar. It was a Kramer 600ST which I still own today. It had a Floyd Rose tremolo and a reversed headstock however I wasn’t fond of the headstock (because Eddie’s headstock was not reversed!!!) so I had it replaced with a 615ST neck before taking it home.

I also replaced my amp with a Fender Power Chorus which was super loud! I have literally never played the amp with a volume setting higher than 1.5.

I still own this solidstate monster however I’ve had to consider other options as it was simply too loud for home use.

Since then, my guitar, amp, and pedal collection has grown as some of us seem to feel like we need to be ready for war when the time comes but I’ll get into other gear in other posts at some point.

The items listed above however are a big part of my early days, my musical journey as as every item also represented a new discovery, a new departure, and a new level of knowledge and experience.