Whilst I was at university I met a guy called Chris Lord (hi Chris!) who was, and still is, a fantastic guitar player. We used to go to guitar shops together and just jam for what I remember being hours at a time. Because of Chris I started practicing with serious intent for the first time in my life (up to 9 hours a day during vacations).

One of the shops we used to go to was in Stafford. The guy who owned the place was very well informed about classical instruments but, fortunately for me, not so clued up about things requiring amplification. He was selling this beauty on behalf of some other bassist and ending up selling it to me for a fraction of its real value.

It is of through-neck construction and has an action and neck profile that are more like a 1980's "shred guitar" than a bass. Before moving to Scotland, Mark Wilmott gave it the ultimate in set-ups, making it a true shredder's dream!

The pickup is somewhat weak (I need to send it off to Kent Armstrong for a rewind), but this bass remains one of the best that I have ever played and is the last instrument that I would ever consider selling

Whilst living in Bicester I bought this bass from Aylesbury Music (see the guitars section, below, for more on Aylesbury music).

The stock pickups are surprisingly powerful and produce a very pleasing tone.

The fingerboard has cheat lines on it, which makes life just about bearable when playing it. How "real" fretless players manage to cope without some form of visual reference is a mystery to me (I guess that they just practice more than I have)

This bass is great for that jazz vibe (so long as nobody expects me to play like Jaco!)

This was the first serious instrument that I bought (whilst at sixth form - errrr a LONG time ago!). The choice was this or a 1972 Rickenbacker 4001. The Rickenbacker had tape wound strings and sounded awful. I didn't know any better and so bought the Fender (not a smart investment move there Mark!)

When I bought this is had a really cruddy additional J-type pickup at the bridge. I replaced this with a Schaller one in the mid 80's and it does a much better job (maybe I will replace it with a Seymour Duncan or DiMarzio pickup in the near future). It's also recently had a bit of a makeover with new scratchplate, volume/tone knobs etc.

Before I moved to Scotland Mark Willmot (a superb repairer/maker and a thoroughly nice bloke to boot) gave the bass a proper setup, thus returning it to the land of playable instrumentation.

It sounds great - really loud and clear with plenty of that old style Fender grunt.

Whilst this bass is capable of making Billy Sheehan type noises, its owner, unfortunately, isn't

Yngwie Malmsteen has always been a musical inspiration to me and so I thought that buying a Strat would make me able to play just like him. Unsurprisingly it didn't (perhaps I should have splashed out and bought a signature model?)

Having bought this guitar, I became a strat convert. I recently replaced the pickups with DiMarzios humbuckers throughout (YJM at the neck, HM2 in the middle and HM 3 at the bridge) and the sound got even better!

I bought this one mail order from Soho Soundhouse and it arrived perfectly in tune! (which suggests a reassuring element of care in the packaging and transportation) The guys at Soho Soundhouse have always been really helpful to me and have yet to give me anything but good advice.

This is the workhorse of my guitar collection.

I bought this guitar from Aylesbury Music (in Aylesbury by a bizarre coincidence!). The staff there were always friendly and helpful and their shop is one of the few things that I really miss about that part of the world (apart from the great friends I left behind).

Again, this guitar sounded great when unplugged but not so hot when put through an amp, so it got a Seymour Duncan humbucker in the bridge and a DiMarzio Virtual Strat at the neck

Once again, the sound was transformed and the guitar became a metal monster!

It has 24 frets and a Floyd Rose whammy bar and a subtle paint job

This guitar was given to me by my very good friend Eddy Frost, just before he moved to the States.

In fairness it used to sound awful when it was amplified (which is probably why Eddy used to prefer playing his acoustics) but sounded pretty good when it was played acoustically.

I convinced myself to pay the cash and buy a set of Seymour Duncan pickups for it (the ubiquitous JB in the bridge and 59 in the neck). The result was that it became a different animal! (do I get free pickups for advertising Seymour?)

The neck is quite chubby, but the action is super-low. Being a converted bassist, I find that the scale length is short and consequently find things a bit cramped at the dusty end of the fretboard. As such this one mostly gets used for rhythm work when I need an old-school meaty sound

My wife agreed that I could buy this one as a sort of wedding present / birthday present / "OK just buy the bloody thing and shut up about it" present.

Again I bought this mail order from Soho Soundhouse (because they were doing such a good deal on them) and once again it arrived in tune!

The tone is superb and I haven't been able to put this guitar down since it was first delivered. The trem system is one of the most stable I've ever played, despite the fact that the guitar doesn't have a locking nut and is an "economy" model.

The only problem I have found with this guitar is one of financial constraint; if PRS make guitars this good in Korea, what are their full on American guitars like? If you would like me to find out, PLEASE send me a cheque for £2500 and I will gladly give you a full report.

This guitar was bought for me as a surprise Christmas present by my beautiful wife. She says that it was worth the money to see the look on my face when I opened the large, Fender-loaded, box on Christmas morning. I was ecstatically happy that she had remembered that I had been droning on about wanting a strat in Daphne Blue with a maple neck- that's dedication to your geeky husband for you!.

This is a reproduction of a 50s strat model and so the pickups aren't organised to have a hum-cancelling configuration and the neck is of a chubbier profile than my other strat.

The maple neck makes a real difference to how this guitar sounds and when it's strung with a set of all nickel strings it really has that vintage vibe (I just have to remember to not use it on mega high-gain settings on my amp)

The tone is superb and it has great playability - as well as looking ridiculously cool (even when hung round MY neck).

This guitar was given to me by Steve Beats when we both used to work in Aylesbury. Steve was a keen car-boot sale trawler and used to make some really interesting finds, for not a lot of money. This guitar wasn't one of his truly best finds, but his boat-building skills allowed him to identify that the tone wood was pure mahogany, despite a ridiculously apalling thick brown finish <shudder>

Originally Steve was going to strip off the finish and put a piece of marquettry (sickeningly, yet another of his skills) onto the front. He got bored with the idea and gave the guitar to me instead.

Once the appalling brown clag and thick varnish had been removed, I gave it an oil finish and replaced all of the hardware with gold equivalents as well as getting, a set of Seymour Duncan P90 pickups. The transformation was remarkable and the tone is what you'd expect of a mahogany bodied LP with P90's..... loud and it barks like a dog with a megaphone!

This guitar also has a midi controller on it allowing me to do "keyboard" work without having to learn how to use a keyboard!

I bought this as a birthday present, for myself, because the piedog website was doing such a great deal on them. As a huge KISS fan, I couldn't really have a guitar collection without something as iconic as the Iceman. OK, so it won't fit into a standard guitar case (it came with its own, so that's not a problem) and the design is so obviously from the 70's, but hey, I've always wanted one.

The neck is typically Ibanez thin and the pickups have ridiculous amounts of power and tone, considering the price. The subtle tobacco sunburst belies its wacky shape.

The only drawback to this guitar is where it hangs (assuming that you're not going to play with it hung round your knees, a la Paul Stanley). The bridge itself sits in a line directly above the belt buckle area (where I'd expect the neck pickup to be on a strat) and consequently the majority of the neck is a long way away to the left. Being a bass player, this is somewhat nostalgic and poses no problems, but it's not going to be everyone's cup of tea.

This guitar is an out-and-out 70's/80's rock machine!

This was another of my purchases from Aylesbury music in the late 90's. The neck is more like that of an electric guitar and the action is low and smooth, thus reducing the shredding of my fingertips as I strum away.

The range of tones is mellow, even when played accoustically, with the slight treble bias that you'd expect from this kind of guitar. Plug it into an amp and all of that goes away as the onboard EQ will colour the sound however you like.

This guitar holds its tuning really well and records beautifully.

This is all the fault of my on-line friend Frank who asked me to produce some filk for him.

Having done so, I then had a rush of blood to the head and bought my Mandola (called Nelson) so that any future filk could be done with greater authenticity. Considering the price, this instrument sounds pretty good and holds its tuning pretty well (after I worked out how to adjust the intonation)

My friend Paul is a better mandolin player than I am (even if I do understand the theory better than him!), so one day I will have to put in some practice to be able to use this properly

This follows on from the Mandola (so can be kinda blamed on Frank again).

I realised that a lot of the "medieval" sounds that I was hearing in my head were lute sounds. Having bought one stringed instrument that differed dramatically from my usual guitars, I couldn't bring myself to buy a lute (apart from anything else they're expensive).

The compromise was to buy a nylon strung acoustic. Having done some surfing to see which ones were favourably reviewed, I settled on this one.

It plays well and has an action which isn't too unbearable for those of us who aren't classically trained. The sound is just what I was expecting and the fact that it's an electro-acoustic is a major bonus as I can record directly without having to mike it up

This pair get firmly blamed on my friends Frank and Paul (who don't know one another...yet!)

The bombarde is the woodwind equivalent of the bagpipes: as loud as jet taking off, it sounds great when played by somebody competent and sounds like an amplified histrionic goose fart when not.

This was bought so that I can do more authentic filk to keep Frank happy, but requires so much breath that you get a full aerobic workout just trying to play 3 notes. It's something that I need to build up to!

The pan-pipes can't honestly be blamed on Paul (although I'll think of some way to do so) as I bought them on a whim a long time ago and have never got around to learning to play them. Paul does, however, make amusing "phoooot" noises whenever he sees them (generally after a beer or two)

This is the magic box that converts the signal from the Roland GK2A pickup on my LP copy into MIDI signals that can be routed to any suitable MIDI sound module. Thus allowing me to play the banjo and/or bagpipes in that World Music mix that I'll be doing sometime soon (errrr.....not!)

A variety of MIDI modules with which to make non-guitar noises. Some of these no longer work, but are kind of welded into the tray on the top of my rack, so I'm stuck with them until I upgrade (but why would I do that when I could spend the money on a guitar?)

This is the best non-guitar musical purchase I ever made. Long before the current range of Line6 modelling goodies, good old Uncle Jim Marshall created the JPM1. Basically it's a valve driven MIDI-controllable preamp with a speaker emulator. Effectively it gives you a great range of classic Marshall amps in one box that you can then route direct into your recording console or into a power amp (just ask Dave Mustaine!).

This piece of kit allows me to get great bass sounds recorded without having to mike up my Trace Elliot amp. It also has some decent settings for acoustic guitar (not really the forte of the JMP1)

Err.... it allows me to link all of the other bits of rack kit together

This is getting on a bit now (being only 16bit signal processing) but still sounds great. It has all of the old-style plate reverbs covered, along with some pretty impressive ambient reverbs.

This used to belong to my brother Paul, so I keep it more as something to remember him by than anything else. It has a reverb that sounds different to the Digitech and some flanging and chorus effects that can be useful some times (if you're after 80's sound quality)

The rack would not work without this... no really!