I demanded he bring me to the dealers house the day after he told me. I searched the guys entire house and offered to give him money on top of buying it back from him. No luck, the dealers is whacked out of his mind and had no recollection of it. Its not his problem at all though. His parents are giving him another chance at home before kicking him out. They are actually quite well off, and not at all like him. He came from great roots. His mother is a chemist making 6 figures, and his father works for the state as a civil engineer. He is currently on Soboxin, and as long as he keeps taking it he can't get into opiates, as it blocks the neurotransmitters or some BS that keeps them from working. He was my best friend growing up, and after I joined the military he got into bad ways. I elected not to let his mom or dad know, as they have already had enough of his ****. I am giving him the opportunity to make right with myself and others without dropping the bomb to his mother. She has even kept a lot from his dad, who would probably and literally murder him.

^well that's a crap situation if i ever heard of one but you DO lay out your path of recovery clearly in there.

6 figures.

yeah, auntie can buy you replacement gear. she can also do it without uncle finding out if she wants to keep playing enabler for junior.

it's not your responsibility to take care of your cousin no matter how close you were when you were growing up. it's not your fault he got into bad ways when you left, you are not his pet / servant. so long as everyone is willing to tiptoe around his BS he's going to keep pulling it.

Man, I give you mad respect for handling your situation the way you did. If it were me, I literally would have killed him, harvested his organs and sold them on the black market.

Playing guitar for fifteen years by now. Also done some vocals. I own Ibanez exr-170.

I play the Mellow Tone chromatic harmonica by Hohner, two Paddy Richter tuned Suzuki pro-master harmonicas in G and D (the latter with valves), a Golden Melody in A, a Blues Harp in G, a couple of Lee Oskars in country tuning and natural minor tuning and my favourite: a Suzuki Manji in C :)

Edit: All the harmonicas mentioned except the first are diationics.

I finally got a new bass.

An Ibanez SR500. It is orgasmic to play compared to the piece of crap I have been playing since I started learning. I am completely and irreversibly in love with this bass. It is the lightest bass I have ever held, it's nice and small, well at least it feels small, which is perfect for me because I'm small, it sounds great - bright and snappy but able to work a range of different sounds. And, suddenly I'm a much better bassist on this bass. The only thing is that I think the action might be a little low so I'll have to adjust that possibly.

NICE

i really like the wood grain finish.

what makes you think the action is too low? are you getting buzzing issues on open notes?

Not so much buzzing, well a little bit, but more so issues with the strings hitting the frets even when I'm playing lightly? It's not really a huge issue. Could it be the truss rod or something? I am pretty clueless when it comes to setting up a bass :o:

Hold down the first fret and the last fret at the same time. If the string touches the the twelfth fret then it needs a truss rod adjustment.

Hrm, it doesn't touch but it is ridiculously close...