Originally Posted by: tehplatypuscan't agree with you on the gibson suggestion...finding a quality built gibson right now is harder than finding a quality built mexifender...going used might be better for that...but i still think parker and prs are the top of the line guitars right now. i've heard a lot of good things about the variax...but when i want a hollowbody, i like to play a hollowbody...feels weird/fake to get the sound without the gut feel from it.

as far as pods go...they are really nice but getting a quality amp should be higher on his list than an amp/effects emulator...i mean if you're running quality effects into a crap amp...it'll still sound like crap. they're extremely useful for recording but not useful for much outside of that unless you get that amp that uses the pod basically as a head (excuse me for forgetting what brand and make it is).

I got a **** hot mexi California strat for 500 usd and it rocks !! It is my first "go to" strat leaving the US made in the tonal dust. I got a second hand LP studio for 600 bucks.....(yes that is 300 pounds) and it sounds and plays just as well as my 1700 dollar 1960 reissue LP. All of these axes sit next to a PRS CE24 and a Jackson DKMG and have 20+ years of my playing experience to live up to. And they all do.

Pods, well I have an XT and and a podpro and they are some of the nicest bits of kit I have, be they in front of an amp or going into a MOTU 828 mk II or even into a USB port.

As far as recording goes, I can stick a really nice LDC (like a AKG C414 or a Shure KSM44 running into an Avalon pre into an MOTU 828 sampling at 24/96) in front of my TSL100 / 4x12 or I can use a POD. Both sound great. The TSL is not even a little bit portable and certainly doesn't have a headphone jack. So, to write off a pod where portability / headphones / neighbors may be in issue is not necessarily useful.

The POD FX are also very nice though a little inaccessible if you don't have a floor board. Another brilliant thing about PODs is re-amping and I know a bunch of people that use theirs live feeding it either into an amp or strait into the PA.

As for the variax, be it a hollow-body variax or a solid body 3-700, they all rock !!