I was doing a search online for some information on a certain make of guitar, "Marlin" they made copies of popular ones like the Stratocaster etc. they also made thier own versions, i used to own a "Marlin Sidewinder" Strat based shape but instead of the 3 single coil pic-ups, the Sidewinder had twin active Humbuckers, it played like a dream so much so i had it poached from me by my mate Tom who fell in love with it after borrowing it to try out on a gig. I didn't mind it was too good of a guitar for a drummer to own, Tom still owns it and plays it regularly on gigs.

So anyway i had come across a Marlin bass guitar it was copied off the Fender Precision or the Fender Jazz however the Marlin had 4 controls and a selector switch i checked on ebay none for sale so i googled it, no images and the net was mainly full of references taken from forums. i clicked on a few links and ended up reading stuff from forums, what a bag-o-shite these idiots type, some guy had posted a question regarding a Marlin Strat copy, i.e. quality of build, performance, and all these so called musicians ripped it to shreads slamming the Marlin as nothing but rubbish and telling the guy to throw it in the nearest skip. i doubt most of these idiots have never even held a Marlin guitar let alone played one, at the end of the day you could give the cheapest made guitar to the likes of Ritchie Blackmore and he'd play it and make it sound brilliant, hand these forum snobs and knobheads a custom built Fender Strat with Roland pic-up and gold plated strings and they'd play the intro to "Smoke on the water" (wrongly by stumming barre chords where as Ritchie plucks the strings). Anyway this Marlin question was still active in this forum so i signed up and posted a response, telling the guy that as long as it tunes up and plays like a guitar the name on the headstock is not important, and is probably better built than a lot of "name make" guitars, knocked up in some sweat shop in the back of beyond and have Fender slapped on it and a price tag to match, i told him about my "Sidewinder" and told him don't ask a forum full of snobs about budget price guitars.

Needless to say the forum page lit up with comments demanding to know what guitar i own, so i listed off my collection, which shut some of them up but some knobheads still wouldn't accept that Marlin could make a guitar worth playing so i told them of my Marlin Sidewinder and how a guy who owns an original 60's Fender Strat fell in love with it and bought it off me, they couldn't get their collective rock filled heads around this, so i asked the question, ok be truthful who on here has actually ever played a Marlin? None of them! People read stuff and log it in their heads they over hear conversations but never actually check things out. It reminds me of the time "Dream Team" came out the movie starring Michael Keaton i was in work telling someone how funny it is when Joe jumped in on the conversation "its just a rip off of "one flew over the cuckoos nest" i asked why so? Well its just is its the same story line, "hmm apart from both being based in a mental asylum i couldn't see any match, "have you seen it?" i asked, yeah, ok tell me the story line, he couldn't basicaly he'd not seen the film its just what he had heard or read.

Paying top money is no guarantee for anything, i own a Pearl export drum kit, its a mid price drum kit but i love it, prior to that i owned an Aria Royal kit, which is a budget price drum kit, but with time and know-how i had that kit sounding just as good as any. Now some years ago Tom asked me to go along to watch his band rehearse and see if i could give their drummer a few pointers, i went along the drummer had a "Drum Workshop" kit, now a DW was the big thing at the time kits ran in £1500 upwards, having said that, this kit sounded shit, he had taken it out of the box set it up and started to play, the snare was a million miles away from being set up correct, add to this the kid didn't have a clue about drumming, Tom introduced me to the kid and said "if you need any advice Pauls the man to ask" the kid just blanked me so i left him to it. Tom asked me what i figured on his playing, i said to Tom, in truth, hes a waste of time, he has no feel for drumming and is too arrogant to ask advice. Fair play to the kid he was trying to do things right paying for drum tuition trying to read drum music, but when your playing covers of the Shadows songs its all about feel.