Wow, an Aria Diamond exactly like that one was my very first elec guitar, got it around 1974 from a pawn shop in Cape Town, R80 if I recall. I loved the 335 shape but it's a hollow body with a bolt-on neck so the sustain wasn't too good. I also remember the neck being a bit narrow and the frets a bit low, so I struggled to play it. I got rid of it after a year when I got a Fender strat. It didn't end there though - I then got a strat-shaped, Aria-built early 70s Epiphone with the same pickups as the Diamond (this Epi is the model Kurt Cobain famously played in the early days of Nirvana), which I loved the sound of. Then about 10 years later I got the 12-string version of your Aria Diamond - same shape and pickups, hollow body and bolt-on neck, but with a tremendous amount of mother-of-toilet-seat plastic on the enormous headstock. This has become one of my fave guitars and features on tons of recordings. I much prefer it to my old Fender hockeystick elec 12, which I could never get to stay in tune and which I eventually got rid of. Your Diamond is likely to sound sweet with some mild distortion (like from a tube screamer with the drive on 3 or 4) to improve the sustain, and if you're anywhere near your amp you should be able to get some easily controllable feedback. have fun

Hi redant, it sounds like your speaker is a 12-inch. Bass is best played through a 15-inch speaker, which is designed to reproduce the low frequencies you need for a true bass sound. However, as long as you keep the volume down you can safely play your bass through a 12-inch - it would be fine for practising or jamming along with an acoustic guitar, say. But if the speaker distorts in any way you're too loud. If you're going to play in rock band with a drummer you'll need more volume, at which point you should get a proper bass amp.

Tom Morello is actually the sensible one . . . probably comes from his jazz training. If you want to anything fast really fluently, cleanly and evenly you have to use alternate picking, with your wrist at a straight angle to your forearm. For that you have to get the guitar up high. Feels weird at first, but try it. Once you get it you'll fly for hours. Now try that with a knee-slung les paul - your wrist will give out before your back. Chicks probably don't dig it though . . .

This is the introduction bit: I'm 58 and live in Cape Town. I learnt to play drums at 8 and guitar at 12. Over the years I've played rock, blues, country, pop, jazz . . . whatever, I like 'em all. Same for guitars: strats, les pauls, teles, 335s, SGs, casinos . . . they all have their strengths and weaknesses but I love them all, depending on the mood I'm in! I also run a studio where I record and produce all kinds of artists. My life-long obsession with music and the tools we use to make it seems to get worse the older I get, and my only ambition is to keep learning stuff . . . which is why I joined this forum. Lekker

This is my first post and I'm still finding my way around, but as a life-long plank-spanker I'm keen to join the chats.

Just picking up on an earlier thread about kicking back your amp: I've doing it for 25 years and it really is the way to go. Nothing new; Leo Fender was putting tilt-back legs on his amps and speaker boxes in the 50s. Use an amp that's just loud enough for you to hear yourself (because it's pointing up at your ears you'll need much less volume), place it close to you, tilt it up and treat it as your personal monitor - since it's miked up you don't have to point at the audience and people on the other side of the stage can hear you in their monitors if they need to. Point it away from singers or anyone else who have trouble hearing themselves.

This approach brings down the overall stage volume and might even solve the problem of the guy in the church band who needs to quiet down their stage volume, without using enclosure, screens or baffles.

However, sometimes there's nothing like a big stage and a screaming 4 x 12 ...