I've been a singer/guitarist, lately also a drummer since '88 or so and while I don't really gig any more been there done that, mostly around the turn of the century. Last proper band gigs were in 2008.
What I like doing the most is recording and producing stuff in my home studio. I do a lot of projects and sessions and whatnot, only this year I've released or made half a dozen EP's or CD's, several videos. Not all of it has been released or maybe ever will, but anyhow. And I do a lot of cover songs, mostly vocals, just this week I did vocals for two new Judas Priest covers Hellbent For Leather & Electric Eye. Halford voice suits me well, as does Alice in Chains and such, but I love to do some more rock/pop oriented stuff myself for solo work.
But, it's all just a hobby. After dozens of releases over the years, hundreds of songs and whatnot, I have never made a penny with music and never will. A handful of gigs back in time paid more than costs but overall it's strictly a hobby. All my music is downloadable for free anyhow. On my web page there are 166 songs I've recorded freely available, over half the songs I ever recorded that I have permission to spread/are mine.
Anyway. I also like to tinker with guitars. All my axes are something I have semi-built myself, meaning that they are all based on some great neck and base, and then I've redone them to match my requirements.
The last specimen just for an example was a used Gibson SG which I stripped and re-tinted after reshaping the neck to my liking, put in good quality hardware to replace the stock crap, and had new frets put in. I do sometimes do my own fret work too but I have a great luthier friend who does stuff for me at good prices :-) now it's an awesome guitar.
Most of my guitars have active EMG85 pickups, which I find to be the very best sounding pickups I ever tried and I have used quite a lot of different ones over the years. Been considering putting them in this last SG as well.
While I concentrate on vocals in my home studio I also have a Marshall JVM halfstack that I modded myself to more 'vintage' sounds and in addition to that I use a lot of Amplitube 3 for guitar recording. I have an Alesis e-drum set and a Pearl set for the band I now drum for, and a few acoustics and a bass. A Cubase 6.5 based DAW system.
I'm quite iconoclastic and down-to-earth dude they say and can't say they'd be wrong :-) let's just say that if you want to argue whether guitar body woods matter, be prepared to provide hard study data. I've built a guitar out of stone even and it sounds just as good as the rest :-)
A few images here just to introduce meself:
