A few of you (a very few of you...LOL) noticed that the forum is gone from the GT website. I wanted to just jot a short post today to fill you in on why I scrapped the forum. The reason is simple: No one was using it. In fact, the only person who understood how it worked was yours truly. Most all of you found it completely counterintuitive, confusing....NOT user friendly at all.

But with the demise of the forum, comes the birth of our awesome new social network. From the feedback and participation I've been getting, it looks like this application is a homerun with GT members. I want to thank everyone for getting involved and giving me such great feedback. Your input has been tremendous. When everyone contributes, we all benefit and our little online community of guitarist, bassists, and music enthusiasts grows.

Here's a mouthful: Fender Special Edition Custom Telecaster Spalted Maple HH Electric Guitar. (Say that 10 times as fast as you can without getting tongue tied.) Anyway, it's my honor and privilege to review this very fine instrument.

Let's start with its looks. The Spalted Maple Tele is absolutely stunning. Its carved maple top and bound mahogany body make it a work of art. It's the kind of guitar which improves the ambience of any room it's in. Hang it on the wall and it becomes a great...

Editor's Note: Excerpted from Chad Phillips' forthcoming book, "Guitar Therapy"

When I bought my first decent acoustic, I was fifteen years old and had worked all summer mowing lawns in order to save up enough cash for that guitar—a $350 Alvarez. It was good guitar for the money, but it wasn’t an exceptional instrument. Still, compared to its predecessors, that Alvarez was solid gold—a good value, and I played the snot out of it. But it wasn’t right for the style of music which would become...

This is just another update on the construction of our site. I hope to get back to blogging on what you care about most in this world (guitars) later this week. But for now, keeping users updated on where we are with the development of our social network is of primary importance.

Currently, I have the forum up and running. It's not perfect, but it's functional enough to get us by until I fix the bugs. To that end, I am strongly encouraging all members to fill out their profile information and upload their avatars. I can't empasize enough what an extremely important step this is toward...