I hope I may be allowed a slightly self-serving post. Although, to be fair, I reckon there’s something here that might well interest all you guitar geeks.

If you’re a regular reader, you know that I run Haze Guitars here in Ireland, building custom instruments and performing repairs on pretty much anything with strings. Well, I’ve been working with Radio Nova (also in Ireland) on a fantastic competition. Next week (the first week of October), Nova will be running their Rocktober 500 Countdown competition and the ultimate winner will get a completely custom guitar or bass.

Let me just reiterate that: It’s a completely custom guitar or a bass.

The winner will get to meet with me at Haze Guitars to discuss and decide on their desired specification and I’ll then go and built their dream guitar.

Pretty cool, eh?

More information as I can. For now, twiddle your radio dial to 100FM for Nova and pop to Haze Guitars. Stay tuned to both.

For completeness’ sake and to avoid international-internet disappointment, the competition is open to residents of the Republic of Ireland.

You’ve read about the new Joe Bonamassa Les Paul from Epiphone. You’ve broken open your piggy-bank and counted all your pennies. Not enough, not enough. Maybe you could take on another paper-round? But, it’s a limited edition guitar. There’s no time. What can you do?

One thing you could try is winning one.

Over at Epiphone, you can enter a competition to possibly win yourself an Epiphone Joe Bonamassa Les Paul.

Why wouldn’t you enter?

Maybe that paper-round money can go towards an amp.

The Razer guys are giving away a guitar.

Not just any guitar.  This is a custom Atomic Destiny guitar.  The very same guitar, in fact, that is custom-made for Razer guitarist, Jeromy Graves.  The guitar will have a custom paint job and Razer graphics.

Not only that, before the winner gets his or her clammy riff-digits on the guitar, it will be played on stage.  On April 28th, the guitar will be played during the last song of the evening at the famous BB King Blues Club and Grill at the Lucille Cafe. The song will be Superpaun (first single off the Dark Devotion album).

Below you can see Jeromy himself driving about, sporting a splendid little beard (I had one just like it in my youth) and wielding a half-finished axe – the very axe that will be played and won by you.

Maybe.  First you’ve got to enter.  Entries are open until June 10th, 2010. Razer’s site has the info.

And, if that’s whetted your appetite for seeing Jeromy and his custom Atomics, check him out below as he shows some of them off and gets a tour of the Atomic workshop.

Here’s one for all you crazy youngsters with your YouTubes and your internets and whatnot.

Epiphone are offering the chance to win one of their, rather nice, Masterbuilt acoustic guitars. They’re all-solid, well put together and very, very handsome.

To be in with a chance to win, you need to video yourself playing something on an Epiphone acoustic, upload it to somewhere on the net and submit the link to Epiphone. They’ll scrutinise them and carefully adjudicate (i.e. laugh at them) and the best one will be published on Epiphone’s own site and will win a Masterbuilt guitar. Nice.

I realise the odd irony of requiring you to already have an Epiphone guitar in order to win an Epiphone guitar. If you don’t own an Epiphone you can always borrow one or sneak a video camera into a music store while you ‘try’ one. If you already own an Epiphone, wouldn’t you like to supplement it with a Masterbuilt?

More info and rules over at Epiphone.

Wanna win Hendrix’s entire back catalogue of music?

‘Course you do.

to mark the release of the Valleys Of Neptune album, Sony Music Ireland are giving away all of Jimi’s work.  Sweet.

To be in with a chance to win, pop off or Sony Ireland and answer the simple question asking when Jimi Hendrix was born (Wikipedia is your friend if you don’t know the answer).

Closing date is 12th of March so get your rocket-powered skates on.

With the Experience Hendrix Tour getting ready to hit to roads in March, Fender have snaffled tickets for six of the nineteen shows and are giving them away, the crazy bastards.

If you feel you’d like to watch, Billy Cox, Joe Satriani, Jonny Lang, Eric Johnson, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Brad Whitford, Doyle Bramhall II, Ernie Isley, Living Colour- Double Trouble’s Chris Layton, Los Lobos, Susan Tedeschi, Sacred Steel and Hubert Sumlin all do Hendrixy stuff, you need to get yourself over to Fender and enter the competition.

Fender have two tickets for each of the following shows:

• March 6 – The Joint By Rogue at the Hard Rock Hotel – Las Vegas, NV
• March 11 – The Warfield – San Francisco, CA
• March 16 – Uptown Theatre – Kansas City, MO
• March 20 – 
Fox Theatre – 
St. Louis, MO
• March 23 – 
Akron Civic Theatre – 
Akron, OH
• March 27 – 
Fox Theatre – 
Atlanta, GA

They will pick the winner 3 days prior to each concert, so get a move on.

Two new Epiphone competitions for all you greedy, competition geeks to enter.

First up, pop over to Epiphone and register to be in with a chance to win one of their new SST hybrid acoustic/electric guitars (left).  A chambered mahogany body and a spruce top with electrics from Shadow.  This is the steel string one.  Nice.

To win the SST, go to Epiphone.

Next up, Epiphone, Krank Amplification and RAZER (you have to do it all in uppercase – it’s the law) have teamed up to present the Big Rig Givaway.

By going the RAZER route, you can win an Epiphone Les Paul Standard and a Krank Rev SST amplifier head (the Krank SST is definitely no relation to the guitar mentioned above).

Second prize winner will get a, splendidly named, Krank Distortus Maximus guitar pedal.  Husband to a murdered wife, father to a murdered son, Distortus Maximus will have distortion, in this world or the next.

I should write copy for these guys.

Go.  Compete greedily and geekily.

Line 6 are giving you the chance to win one of five XDR955 Wireless Microphone systems.

The XDR955 has all sorts of clever digital boffinry included to allow top-notch 24-bit sound and secure, interference-free transmission and it can be yours if you pop over to Line 6 and register for their competition.

Win one and you could have just saved yourself the RRP of US $859.99 (although we’ve seen them as low as $499).

The closing date for this competition is 5th February.  Learn a bit more about the system at Line 6.

Off you go then…

Epiphone, generous souls that they are, are giving away ten custom guitars in conjunction with AP Magazine.

The guitars have been customised with a special paint-job celebrating one of four bands:

• Cartel
• A Day To Remember
• Third Eye Blind
• Motion City Soundtrack.

To be in with a chance to win one of these, point your browsie-thing over here and fill in the relevant details.

That’s it (although I’m sure AP would appreciate it if you hung around and took a look at their site).

We mentioned the launch of the, rather handsome, Epiphone Thunderbird PRO bass a while back.

Did you see?  Did you want?

Well, if you did want one, now’s your chance to win one.

Just pop off to Epiphone’s competition site, pop your email address in the email address field and you might just win a T-Bird Pro.

Not too shabby.

Closing date is 31st of January, 2010.