Again, thanks to everyone who gave guitar advice - I got the Ibanez in the end, and it's a very nice guitar :) It feels a lot better than my old one already (for a start it doesn't cut your finger when you slide up and down the neck, which is a huge improvement).

At the same time I ordered a Pod X3 which I got... not cheap but mildly less expensive than normal from a distributor on eBay, and it's set up on my desk looking absolutely enormous. I've been playing with it this evening and already have a lot of new ideas just from looking through the presets. :)

Overambitiously I had a go at piecing something together with the new tones - this is a fragment of the intro for the next song in line for upload (which still isn't finished and is creeping over 15 minutes long). I still have a lot to learn about mixing it together to sound at all professional, but I really like what this thing can do so far.

http://www.clickteam.info/davidn/mu.....d-fragment.mp3