J: ...look what I bought myself yesterday.

me: What is that? A Rocket Launcher? No fair!

J: The DigiTech RP100 is a guitar processor, of course.

me: A guitar processor? Of course, I knew that. Ah, what does a guitar processor actually DO?

J: A couple of weeks ago I sorted out all these tapes containing music which H and I recorded on our 4-track porta-studio. I haven't listened to these tapes for yonks. I was pretty dazzled. There were tunes I didn't even remember. Typically what would happen was, I would come up with a tune. H would programme the drum machine and record the drums. Then I would record two layers of guitars and the bass guitar.

Anyway, I liked my guitars quite effects-heavy. I used an echo pedal, which obviously creates an echo sound around what you play. I used a distortion pedal, which gives you that heavy metal sound and feedback. I used a flanger, which creates a swirling sort of texture. And I used a wah-wah pedal. You can use all of these effects in different configurations; you can have them all on at once, or you can combine them in different ways, or you can have them all switched off. So. I was listening to these tunes and thinking: We should work on these again, they're too good to be gathering dust in a cupboard (I mean that symbolically; of course I don't HAVE dust in my cupboards). So I dug out my guitar (a Fender Stratocaster) and dug out my equipment (mostly Boss) and thought: I'm going to splash out on a new effects pedal. This is where the DigiTech RP100 comes in. It contains all of the above functions in one programmable pedal. One programmable pedal, I tell you!

me: I, I don't know what to say.

J: No, I didn't think you would. Okay, it's a rocket launcher.

me: No no, it can be a guitar processor if you want. But just so you know, when you first said it was a guitar processor, I thought it might be like a food processor or something.

J: What, like, you put your guitar into it to make things like soups and smoothies? Bushra, have your friends been pressurising you into trying drugs?

me: I'll have you know I haven't touched a painkiller in WEEKS.