Is this forum even alive? Anyway...

I have a neighbor who is a bit of a shut-in. I think he is now on disability as I haven't seen him go to work in several months. Other than eating (he is quite large), his only hobby is making noise with his guitar.

By noise, I mean just that. It would be an overstatement to call him a bad guitar player, as none of the sounds he makes resemble music in any way. I am not exaggerating. Imagine the most awful racket you can coming from a guitar. He is worse than whatever you thought up, but he seems to enjoy doing it quite a bit. I am glad he has something to keep himself occupied.

However, this presents me with an obvious ongoing problem.

My tentative solution is to buy him some sort of headphone amp + fx setup. I don't think he has the budget to do so himself. My goal is for something with so many bells and whistles that he likes those noises much better than what he can get from his current gear.

Obviously I don't want to spend a ton of money on this, and quality is not very important. I'd like to do the whole thing as cheap as possible, but I do want there to be lots of crappy effects to keep him motivated to use the headphones instead of his amp. I think it would also be ideal if there was no way for him to plug this new gadget into the amp, since flanged, distorted and reverbed cacophony isn't likely to be an improvement from my point of view.

I've been looking at some of the Vox stuff, and it's affordable enough, but I'd like something with even moar fx, and I don't think Vox quality is necessary, nor would it even be appreciated. Suggestions?

Your problem is going to be the "not be able to plug into the amp" part.

I would check out one of the Boss or Zoom crap effects boards.

You're probably better off getting him some lessons.

bump from dead... but just want to say i would knock on his door and tell him "dude certain hours need to be predetermined for the guitar" if its bothering u like that. y should u have to spend ur money lol

He already limits his playing to "reasonable" hours, but it's such an awful racket that there really is no reasonable time or place for it. I'm willing to spend my money because for less than $75 I can outfit him with a Vox amp and headphones. That's a very small price to pay to maintain non-hostile relations with the overweight shut-in I am probably going to be living next to until he dies from some obesity-related illness (which at his age and weight probably isn't too far in the future).

I'm letting it ride for now because open window season is over and I can't hear him when I'm inside. Basically I pity the guy more than anything. Making noise with his guitar is pretty much the only thing he has in his life. I don't want to take that away from him, I just don't want to hear it.