For those saving for nice gear...

[yngzaklynch]

Let me offer some encouragement. Almost a year ago I recieved a custom Suhr I had ordered roughly 8 month ls prior. I worked many double shifts to make this guitar happen. That's not only more time at work but less time with my family. Let me bring up another aspect. How many of us have settled only to continue flipping gear. In the end this costs more and leaves us less inspired to play. The Suhr was better than I had hoped. I did my homework and bought the right guitar. It's bought and paid for completely. It's still the guitar i reach for every time I play. It sounds, feels, looks and sustains better than any guitat I've played before or since. So I'll get to my point. Great gear, that is to say the right gear for the individual player, is worth working and saving towards. No it doesn't have to be exspensive. But if the right guitar, amp, etc... Is pricey I encourage you to stick to your goal. In the end you'll spend less and play more. My 2 cents. Rant over.

 

[mystixboi]

love that guitar!!!

actually, i really love your other one more... that one's hot!!!

 

[yngzaklynch]

The first one is awesome. The 2nd one is me refining it, optimizing the design. Neither will ever get sold

 

[ElectricVoodoo]

Agree, well said.

 

[cecilbag]

Very well said. I agree. If you really want something, all the flipping and second guessing can cost you much more. It's best to just save and save to get what you're truly after. When it's perfect, it's worth the wait

 

[HilltopExplosion]

Great gear, that is to say the right gear for the individual player, is worth working and saving towards. No it doesn't have to be exspensive. But if the right guitar, amp, etc... Is pricey I encourage you to stick to your goal. In the end you'll spend less and play more. My 2 cents. Rant over.

This part I totally agree with. My favorite, best sounding, guitar... 50 bucks, and 150 for a pickup. A Guthrie Govan used to go for 1400 or less.. Now what are they? Too damn much! I snoozed, so I loozed

 

[Elric]

That's a good point and you probably won't get much argument in that it is worth it to buy quality... but FWIW that bit of it doesn't seem to apply to most here or some of the other boards. Seems to me that mostly folks here are not flipping crappy stuff looking for a quality sound, they are flipping quality stuff looking for the sound in their head. Some people are always messing with ghetto rigs but I see mostly guys going through lots of high end pieces. So really your implied point about knowing what you want is the real trick and the most generally relevant one.

This is, of course, a subjective view.

 

[Mailman1971]

Good post Jim. My problem was that with all these great amps and such out there.....
I wasnt sure WHAT I WANTED??

So yeah I went on the Merry go round of Buying/Selling/Trading.
Only pretty much to come back full circle.
I didnt see it as losing money but more of 'rental fees' for the time I had it in my hands.

 

[lll]

I wholeheartedly concur. So much so that years ago, I came up with:

The Suck Tone® Vicious Circle

The Suck Tone® Vicious Circle is a circle of suckage that sucks you in with its new gear smell, novelty, fad appeal and empty tone promises - but your tone never actually improves and you essentially wind up losing $$$ because you sell the Suck Tone® gear that you once thought was great but realize it wasn't... only to purchase newer Suck Tone® gear. And of course, the Suck Tone® Vicious Circle really takes advantage of the inexperienced.

Here are the insidious steps of Suck Tone® Vicious Circle:

1) sucked in by new gear smell, novelty, fad appeal and (empty) tone promises
2) purchase of Suck Tone® gear
3) new gear smell, novelty and fad appeal wear off; tone promises are found to be empty
4) disillusionment with Suck Tone® gear sets in
5) the selling off of Suck Tone® gear begins
6) use proceeds from aforementioned selling off of Suck Tone® gear to get (go back to step 1)

You get nowhere because you keep going through a revolving door of gear that never hits the mark. At any point in the Suck Tone® Vicious Circle, you can easily discern three things:

1) sucky tone
2) a revolving door of gear
3) loss of $$$.

And yes, I too was once caught up in the Suck Tone® Vicious Circle myself, but I pulled myself out.

 

[billsbigego]

To me, the incessant gear flipping is just to fill an internal hole that can't be filled with stuff. I'm just bored with my life. However, gear is not going to change that. I'm focused now on getting out of the matrix permanently. That will never happen by constantly losing my shirt on gear and focusing on new gear. Gear is gear. After a while you realize that it's not the tone you're searching for so much as that rush you get when contemplating something new. Then there's the honeymoon when you actually get it and then you're sitting and looking at all the money spent going WTF did I do?

I'm contemplating selling all my shit and focusing on my hillbilly band. The metal stuff is just too aggravating to me. I can't write metal tunes. I can write blues and hillbilly tunes. Comes natural to me. With metal, I was good. Then I took 10 years off and things just progressed to the point where it's depressing. 90% of guitarists are better than me and it just pisses me off that I quit for a long time. Seriously contemplating selling all my electric shit.

That's where I'm at.

 

[zuel69]

What next? Stop the porn obsession and actually spend time with my wife???

 

[Mailman1971]

I just like to try all the gear. Some of it stays, some goes.

+100 on this.

 

[billsbigego]

What next? Stop the porn obsession and actually spend time with my wife???

You better or else someone else will.

 

[PBGas]

Great post and very true. It's taken me a very long time to finally be happy with an amp. I wish I had have just gotten it years ago instead of getting on the hamster wheel of buy, selling, trading. However, through the journey, one does learn a few things along the way.

Guitars a bit of a strange thing too. You either bond with it or not. There really isn't any inbetween. I've bought an sold a few beauties and I regret only a couple of them but hey, that is the price of doing business when I wanted to get something else.

One thing that I have always done is use any $$$ that I make on the side with music, whether it be when I play live or do some private contract work with recording....is that I only use that to buy something....never from the family finances. It's an easy way to stay safe. If it takes longer to get something that is more pricey, then so be it. I wait patiently.

It also helps to have a few friends in the business that give you some great deals.

 

[Rick Lee]

So much gear I want simply is not local and cannot be tried out before buying. So I buy and flip. If I keep something, I usually sell something else to offset it. I usually buy when I can get it cheap enough that I can get my money back out of it if I have to flip it. I bought a EVH 5150 III and a 100S on the same day on eBay. Stole them both. I wanted to try them out side by side to see which one really sounded best and which was the best bang for the buck.

 

[John 14:6]

I agree completely.

 

[Valtyr]

I just enjoyed buying and changing gear, so even after I got into quality gear there was still a lot of trading/selling. Going through the churn allowed me to figure out what I really wanted and get gear that stays.

 

[Red_Label]

What gear I don't buy locally at my buddy's shop, I prefer to buy on the Sweetwater/Musician's Friend 24-36 months, 0% interest plans. That way, I get a long time to pay for it and I get to use someone else's money to finance it.


And a big ditto to the sentiment that moving gear is simply trying it out and keeping what works/inspires and sending what doesn't to someone else to try. Sometimes I make money, but most times I lose a hundred or two. That's just the "cost of doing business" for me and it's worth it to get to try all of this stuff.

Having said all of that... I've got my third Tom Anderson on the way (just traded my LP Standard for it) and I love my Friedman Smallbox and Splawn Quickrod. There's NO "better" than the gear I have now (not even on the world's biggest stages). So my GAS to try new stuff is pretty low at this point.

 

[Racerxrated]

I just like to try all the gear. Some of it stays, some goes.

+100 on this.

Yup. I find that its harder to settle on an amp, and that has been my revolving door issue. Some I've had twice, three times..only to realize that damn...should a kept that one! Lol. But I can find a guitar in the 5-700 range that I like as much as any Suhr(tried 2) or Anderson(1). With the right pickups. Its the amp carousel that I fight....

 

[Red_Label]

I just like to try all the gear. Some of it stays, some goes.

+100 on this.

Yup. I find that its harder to settle on an amp, and that has been my revolving door issue. Some I've had twice, three times..only to realize that damn...should a kept that one! Lol. But I can find a guitar in the 5-700 range that I like as much as any Suhr(tried 2) or Anderson(1). With the right pickups. Its the amp carousel that I fight....

I was the same way... until I took home my first Anderson. That changed everything for me and my third is on its way. No more dumping expensive guitars to go back to sub-$1K axes for me. I've found the right guitars for me. Amp-wise, I'm pretty damn happy with my Smallbox and QuickRod. But who knows where I'll be in five years. Still... it's not like I'm gonna find anything "better".