the power of nostalgia, impulsive/compulsive, GAS, etc

[spektRe]

been doing a lot of thinking surrounded by gear i never use, trying to figure out why i got it in the first place. i realized most of my equipment was bought out of impulsive while looking up equipment on people who i see as musical influences. made a decision to sell most of my equipment and almost start off fresh.

just wondering if any of you have any experiences with anything similar to this? what did you do? do you do anything to prevent buying something then once you get it you didn't really want it?

i mean it can be summed up in the obvious answer, will power and patients. just thought it might be nice for people to see they're not only one alone on this.

[meatballfulton]

Buying what your heroes used is almost always a mistake. Many of them used whatever was available at the time and later moved to something different as the technology evolved.

You should only buy what you can really afford and what captures your imagination. It's always fun to try out other gear to see what it can do, once in a while something will just grab you immediately. Buy it!

After 25 years of owning synths, I can tell you that they all pretty much do the same thing. They let you control the pitch, harmonic content and amplitude over time. You really don't need to have a lot of them around. Two or three should be enough...as long as it's the right two or three

[madtheory]

After 25 years of owning synths, I can tell you that they all pretty much do the same thing. They let you control the pitch, harmonic content and amplitude over time. You really don't need to have a lot of them around. Two or three should be enough...as long as it's the right two or three

Spot on

[Cumulus]

Yes, spot on indeed.

The strategy I have used has been to only buy at a bargain basement price.

It keeps me from spending too much cash and if I hate the synth I can always resell it at a modest profit.

Sometimes I end up selling something that I thought I would love or keeping something I thought I would hate.

[meatballfulton]

Sometimes I end up keeping something I thought I would hate.

OK, I'm curious...why would you buy something you think you would hate?

[spektRe]

Sometimes I end up keeping something I thought I would hate.

OK, I'm curious...why would you buy something you think you would hate?

lol. good advice meatball. funny you said 3, told myself no more then 3 keyboards. what are your thoughts on these "right ones". seeing as you been collecting almost as long as i been living. looking for 3 well rounded ones in the way of the esq can do things the ms20m/ody or p08 can't and visa verse.

1)esq-1 vs blofeld
2)ms20mini vs korg odyssey
3)prophet 08
4)s950

1)for more of a non-traditional waveforms digital vibe
2)a mono for bass,leads, and some sfx to sample
3)poly analog that can sound like 2 older synths i enjoy the sound of without having to fork out 1/2 the cash + not deal with vintage maintenance
4)older sampler for the crunchy drums/samples

anyone else every deal with this stuff? not to get completely off the subject of synths but i think most people deal with things like this in everyday life. can't speak for anyone else but i think one of the biggest things that blind people, or at least myself are emotions. funny in a way how something like that can sometimes throw rational thought out the window.

[ItsMeOnly]

Sometimes I end up keeping something I thought I would hate.

OK, I'm curious...why would you buy something you think you would hate?

Curiosity, bad hype, the possibilities are immense: for me the extremes were U-220 and 01W: the former I bought because of hype that it had great strings if you buy the "Super Strings" card - bought them together and... absolutely hated the thing - however it has a few nice Rolnd-ish sounds (nice piano, for example) so it's still here. Then there was 01R/W I bought because of interest in one particular "Jarre'ish" sound - I hated it outright after first auditioning and attempt to make my own sound - it was clumsy to edit, it didn't add up anything to what Wavestation couldn't do, it was covering with dust for almost A YEAR... until I discovered A27 Analog Pad: that was the pad I was searching for all my musical life - lush, stringy, warm... I mourned its loss when the capacitors leaked and ate the PCB (which is a common failure on 01W).

[Rbh]

Two thoughts : Software IS vapor ware. Hardware lasts about as long as you care for it. 3 months to 3 years typical for software. 30 months to 30 years might be pretty typical for hardware. Try to buy an open ended architecture if possible.

[recordbot]

I recently got to speak about gear with one of my musical influences, he also owns a large studio so his point of view was that a lot of gear that wasn't always reliable wasn't worth having around for the most part,

he advised me to dump my linndrum so I did and it ended up going to another of my musical influences, Ryuichi Sakamoto


now I miss those toms, even though 3 trips to the tech were required for 8 years of ownership of the linndrum

so what I guess I'm saying is in line with what everyone else is saying, experience with stuff helps but you should be sharing and exploring stuff without buying it and asking around about the reliability of things if constant trips to the repair shop will be an issue for you, ultimately it's inside your head where the music is and whatever you use to make it is less important that your creativity

[Cumulus]

Sometimes I end up keeping something I thought I would hate.

OK, I'm curious...why would you buy something you think you would hate?

Just to flip it.

Sometimes I change my mnd after playing something.

[meatballfulton]

Just to flip it.

OK, I did that back in the 90s a few times myself.

[gs]

I have never bought synths just because a hero of mine used one... but I have occasionally bought synths over nostalgic reasons, or because it was a synth I couldn't afford back in the day, but has become dirt cheap to buy used now... so I figured, what have I got to lose? Ended up flipping a few, and keeping a few.

The one I was most surprised by was the Korg Z1, and the one I was most disappointed by was the Roland Juno 106 (due to all the hype - I had to find out for myself).

I understand these synths are more than a decade apart, I certainly wasn't expecting the 106 to have all the modern features of the Z1. But I was like... meh... simple 1-osc 6-voice poly, only really good for "that" 80s sound, and paid as much for it as the Z1 itself. I had no real use for it. Flipped it, moved on.

[sigment]

Sometimes I end up selling something that I thought I would love or keeping something I thought I would hate.

Truth. I bought an mc-303 knowing i would hate the sequencer and general workflow, but got it anyway. Kept it way too long and finally ended up selling it for break even so all in all not too bad, but i knew I would not like it or use it when I bought it.

A few months later a found a cs2x for cheeeaaap on clist. I flipped it a few days later for a few hundred profit but really wish I had kept it longer to explore the possibilities. It sounded pretty good in hindsight... but then again most of them do.

[drawtippy]

I am a nostalgia freak, especially for 80s stuff. Hopefully you buy synths not on who used them but for the sounds they make. I've only bought when the price is good, it has the sound I'm after, and it just so happens to be an amazing synth.

When all these things intersect you deserve the synth and the synth deserves you!

[calaverasgrande]

personally I have a perverse fascination with 70's and 80's gear. I like to use it not to make stuff that sounds 70's or 80's, but is explicitly not of that era. I use a TB303 clone and intentionally do not make acid basslines with it.
The one nostalgia purchase I am guilty of is the Radio Shack/Moog MG-1.
I actually used to hang out at Radio Shack back in the early 80's. It was my first exposure to computers (TRS80!) and synthesis (MG1!).
It doesn't hurt that it has a different voice than my other Moog stuff.