Gear obsession

Right there with you, I have a fully treated room but it's too small.. The first thing on my gear list in "reality" is a new house . You can work around it though (to a certain extent), I tend to go for smaller monitors and try to place treatment so I don't get buildup / standing waves in area's and do the best I can with what I have.

On a side note, I do believe quite a few of us like talking about and aquiring gear as much as we like making music. Shopping impulses and doing research can actually be quite enjoyable, although as you said you might not actually end up improving sonics just sidestepping with a different flavour.

The rules:

1. Skill and performance trump gear every time.

2. #1 notwithstanding, gear is still important.

For me, some of it is wanting to know what great, classic gear sounds like. I'd never bought an LA2A and didn't know what it sounded like. So, I bought one. Now I know. Yes, perhaps there are less expensive clones, but I'm keeping my LA2A. If I want another one, I'll buy a clone. Then I'll know.

The key to GAS financially is to know how to spot good deals and then turn them around quickly if you don't like them by selling with minimal losses. That takes skill imo. I think it's easier with classics that don't lose their value much. It's much more difficult spotting and staying away from what is the the latest and greatest but gone tomorrow item and what is the latest and greatest and going to stay that way item.

I like trying different pieces of gear to see what I like and don't. The best way to demo gear is by buying used and selling to buy something different.

I generally buy used gear when great deals pop up and rarely sell for a loss. The downside of buying these deals is that sometimes I need to sell pieces that I like to cover the cost of a deal that I grabbed. I've had a few items that I've purchased multiple times now. I've owned the Trident 80B strip twice. I've probably purchased 8 Tonelux compressors at this point and sold a couple, traded a few, and still have some. WA76 three times.

As for the sound, I think better gear makes the process smoother. A carpenter could cut through a board with a nail file, but a saw will provide a better experience.

I find it's much easier to say, "It's not about the gear", when you already own nice gear.

I do believe as stated by JK above great gear can get you there faster

Not in the US, I checked sweetwater and it's $1495.00 still not dirt cheap by any stretch.

tasteliketape

Not in every scenario, you may find that some mic's whether expensive or cheap just don't sound great on some singers. Putting an expensive LDC on a guitar cab doesn't necessarily mean it's going to sound better than an SM57 / MD421 combo which has been tried and tested. If we take it out of context and say great gear makes things quicker, not necessarily expensive gear then I'd agree completely.

Although that's what he might be saying anyway??!

KM84's, Bock 251, Flea 47 and Twin Servo pre's would be the pieces of gear I would part with last.

Overall they probably excel in their own areas more than anything I have.

Yes, that was a cute one...

but the telling thing is how something translates to a mix, not how it sounds on its own. As much as I might believe otherwise, I can't always hear what makes a microphone so great on its own, but I sure as heck can when it gets in a mix.

My first "big" gear purchases..

Gefell M930 mics and Neve 1272 clone preamps.

HUUUUGE disappointment.


Why?

First off, I never had experience with "good gear" at that point, but reading forums full of descriptions made it seem like I'd be getting finished sounds without doing any work.

Second, the rest of my gear acted as bottlenecks, especially the monitors. If you can't hear what's going on, why would you expect to hear a difference?

3rd, my obsession with the "gear" made me overlook the "mix". I was too absorbed in what each piece of gear was bringing to the mix that I didn't focus on the whole.


It's human nature to find ways to short-circuit the work involved. We are hard-wired to conserve energy and time, it's in our DNA to do so, and be lazy. We also have the drive to be better than one another. That's also hardwired, and it's basically the human form of social hierarchy. Birds show off with complex mating dances and bright colors.. Plumage..

Nice cars, nice clothes, makeup, and even gear are just plumage for humans.. The problem is that marketing preys upon this fact, and "it'll save you time and money" is just appealing to the human need to both shorten the amount of time and energy involved in perfecting something, along with being able to show your plumage to prospective clients, and online forums alike.


So, after being involved in furthering the circle of gear: Buy gear, be disapointed, buy different gear, be disapointed, buy different gear, be disappointed...

I found that it's the nitpicking the details that causes gear lust.

As for the M930's and the 1272's..  I found that it's not the quality of the sound, but how they work in the mix.  They just work, and without all the fuzz and buzz and noise and mud.  Workhorses that get me further, faster.

I've certainly heard things done on mackie mixers that sounded fine.. for the type of song that was mixed.  Sometimes you just get the right combination and it works.  

However, I also believe that professionally proven gear just gets you further, faster.

I've told the story many times here, but the short version is that I once believed that I could produce the level of audio quality that high-end studios get, but using low-end gear instead.  I just *knew* that I would be the one to finally make it work where so many others had failed.  After many years of failing this, I decided to start buying or building time-proven professional level gear.

I decided to make a list.

On that list I placed every mic, preamp, compressor, and other effect that I read/heard the pros using.  Overall, it's the same handful of mics, preamps, compressors and other effects that they all use, and an overall extremely small portion of the pro-audio marketplace.

U87, U47, 57, 421, 414, R121..
1073, 1084, 312..
1176, LA2A, LA3A, 160VU, SSL g..

..And so on.

So these professionals, with just about any brand/model of gear to choose from, always end up using the same gear?  That's the question I asked myself..  I was forced to acknowledge that it comes down to one major point.

They deliver known results that have been tested by many over decades of use, and always work in the majority of situations.

I also was forced to acknowledge that most of the lower-level gear out there generally portrays themselves as "getting you close" to some other professional gear.  Lots of mics "sound like a U87" while lots of preamps "sound like a neve", etc.   However, it's almost always a case of those "sounds like" products work OK on a much smaller number of sources that have been carefully picked for marketing purposes..

Case in point:

When I first got my Gefell M930's, I actually thought they sounded kinda boring.  Up to that point, I had a couple SP B1 mics that I had bought because they were marketed as audio wunderkind, and they were cheap.  They had a lot of HF sizzle, which I mistook as "detail" at the time (I had nothing else to compare to at the time).  It took a while before I had monitors and other gear good enough to realize that what I thought I knew about mics was a big, fat, LIE. 

It really drove home that I needed to focus on using professional gear to get professional results, and for the most part, getting rid of any gear that wasn't on my list and obtaining stuff that was on my list.  Once I started doing that, things really started getting easier for me.

It turns out I was doing a lot of fighting the problems with the cheap gear, but not realizing it.  Muddy bottom end?  Gone.  Sizzling top end?  Gone.  Being able to clearly identify frequencies?  YES.  Being able to identify and work on placement of instruments in the sound stage?  FINALLY.

This whole process set me back years and years.  I'm finally to a place where I worry more about getting bands to rehearse before coming to the studio, and where I worry about getting the vibe of the mix right, before worrying about the gear.  I rarely even think about the gear now.