What's up with the used gear market?

An ex John Kennedy STA is not exactly a rare beast,………8)

You missed a huge swath of people. Doctors and the independently wealthy.

Serious pros want nothing to do with a lot of potentially hugely problematic vintage equipment that could die at any moment. Fixing it is time or money that could be used to do more work and make more money. This includes tube mics, old LAs with potentially wild detectors, and noisy even if recapped 1176. The guy I’ve heard of with the most real 1176 (not the reissues or clones) built his studio with money his family obtained through white collar crime. Not a pro using them to make a living at all.

Many more serious pros I know would rather spend 3k on something guaranteed to work than than 3k on some vintage retro thing that might be unrepairable. Unless it’s a something like a deal on some old partially broken console being used as a desk for a laptop somewhere they can restore and rack the individual modules from, sell off most channels, and throw the frame in the dump. Free money from the nouveau riche musicians and amateurs who want to belong and be cool rather than buy something new. The same as “vintage boutiques” replacing thrift stores for millenials and zoomers.

With high end gear like the Retro 176, the CL1b, and the Chandler RS124 readily available, I think buying the old gear has become too risky for most people. I also think many sellers are simply overvaluing their gear, but some gear hounds may fall for it because they are smitten by the allure of the magic bullet to get that "great pro sound".

While I'm not sure if I'm going to purchase much hardware, I'm still getting messages from sellers offering me significant discounts, especially if I deal with them directly off-site. They tell me their latest buyers flaked when it came time to make the purchase. The last used Black Boxes I saw weeks ago sold fairly quickly for almost the same as the new price. The demo up on VK has been there around a week at less than what those used sales went for. A lot of other stuff I've looked at is just sitting there. Items I set to watching status weeks ago haven't sold. Only two even received formal offers on Reverb or Ebay. Do you guys think a lot of the people who would be buying used gear are instead pouring money into Atmos setups? It seems like it might be smart to wait and see what happens with that before buying any amount of hardware that would set someone back badly if stereo becomes obsolete. Or one could mainly stick to this stuff that costs $65-$100 a month with Affirm or the VK credit card. Like a lot of people, I'm not going to be able to throw 50k+ at an Atmos setup and if Atmos somehow does become dominant, I'd hate to have spent on hardware that now would only end up being useful for my own entertainment.

The vintage stuff has the most history and plugin emulation. Lots of people are obsessed with 60's music and sounds. Waves and UAD have done a remarkable job hyping that stuff up for the last two decades. Then you go on the purple site and you find out that all your fav albums from the 60's into even the 90's were using the 1176 and all this vintage tech. There's no basic information out there that explains to people why something modern may be able to do what they want and do it better. Or that gear has maintenance costs at times. Buying the vintage gear or plugin emulations of it seems like a sure bet if you're new to things. Maybe some of these guys will apply themselves and learn it. If they've got some demanding job, maybe they'll play with the gear a few times and resell it. Or just put it away in some box somewhere. In my experience, if they bought it just to have something to use with their buddies on Friday nights, they won't want to put serious effort into learning it.

Seems like a lot of the covid buying habits are gone. Most everyone is back to spending like it's 2019 and I've read many times that gear prices became inflated as a result of the usual activities being closed. Maybe a lot of would be customers already bought what they wanted 2-3 years ago? I have no idea how badly the finances of most studios were affected by covid. It would seem plausible that a lot are still recovering. The finances of the customers probably took a huge hit too. The 480 owned by someone from Sum41 is up for sale for about 5k. Some other famous musician is selling all his stuff. There were probably others. Some of these sales must have been out of necessity.


It'd be really interesting to find out how Atmos is selling vs traditional used gear.

The pendulum always swings back and forth, but think the natural supply chain and inflation issues that come with a pandemic (making a sellers market) followed by the predictable exit from a pandemic as any fed would try to tame inflation by raising interest rates, means at some point the cheap and easy money of credit becomes tighter and more expensive, resulting in discretionary nonessential spending contracting, and a buyers market while they slow things down to bring inflation under control. Even in a better than expected job market. While inflation has been easing, they still have a ways to go before the pendulum will swing back the other way again.

The good news is - at least you can FIND a Fairlight now. They were unobtanium a couple years ago. Here's your chance guys....

www.ebay.com/itm/185906926838?mkcid=1&mkevt=1&toolid=20008&mkrid=711-53200-19255-0&siteid=0&campid=5337038272

Couple of thoughts. Shipping is ridiculously expensive right now…and Reverb is to sellers as Spotify is to songwriters

And they charge sales tax on the shipping, too!  WTF??  There's something fishy about that.

It's the same with everything. I know I'm preaching to the choir, but they're all just tools. There is literally ZERO reason to pay $30-300k for a compressor when you could buy something for a 20th of the price that essentially does the same thing. If I were independently wealthy, I could see getting into collecting guitars or maybe even mics...but good lord, we've lost our minds.

Nobody would buy and maintain a 50s car to drive to work everyday. They’re projects for museums and rich bored guys.

The people I know who purchased big ticket vintage items are not working audio engineers. I have several friends who are surgeons, tech executives, and business owners that earn either or close to 7 figures and they are the ones who buy vintage LA-2a, M50s, M269s, Tweed Fenders, etc.. etc..


I depend on my gear to work, so my appetite for investing in something that is going to require maintenance or downtime is very low. I would rather buy pieces from Audioscape, Serpent Audio and the like because I know they will (or should) be reliable.