Instead, I focus on ways to make my clients' experience with me better, so they never confuse the convenience and lower cost of home recording with the vastly superior outcome of working with professionals in professional spaces. Shortly put: we are not in competition with home recording, unless we allow ourselves to be.
As for gear repairs, it's a cost of doing business.
We are not in competition with home recording unless we allow ourselves to be... I love that.
And absolutely the whole thing about making the experience better..? That's why some people have 20-30 + year careers and some? Well those clueless zorches hang out a shingle, maybe rent an old storefront and are gone in 2-3 years. Seen 'em come & buy their gear when they go!
But guys like you & me are kind of approaching the whole deal from a way different angle then anyone at home... recording themselves, or what we might call the hobbyist crowd? And that's not a knock, some of those cats are killer players & do great stuff... but, there is a fairly defined, intrinsic line between full timers/shops for hire and someone who's really only working on their own material, and not relying on the investment/income.
Kinda like a racecar driver vs just a regular person who happens to buy a racecar. If your a pro driver you know your gonna tear shit up & burn piles of money... tires, blow a motor... maybe even wreck the whole thing. Cost of doing business.
Most of the people (certainly not all!) but an awful lot of "regular" people who buy a $250k car barely drive it. They'll get a Porsche track monster and with insurance & repairs being what they are its insured for about 3000 miles a year and rarely leaves the garage. When was the last time you saw a daily driver McLaren? Right.
Everything breaks eventually. Digital gear is great when it works, but when it doesn't oh boy that can be maddening... usually because its some kind of mission critical piece that spits out a cryptic code. Most "analog" problems can be patched around in 30 seconds...
And yeah like everyone else on the planet at any given point in time I have "projects" and a pile of junk that doesn't work, or doesn't work well. Mic amps that are dead... bad tube in something else... always at least one guitar in pieces. Probably two.
The "problem" more, lets say more involved humans have... is that when you have a pro studio of a given size you end up with a pretty vast collection of junk! Enough to fill a building... so there's just more of everything. And so way more chances for shit to break. Because there's simply more shit!!
As for the analog hassle vs ITB..? Whoo.
At this exact moment in time I'd be lying if I said I haven't been having thoughts of taking just about every single piece of outboard & whatever else, calling the vintage queen or whoever and trading it all in for a pair of 8 channel apollos and a wicked car.
To put some perspective on that, having just moved the business & everything else about 600 odd miles from northern NJ/NYC to the outskirts of Johnson City TN..? Holy crap, the studio & the house filled 3/4 of a full size semi. About 19,000 pounds (mostly packing paper, don't get me going on the movers) with an estimated 3000 pounds of "production gear"
There's one ATA case that no joke, has probably about 200 pounds of cable in it. All the snakes, like the 24 pair mogami / redco's for all the outboard... another trunk filled with just mic XLR & patching... Hell the iMac is still in its box in front of me (i'm on the laptop!)
Two drum kits with all the fixings, 15 plus guitars, however many amps & handful of cabs... At some point something's gonna need repair and its all packed in boxes.
And so I sit here, in a new town literally surrounded by everything in pieces and yeah, sure as fuck it'd be awesome to trade nearly everything and get some studio in a box happy meal kinda setup. Plug & play. Boy that'd be swell...
But then I'd be, we're going right back to your point in that now I'm just the dude with the Apollos & some cool mics. Just like every other home studio... and while that's fine, and you can (and I have, many times!) totally make a good, no-excuses record on one of those... its not very cool or interesting enough to base a business around.
So we surround ourselves with the tools of the trade and yes, all the rad toys and killer "tools" that make our lives easier & make for better, as in more interesting sounding records. Not that I believe anyone needs a lot of gear to make a record, but if you don't have a lot of stuff everything you have needs to be seriously good.
Grumble as I might over the next, however many hundreds of hours it'll take to knock not only all the gear, with the baby SSL desk and roughly 250 point patchbay back together... all the tech junk... BUT... also make the spot a nice, inviting clubhouse? So that the process of recording is a comfortable experience?
Totally worth it.
I've always viewed the equipment, especially the analog gear as an investment... certain pieces, especially major ones typically don't lose value. Don't go up, but the cash investment is usually safe & can be (mostly) recovered.
About 20 odd years ago (2001?) I bought a pair of Daking 52270 pre/eq from a guy who was selling a bunch to pay for a pro tools upgrade... Paid around $2k for those and holy guacamole I could easily get that back & then some. I've used 'em on countless projects and they've needed, knock wood maybe 2 or 3 fairly simple repairs? Had a relay go bad a couple 3 years ago...
I've also owned a handful of large format consoles & tape machines, and by sheer need did & still do all the daily driver kinda maintenance myself. Kinda have to because right, the tech nerd is like $100-150 an hour and the studio is charging $500 a day? $800? That's bad math.
If & when I come across some kinda bad apple piece that keeps going back to the shop, just can't stay working? Or if I have repeated problems with a certain company..? Their build / QC / engagement sucks? Punt that sucker. Life's too short.
