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Between two solid days of battling with the Canadian Post just to get delivery of a guitar I objectively don't need and two weeks of trying to organize a modular amp/effects setup, I feel like I've finally hit that aha moment where my brain is starting to ask myself why on earth I'm doing all of this scrambling with gear when all I really need is two guitars and an amp that can do a reasonable facsimile of a low volume Blackface tone. Between the blue Soloway (that I've been playing for about 12 years) for lowered tunings plus my Mustang for standard tuning, I already have the two guitars that do everything I need (or am likely to ever need). A simple Fender Champion 40 does the basic tone I'm use and it does it at any volume level that I'm likely to need and if I ever start playing small restaurants again I can pick up a Chamîon 20 for $140 Canadian. So why am I bothering with all of this buying, testing, and selling (rinse and repeat over and over). Time for me to go into selling mode and get down to what I need and stop wasting money and time that would be better used to just play music.
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06-04-2022 05:22 PM
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Well said. Buying gear is for collectors, it doesn't improve your sound.
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Jim… realizations like that…
Its a 70’s thing)
(I follow you in August)
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Yep, with 15 guitars and 4 amps my gear needs are met.
No mas. Unless a great deal on something interesting comes up that is.
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Stop making sense Jim!
I look forward to watching this unfold. Is it really an epiphany, or just a moment.? Will it happen? How long can he hold out?
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You know, Jim, such blasphemy will get you "canceled" on this Forum, so ...
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gear is great
but it’s not as great as music !
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My own No Más moments come and go with stunning regularity. I'm such a weak man.
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I feel like that too - see my postings in the for sale section. I’ve come to the conclusion that playing is much more satisfactory than owning.
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that's your path, and to other people it's exactly the opposite, playing for 30 years on the same guitar and getting new guitars or and amps cause they feel the need to try new gears.
Never too late to learn something about yourself.
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Just a quick update ... Power amp and cab up for sale locally. Reverb pedal returned to the local store. Pedal board returned to Amazon. It's a start.
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Goethe said something like, "for real change to happen, it must be immediate and exaggerated"...
Originally Posted by Jim Soloway
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Hi, J,
Aside from players who are classic collectors(ie;Stringswinger and others), the concept, for me, is absurd. As a former multi-instrumentalist(Sax/flute/clarinet/guitar), I find that the average guitarist is always looking for another guitar that they believe will make their playing better. And, they follow this mania throughout their lives as they collect guitar after guitar and their playing never changes . . . just the eye candy in their lap. I own a Selmer Mark VI Tenor Sax that I played professionally for years. It is considered, by most, the best of the best and I never felt that my skills were inhibited by the instrument. In fact, its total mastery and hidden nuances could never be discovered by even the greatest players in a lifetime. So, find a quality instrument and learn to play it well as you discover its nature and intimate personality in your hands.
Marinero
P.S. I've only found this mania among guitarists. No other instrumentalists engage in this behavior . . . God save the drummer with this affliction! M
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And it’s not like we weren’t told this a thousand times in a thousand ways! Like many, I long ignored the sage advice of many people smarter than I am. I’m also now down to the minimum for gigging - Blu 6 plus ext cab, one solid & one archtop. I only keep a few of my early acquisitions because I love them - everything else is gone now. When my days as house band leader at a local club are over, the backline stays there. Originally Posted by guavajelly
With one carved 17” as a beloved homebody, a Little Jazz for backup, and an original RE 10 with Raw Dawg head under the piano, I take playing much more seriously than I ever did and hope it’s not too late to catch up at least a little bit to where I now realize I could’ve been.
It’s not what you play, it’s how you play it.
The faulty carpenter blames his tools.
”How do you get to Carnegie Hall?”……..”Practice!”
Practice in private to be rewarded in public.
Your best work has not been done yet.
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Yes- but you are talking about a '59 Les Paul or L5 or ES335 there! The best of the best! I could be happy with one of those too! Originally Posted by Marinero
To me the analog is more like a sax player doubling on flute, bari, soprano etc. I have different guitars for different sounds, but that goes back to my studio playing days, which is when I got them. I never purchased a guitar because I thought it would make me play better, only to get different sounds or help me to play in different ways. What I really don't understand is someone who owns like 15 stratocasters, (yes they are out there), that's crazy to me, and a kind of sickness in a way. I have 8 guitars and they are all completely different from each other. Not really looking for more. Okay, a nice ES335 would be welcome......
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Gear has been fun! However, at 62, I am looking at my collection of six amplifiers, two cabs, eight guitars, pedals, etc. Almost all of my pedals sit in a box 98% of the time; some of them have been in the box for a decade or more (I should make sure there are no batteries in those). Do I need all this stuff?
I don't have any gigs scheduled, I play with a bass player in the living room every Monday evening and I've been rehearsing with an R&B band on Tuesday evenings; the bass player doesn't ever want to gig again, after decades of dealing with that hassle, and the R&B band may never be organized and tight enough to gig. I don't foresee myself being the next great thing in jazz guitar that anybody is going to be knocking on my door begging me to play- if I was ever going to be the next great thing, that would've happened 30 years ago or more.
For the last two weeks I have been playing my GB10 a lot and to be honest it is all the guitar I would ever "need" to play jazz. It also worked great 35 years ago when I was playing blues gigs. I have a lovely 17 inch archtop (known around our house as the "midlife crisis blonde") made by Matt Cushman, but an arthritic shoulder is starting to make that a little uncomfortable and there only seems to be so much I can do with positioning the guitar. Wonderful playing and sounding instrument, though, and very difficult to consider giving up. I've got a Tele that I hardly ever play, another semi hollow guitar that sort of a cross between a Telecaster and a 335 which is lovely but I rarely play, a Strat with weird pickup wiring of my own design that I play a lot. The Strat, the GB 10, my old flattop and the nylon string would suit all of my guitar needs for the next 30 years, assuming I live that long. For amps my Clarus 2r, SansAmp Para Driver DI and RE 12" are suitable to just about everything.
i've always admired guitarists associated with either one instrument throughout their careers or even just one instrument for long stretches (Ed Bickert, Jim Hall, Joe Pass, Rory Gallagher, Jerry Garcia, etc.). Settle on an instrument, learn how to play the doggine thing and stop distracting myself. But gear is fun, an entertainment in its own right... arrgghh!
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I've never bought a guitar because I thought it would make me play better or sound better. That seems silly to me. Guitars are organic things to me and they're all individuals. I'm fortunate to have a bunch of beautiful playing instruments (that either came that way or I got them there) that have a bunch of different voices, but the magic is in the intricacies of the way they respond. Each is quite different from the other.
I'm not talking about the difference between a Strat and an archtop.
I don't like a guitar that just does what I tell it to, especially when it does that perfectly. I've had guitars like that and they feel dead to me; not sonically, but if the only response from the instrument is "yes sir" then there's no back and forth between us. It's like a robot. Each guitar responds slightly differently when I play it, and I need to listen carefully as I'm playing to suss out the nuances. Little changes in right hand pressure and technique bring out a particular instruments voice and so there's a reward. What works on one guitar to make it really speak isn't right for another one, so I need to adjust what I do. I like that.
I know some, maybe most, players do what they do; play the way they play and look for a guitar that fits them the best. I get more joy out of the relationship, and finding the way to get a particular guitar to really speak, and I enjoy the idiosyncrasies.
But I also don't understand having 10 Les Pauls and 10 Strats.
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FWIW, I'm not sure about other instruments.... I just can't imagine multiple pianos per se, but then I have a friend who has two because she "likes to play duets" with a friend. But what I'd throw in here is that gearheads in photography are and have always been about the next camera that will make them a better photographer. There's even a term for it: GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome). If guitarists have the same affliction... that'd be really odd. Similarly.... the great photographers buy a camera and use it until it dies. Then and only then do they replace it.
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There is a whole forum community for guitarists that exists because of GAS - The Gear Page. GAS is alive and well ! Originally Posted by JWMandy
One question I do have for the more experienced and matured musicians on this thread- Personal finances withstanding, is GAS inversely proportional to how skilled you are on the instrument? I mean, once you have settled on the general tone you are after, the music you want to play, the style of instrument you want to play that with, does the distraction (eye candy and marketing) of alternatives just fade away after time? Or does one morph into collector status?
What do we have in our foreseable futures?
EMike
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If you watch the John Abercrombie bio "Open Land" you will see that he had many guitars too. And guitarists don't get much more skilled.
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"Settle on an instrument, learn how to play the doggine thing . . . "Cunamara
Yes, C . . . exactly. There was only one time in my life(12 yo.) when I owned a Kay Value Leader that was affordable but impossible to play. At that age, I never knew that a luthier could "set up" the guitar's action and make it playable and the happiest day in my life was when I traded it four years later for a cherry sunburst Gibson ES125TC. I still own the '66 Gibson today and it has thousands of hours of playtime in both practice and gigs. Are there "better?" guitars to play? Well, there are certainly more expensive guitars to play but I believe there is an intimacy a musician can establish with a quality instrument where he/she understands the instrument's personality, nature, and capabilities. The only time I would consider another guitar(sacrificial) is if I started playing again in an ensemble. However, after recovering from Covid last month after living an isolated existence, I'm still gun shy about playing in confined areas although I believe gigs are starting to open up again. Listen to C's sage advice above. It's spot on.
Marinero
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I think it’s we live in an age of such abundance of great gear from Archtops,etc. And like kids in a candy store you want to try them all, Lol! Also most of these boutique or off brands aren’t available to try out locally.
What I try to remember is once you find your comfort zone with a particular instrument or pedal etc. It’s really better to work on the important part MUSIC!
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Good for you to address your actual needs. Myself, I need several guitars and amps for mine. I'd like to trim down, but can't at this time, doing much theater work. I keep an electric amp and an acoustic amp in the theater, have a second of each for home practice. Need electric, archtop, nylon, flattop, banjo, uke, mando, etc. Some day soon when my hands no longer work or I can't walk, the madness will end and I will walk away and go fishing.
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i just remember the deep joy of
finding a guitar that wasn’t going
‘twang twang’ all the time and I could play it in tune !
it was a cheap Ibanez archtop with some fat flatwounds on it ....
it made a good true sound
i’d got to the place where the gear
wasn’t screwing me up anymore
(i had began to think that I wasnt
someone who could ever play guitar in tune)
Oh Joy !
I didn’t need any more gear
and could get on with it
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