I will third ECO on the diminishing returns - the more I play the simpler I want my sound and set up. I have even recently paired down my collection as I just simply have too many of one effect or I am not using it in my daily practice.
That being said - I am happier with my music than I have ever been. I have an amazing teacher and I am still playing every week. Eventually I want to cut a three track EP of my own music in a professional studio.
I am also pretty close to being set for gear - I might move a bass to make room for another Floyd Rose Guitar and maybe move the SG to something a little more AP but really these are minor adjustments and I would be extremely happy to keep it all the same now.
So yes - very happy, playing lots of nasty thrash metal
THEBEERHAMMER wrote:
Achtane wrote:Doom Weed, duh.
Doom seed is like...what you get when wizards jerk it.
Doom Weed produces Doom Seed.
BRO IS THIS EVEN KUSH??? IS BUFFERED? TRV BYPASS??? MY FRIEND DAMBLEDORE TOLD ME I NEEDED CRYSTAL LETTUICE.
D.o.S. wrote:I am - too much real band time not enough internet gear nerd time, but gear also feels like it's stagnated pretty hard? That might just be me, though.
Cool stuff is coming out but I think once you’ve tested enough gear after a while you’re getting diminishing returns. Once you’ve played a few flavours of overdrive there’s not much left to do. People like MidFi Doug keep pushing the envelope and make cool ass shit, but the wilder the sounds are the more niche they are, in a way. Like he had that new one that sounded like a broken PA. That was cool as duck, but I now know that if I buy it I’m going to dig the hell out of it but ultimately never use it - cos I’m super satisfied with the gear I’ve got for the music I play. You can apply the same logic to fuzz, delays whatever.
This is possible but I also feel like the things that don't exist in the realm of 'yet another boutique fuzz' (which is a genre I love) tend to be on the 'it's essentially a plugin but less useful because tone faeiries' LTD 10/10 runs announced 15 minutes before The Drop', variant.
Which I guess is also diminishing returns, but maybe the spread and scope of technology has made that space feel more stale faster?
Learning about gear has been interesting, but like you all said, eventually you figure out that there's not much to it. I agree with goroth--there are still interesting boundaries being pushed, but the uses are very niche for my purposes. And just like MaxMaps, the more I play, the simpler I want my setup to be. Maybe I'm old and boring; after all, my pedal board doesn't have any sounds on it that weren't possible 50 years ago. But maybe experience has taught me what colors I like to use, and I don't need the 152-color crayon set because I won't use all of them.
As is often said, time spent geeking out over equipment is time you're not spending on playing or writing, which for me is exponentially more rewarding. As of this year, it's 25 years since I picked up my first instrument, the guitar, which I wanted to learn to use to express my Big Important Feelings. But these past couple years, I wandered down a winding path of sound design, mixing, and production and lost sight of what was most important to me. I'm excited and nervous to try to reconnect to the drive and guts I had to focus on writing and recording my silly songs.
There's a lot of interesting-looking gear being released regularly now... interest in effects and sound generators is at an all time high. Often, I look at this gear and I can't see a way that I can use it to make music, or how it would fit into my existing setup.
Sometimes it's gear doing something extremely specific, or there's a complex interface that seems like too much to learn, or it's able to "play itself" making me feel replaceable or interchangeable with anybody else who buys that same gear, or it's so highly playable to the point that it can't be played simultaneously with any other gear, or it's a variation or update of a flavor that I already have and I know it won't add anything significant to my existing equipment.
When I consider all the new stuff being released along with all the older stuff I didn't know about or understand earlier, it's kind of overwhelming. But I also think that equipment is sometimes overrated, so I am also okay with all that.
It's one of my casual hobbies to keep tabs on equipment, new releases, what is happening with the used market, etc. I think it's partly a way to distract myself from the struggles I have with my DAW, and trying to make something worthwhile at the same time I don't really know what I'm doing.
