ilovefuzz.com

This has been covered somewhere here, I'm sure. Maybe someone can talk me into or out of a decision I'm trying to make.0

I'm at a point where I own more instruments than ever before in my life. I was having a dilemma a little bit back about why I even played music. All I ever did was look for cooler gear, as if someday, if I had enough cool then I would magically start writing baddass tunes. I have enough pedals to make as much noise and drone as I could ever dream (minus a couple effects, like chorus, flange, and oddball shit). But what really holds me back from just sitting my ass down and writing is tone searching and finding the right strings and tunings. Having a bunch of guitars makes me want to tune them all differently, which would be fine, but...... all this leads to having too many choices. More choices means more decision time which means less creativity.

I want less superfluous crap so I can just think about writing songs instead of which instrument I want to play and why.

So this is a really long way of saying that I'm thinking of selling my baritone that I built but I'm not sure if I should or want to. I don't play it very much at all these days, and I'm probably getting a guitar this season sometime that will kill all my future guitar GAS for a looooooooooooong time, and probably basically make me forget that I even own other guitars for equally as long. But I built the baritone myself. I'm also wondering how to price something like that, where I spent a lot time making it and got good parts for it, but they're all kind of modified and in a couple places kind of blemished.

Thoughts?

I totally agree that the quest for gear and having too many choices can hinder creativity. I spend as much time searching for and discussing gear on forums as I do actually playing sometimes which is a sad truth. I have a shit ton of pedals and I like it that way but I recently started selling stuff that overlapped and spent a lot of time on the shelf.

As for guitars, I like variety but again, I don't want any overlap. Each one needs to be unique and something I can't cop with my other guitars. I also like a wide variety of switching options to get the most out of each instrument. Currently I own an EGC Chessie, LP Custom, SG, Tele, Jazzy, and Bass VI and I don't long for much else beyond an acoustic. I try to settle on 2-3 tunings tho so I can streamline my ideas when switching instruments.

I'm the same with amps. I get models I like in both low and high wattage formats to cover most any situation/need but I've been scaling back and selling amps lately too. Just tired of constantly tweaking and knob turning. Like you said, just too many choices. Sometimes less is def more so you can focus on what's important: making music with all that cool gear.

Definitely got you on more time searching tone and noise than playing. It takes a bit to decide how to slim down. Sentiment is often a hindrance but I've found different instruments allows inspiration. The baritone sounds like a personal matter and I'd keep it and get rid of other things if I were you but that's your thing.

Ultimately it sounds like your lacking inspiration which is hard. Maybe just play while watching tv or something. It seems to be someone inspiring since there's so much stimuli to go off.

My philosophy is plain and simple.
"If I don't use it, lose it"

You can always build another.

Very good policy.

Jero wrote:My philosophy is plain and simple.
"If I don't use it, lose it"

You can always build another.

That's what I want to do right now, but I tend to get really stoked on an idea and want to go to extremes. I'll try and sit on it for a couple days at least. It's not like it'll be gone as soon as I decide to sell it. I'm in the same process in a lot of other areas of my life; I'm looking at the things I want to do, and finding the things that hold me back, so I can remove them.

I totally get everything in this thread but I've started to adopt the "if I don't use it, lose it" mindset and it's working pretty well.
That being said something sentimental like the baritone would be hard to sell.
I've found that many times when you post something to Kijiji or CL and actually get some offers on it, you'll realize if you can actually let it go or not.
A couple times I've posted something, got reasonable offers, and then realized that I just couldn't let it go.

I had this same dilemma a few weeks ago with my hagstrom, until one day it hit me that I was putting too much thought to it - now I have it up for sale and I'm looking
forward to selling it. Two electrics (one in alternate tunings), one parlour acoustic, bass and an old jazz chorus amp is all I need these days. If I feel like change I just
buy more pedals.

Constantly going through this. Working weird hours has me on here more than home playing guitar, recording, etc. But I've realized I just need to slim down.

Sometimes I wish that I hadn't modded all of my guitars into worthlessness.

Achtane wrote:Sometimes I wish that I hadn't modded all of my guitars into worthlessness.

hahahha I'm going through this as well. Each of my guitars are so personalized I feel like people wouldn't hardly pay anything for them if I tried to sell them

weed_killer wrote:I had this same dilemma a few weeks ago with my hagstrom, until one day it hit me that I was putting too much thought to it - now I have it up for sale and I'm looking
forward to selling it. Two electrics (one in alternate tunings), one parlour acoustic, bass and an old jazz chorus amp is all I need these days. If I feel like change I just
buy more pedals.

This is actually my exact set up right now. Except instead of parlour acoustic I have a resonator and my amp is a Fender Excelsior.
If I feel like change, definitely new pedals, but I also constantly trade gear. Currently considering trading my bass for a new one.

skullservant wrote:

Achtane wrote:Sometimes I wish that I hadn't modded all of my guitars into worthlessness.

hahahha I'm going through this as well. Each of my guitars are so personalized I feel like people wouldn't hardly pay anything for them if I tried to sell them

This is the one thing that kind of worries me about modding guitars...
That and my complete lack of experience modding guitars

skullservant wrote:

Achtane wrote:Sometimes I wish that I hadn't modded all of my guitars into worthlessness.

hahahha I'm going through this as well. Each of my guitars are so personalized I feel like people wouldn't hardly pay anything for them if I tried to sell them

Me too. Which is why I put the baritone in the BST here and not on craigslist

Yeah. I feel like you'd have better luck here anyways

I feel kind of stuck with the guitars that I have though, since I've either built or modded every single one. Not necessarily a bad thing unless I want to try to sell them for something else

that's a really good point about modding - I know that my guitars are set up to offer me exactly what I need, but if/when I go to sell one I'm aware that they'd
usually appeal to a niche market of similar minded people moreso than the general kijiji/cl buyer. The biggest downside to this is that most of the niche market
members are always broke.