Just barely pre-COVID I picked up an ancient Harmony Rocket tenor guitar conversion. I still have this and love this, have made a lot of music on it, but it is decrepit and fully hollow and generally not something I'd want to play out with. So I picked up a Fender "Alternate Reality" Tenor Tele, as a more solid thing to take places. But it turns out true tenors are just too small for me (my Harmony does not have its original neck, and the replacement is skinny like a tenor, but it has a longer scale length), plus like two weeks after I bought the Tenor Tele it became immediately clear that Playing Shows and Touring could be taken off my plate of worries for a while.
When I went to sell it I found that in just about a year, the Tenor Teles had risen like 50-100% in price, I guess from being such a limited series. So I got to sell for a minor profit, which never happens with Mexican Fenders you paid retail for a year ago.
Other moves since pandemic/since the forum died have mostly been about recording. I'm still not ready to take on open-reel tape machines, not a multitrack machine anyway (might be prudent to get a stereo deck eventually for actual master tape creation). But after some experimenting over the winter I've decided I want to move OTB as much as possible. I'm working towards using my DAW as a tape machine I don't have to clean or align, just doing as little in the digital domain as possible.
I can still mix or process as much ITB as I ever want without repatching much or at all. Which means I don't have to spend money on a Yamaha or TC multi-effect for the couple times a decade I need a pitch-shift effect or something. But for everything else, if I want, I can make a record while looking mostly out my window instead of at a computer screen—a thing I've gotten sensitive to now that we can only ever be on the computer anymore.
So here's what I got for the rack (I got a rack):
DBX 163X
Alesis Microverb II that came from Europe and has a Cow Tools prong end and I have to look into whether I really can set these to the correct voltage and use a different adapter or if I was mistaken
Symetrix 525 with Valley People VCAs
Yamaha E1005
Then I traded my Tascam M-312 board in a trade that a friend suggested years ago: my somewhat smaller M-series board for his Teac Model 15 24:8 console. He got it from the building manager at our old workplace, it was in his garage or basement for recording jams, but originally the console was bought by and installed at a radio station in a small town nearby. As much as I was enjoying my mixer/interface setup and hadn't planned on upgrading them, remembering this offer kind of changed the game for the OTB setup I was theorizing. So we made the trade! It works nearly perfectly and it is the size and weight of a Mini Cooper and it's the best (in terms of the money spent on the M-series board initially) $180 I've ever spent.
At this point I picked up a BSS DPR-404 for the rack, to cover some of the extra input channels I suddenly had.
My interface had been a Roland Studio-Capture and it was, again, completely fine. Not trying to buy a Pyramix setup for a spare bedroom. But I bought the Studio-Capture only thinking of its 16 inputs, and it was only now that I was positioned to feel limited by the eight analog outs. As I was getting ready to patch the Teac and everything together finally it was hitting me A. how annoying this would be, and B. how I would have to do it again once I got sick of mixing on eight channels, which would probably be immediately. I did not feel like spending any more money at this point, but I remembered a friend and bandmate who was talking about upgrading, in terms of inputs, from his Quad-Capture. So he bought my Studio-Capture and I used that to buy my MOTU 16A that just arrived yesterday.
Now I have a nearly professional recording studio in my house, no money, and a lot of work to do. Literally exactly how I like things.
Re: What are you buying, What's on its way?
11active things: Belonging, These Estates, Spruce Island
