Don't sell your piles of really cool stuff from swap meets to pay for college.
You'll never use your degree, but you're going to make a living recording.

Don’t give away that 1st Gen sovtek big muff.

buy every Traynor you see, even if it was a "ridiculous" $200
Same for Garnet, but you knew enough by then... but not enough to get the BTO for a "ridiculous" $500
use a thicker pick
You only need one cab
your spouse will always sound better than you no matter what you buy

TylerDeadPine wrote: Sun Jul 25, 2021 11:37 pm buy every Traynor you see, even if it was a "ridiculous" $200

Yeah, put Music Man on that list too, even if purely from an investment perspective. The undiscovered/cheap awesome tone amp era has ended.

Do practice trumpet, it actually is cool.
Don't sell the Hoshino Gakki Cimar for $100.
Don't trade the black strat for that weird, stupid 70s SG.
Don't sell off 90% of your boss pedals, you'll end up buying them all back for 3-4x times what you sold them for.
Don't give away your '63 Hofner to a dude who won't play it and eventually sells it.
Don't buy so many stupid fuzz pedals that you are absolutely capable of building.
Don't sell your Fostex R8 you dumb idiot.
Do buy the broken RE-201 for $250, and definitely don't sell the Korg SE300.
Don't let your brother smash your DR-110 with a fireplace tool for the sake of performance.
Buy at least one YBA while they are below $500.
Don't sell the white strat either, there are other ways to buy wine for your wedding.

Rickenbackers look and sound cool, and a lot of your "heroes" play them, but they're shitty playing guitars with too much goddamn lacquer on the necks. Buy that Hamer LP or SG copy with the thru-neck. That's a solid goddamn guitar with a great neck and sustain. A guitar for a "musician" and not a fanboy. Take this advice and you might actually stick with playing electric guitars a bit longer.

Geiginni wrote: Tue Jul 27, 2021 6:54 pm but they're shitty playing guitars with too much goddamn lacquer on the necks.

Amen.

A lot of these are, "have another 10 grand or so late in life" by holding onto a thing or two until it became collectible. Sure, it would be nice, especially if you're currently struggling. None of this is enough to retire early on, though, so don't sweat it too much.

I'm surprised none of the synth players have chimed in, as I think we're all old enough to have had a Juno 60 or something that cost $100 at the time and now sells for $2k.

biscuitdough wrote: Thu Jul 29, 2021 6:23 am A lot of these are, "have another 10 grand or so late in life" by holding onto a thing or two until it became collectible. Sure, it would be nice, especially if you're currently struggling. None of this is enough to retire early on, though, so don't sweat it too much.

I'm surprised none of the synth players have chimed in, as I think we're all old enough to have had a Juno 60 or something that cost $100 at the time and now sells for $2k.

I churned some numbers the other year and even my best gear investments over the year were only about in line with what a 6-7% return on something like mutual funds would have been.

I'm not saying having some fun old gear isn't worth having so much as the amount of crap you'd need to hoard for three decades to be a significant investment isn't a great strategy, although your musician friends would be green with envy.

yard barf wrote: Tue Jul 27, 2021 8:19 pm

Geiginni wrote: Tue Jul 27, 2021 6:54 pm but they're shitty playing guitars with too much goddamn lacquer on the necks.

Amen.

As an adult, buying a grand piano was an entirely different wake-up call to the realities of what's truly important in an instrument. Rock-solid construction, stability, sustain, great scale design and pleasant overtones, and a great tech to can ensure the action rebuild would offer great playability and perfectly balanced keyweight, dip and wippen adjustment.

Didn't matter much what it looked like. They're all big black lacquered wooden horseshoes. All that mattered was the sound, action/playability, and tuning stability.