There could very well be a thread about this, and if so, we can deal with it later.

I've been noticing that my obsession with gear has been affecting my mental heath a bit lately. I've been thinking about it more and more since writing this post.
https://www.premierrockforum.com/viewto ... 65#p839465

I just want to tell a little story and open the floor in case anyone else has similar things to share. Mainly, I just need to tell someone this stuff who might understand.

I have a new band. It's going great and I'm very excited. We're playing Caterwaul on the Sunday. One of my joys when I start a new band is that I get to pick the gear I'm going to use and define the sonic palette for the band. This is why I had the thread on dual amp setup. This is why I had the weirdo preamp thread. I began trying different guitars and swapping pickups. I wanted something that looked cool, that spoke to me, and that was a change. As I was doing all of this, nothing was really clicking. I started to feel anxious. I was trying all sorts of crazy gear shit because I have access to all sorts of crazy gear, but nothing felt right.

I went through a big creative drought after the death of my friend Chris, who also played drums for Cartographer and Replicator. Any time I'd write music that would have been for Cartographer, I kind of just put it aside, or I'd get sad and just do something else. The grief was really deep inside. I was sad. I'd talk about it. My life was great. I though I was getting over it. Inside, though, there was a deep creative void. If I wrote anything too close to my old style, I'd feel guilty. I would feel a kind of musical despair. So, instead of dealing with the deep loss, I tried to change my sound. It was the same music, but I was hoping that if I put the songs through different gear that the change of sound would change the feeling associate with the songs... or at least the feeling associated with the creation of the songs.

Of course, nothing sounded as good. The new gear never felt right. The changes always resulted in a lesser result. So I began migrating back to my old tools. A few practices back, we were just running through some songs. I did a quick setup for a low volume run through in my home studio. I had a simple setup; guitar, boost pedal, amp. I realized that I was only really turning on the boost pedal once or twice in a set. So I told myself "fuck it, no pedals".

Since then, I've plugged my guitar straight into my amp. It's kind of an obvious "duh" moment, but it felt so freeing! I was just pushing through the bullshit, using MY guitar, MY amp, my body, and nothing else. Maybe I'm putting too much into this, but I don't think so. I had been using gear to run away from grief and now by using my old configuration in the rawest possible form, I think it allowed me to work through some shit. It was also comforting to tear everything down and know that I can be creative and do interesting, cool shit without hiding behind anything extra.

If I feel that I want to add something, that's fine. Sometimes I get curious and change things up. Mainly, though, there was a lot going on inside, behind the scenes, that lead to a tone-quest that really had nothing to do with sound at all.

Thanks everyone.

There is definitely something to be said about having too many options available at your fingertips. You get into sort of an analysis paralysis situation, because you're spending way too much time tone chasing and not enough time actually creating anything. I've been guilty of this myself, to the point where I purged a lot of amps and guitars that I was only hanging onto because I might someday want to use it for something and I didn't want to feel limited. It occurred to me that some of my most creative periods were when I was limited in some form. I was a broke student in the early 'aughts and only had a Tascam 4-track, a bass, and a synth, and I was churning out ideas left and right.

My band broke up last year after a pretty lackluster show. It was kind of a one-sided breakup (not on my part, though I admit that I had thought about quitting a couple times), things weren't really handled well and none of us spoke for a good 4 or 5 months. I was doing double-duty playing bass and keys, and I got to the point where I absolutely loathed having to haul my gear around and set it up to play for the same 20 friends and spouses at midnight. So I purged all of my live keyboard gear within a week of the breakup. It was cathartic on some level, like a weight had been lifted.

We reconciled late last year, apologies were made, and we agreed to try to have another go at it. I laid some ground rules though: I wasn't going to be playing keys live anymore. I didn't want to haul around a ton of gear. I also wanted to be way more choosy about our shows, maybe 3 or 4 a year, max, and only when we were ready and comfortable. I'm at my happiest when I'm engineering a recording session and collaboratively writing and arranging, and we're actually really good at that, as a band.

Turns out the other guys felt the same way. Our drummer was using a Nord drum pad sampler thing on quite a few songs. He sold it after the breakup. One of the guitarists was also playing mellotron and synth on some songs. He sold all of that right away. I think we all realized that the gear and the desire to add more layers and sounds and complexity, and then having to pull it off in a live setting, was sucking all of the air out of the room.

Since then, we've been writing and arranging and rehearsing as our schedules will allow. We're all back to basics with our gear. I think we're producing some of our best stuff yet, and I've personally contributed more ideas and entire songs in the past 6 months than I did in the previous 2 years.

TL;DR: Yes, the struggle is real.

I have to keep things simple, because I have a hard time dealing with clutter and chaos. This goes beyond making music for me. Too many buttons to press, lots of cables, even lots of guitar knobs really frustrate me. Recently, what's become liberating is actually having an amp sim pedal with some different amps loaded. Ironically, having more amps on hand allows me to wrap up different sonic qualities without the chaos and clutter, offering a more simple and elegant way to get more out of my overdrive pedals without needing to change the settings on them, I even cut one out because it was no longer necessary. I found 3 amp presets that really work for me and helps tidy everything up.

The music I am working on now doesn't have one particular sonic quality I'm chasing... or I should say, I don't think I could box in what I want in one amp and pedal combo. That was different in the past, especially when I played bass. I had a very particular sound I was going for and required very little in terms of needing to go outside the lines. It really helped not having any clutter around me (and anyway, looking back some of those bass lines were a little nuts -- why didn't I just go and do a chill psych band and just smoke blunts and chill?) But this current band, I want to write different kinds of songs that have different sonic qualities, while balancing the need for simplicity for my own brain's sake, I feel like I'm coming close to what works for me.

I've noticed that there are two very different headspaces between researching, window shopping and purchasing gear and being musically creative. There is a necessary interaction there, but it seems I'm fully immersed in that gear lust research mode when I haven't played much, and after a good rehearsal, writing session or recording session I often feel less interested in that online gear rabbit hole. I think a large part of this is there is a certain kind of leisure time necessary for creativity that is in limited supply for most of us. But the way the internet interacts with our daily life there is more opportunity for mucking around on forums, checking Reverb for stuff etc. The urge to check in with our creative spark is momentarily stifled by circumstance (or sometimes motivation) so instead we try to check in with it by gazing at the tools of the trade.

I've seen the opposite, where a new instrument makes me want to play. A new pedal gives me an idea for a song. A new mic makes me want to record. But that negative side is one to guard against.

This is a little different than the above stories which have to do with trying to play with more elaborate setups, but I think there's some connection. They both have a forest vs tree, map vs terrain element.

I have heard "there's a new song in every new guitar" or something like that attributed to Neil Young. I'm not shit as any sort of stringed instrument player and barely capable as a drummer, but even w/ my limited abilities have experienced first hand just messing around and trying to get the lay of the land on any new instrument...amp...pedal...other noisemaker re-introduces the disorganized creative process of play which can tap into creativity that maybe isn't getting expressed when just practicing parts or playing-by-numbers. It can be an expensive way to get new song ideas.

New gear is really only a problem when it's a problem. Having lust isn't always bad - everything in moderation including moderation I think is the operating word here.

The issue I'm having & where it's causing a bit of a strain is the old Fight Club thing where the things you own end up owning you. I'm in a situation where I have a (to me anyway) huge collection of amps, cabs, guitars and less-and-less justification to own any of it year-after-year. Of course trotting some old thing out at this point can do the above which also helps justify not getting rid of it.

Maybe this isn't totally on topic but I feel like the end of almost every band I've been in has been somewhat emotionally traumatic to some degree, and playing a different or new guitar or amp has been a way to shed those negative powers and start fresh.

Last band I was in kept it together during the first year and a half of the pandemic, even writing most of the a new record remotely during that time. When we finally broke up after playing a couple shows in fall 2021, the guitarist (who I've known for 20+ years) and I immiediately started a new band but both had some strong ideas about what we wanted to do after where the last band had ended up. We both had giant Pedaltrain boards with a ton of shit, I was playing foot synth so we could cover keyboard parts without getting a fifth member, guitarist had one of those Boss pedal looper things so every song had a different preset of pedals in specific order, our cabs had LED lights shoved into them, etc etc etc. We both agreed we wanted to greatly streamline the pedal situation, and going forward we wouldn't add parts to a record that couldn't be reasonably played live by one of us without having to buy a bunch of new shit. We found another old friend who wanted a non-heavy band to drum in, and while we haven't done nearly as much stuff in the last couple years as my prior bands have, it's been much more enjoyable on a weekly basis, with much less internal pressure from any of us to do anything but write cool songs and have a good time at practice.

Also I got a big dumb heavy bass cab and decided that if I'm only playing 4-6 shows a year, fuck it I'm bringing the big 2x15 and the heavy tube amp to shows, instead of the single 1x15 and preamp->class D power amp I was using for the other band since we had so much other shit to carry.

Sounds (and/or the memory of) and possessions are often linked to mental health so I don't know why it never dawned on me just how big an impact gear, the changing of or interacting with, would have an emotional impact on the player in like a health, way but it seems so obvious now that you write it out.

I had a band I liked writing for, but for a verity of reasons broke up somewhere in the pandemic. The bass player used my bass and entire setup that I played in another band, except none of my pedals or dumb shit - he wouldn't second guess anything, he wouldn't change eq mid set, he just didn't care, loved playing. I would set the same shit up and wonder what I could change to get whatever it was that I was looking for.

A few months ago he died tragically - I was going through some old footage and he sounded so fucking good. Next time I practiced with that setup I imagined him laughing at me fucking around with stuff so I just stopped, and of course it sounded great. Now when I get the urge to change anything (needlessly) with what I'm doing on bass I think of the video of him playing and it stops me immediately. Plus I still have a guitar setup to ruin with my bullshit.

Progression can be great, but there's also a lot of music that influenced us that was made by 18 years olds just plugging something in

Good point w/ the gear research and buying happening when you’re bored at work or whatever. That is pretty much always the case for me, a guy with a desk job.

My thing is, if I had millions of dollars I would totally use it to buy guitars and amps and recording gear, but I would have even more time to dedicate to playing it. I haven’t even come close to making that much (and have yet to break the six figure mark on my very own), but still I buy guitars and amps and recording gear when I can.

Of course, I’ve built a home studio so I’ve invested a terrific amount of money into gear the last year or two. ‘Pro audio’ is a different game altogether, and it’s not like an old Traynor or Fender where you can usually find a guy across town to work on it. It’s kind of a weird thing to wade in on post-2020, but I only wish that I would have started in on it sooner.

I definitely have too much gear, especially if something happened to me and my wife had to deal with it all. But mostly its because the upkeep costs really start to suck. To tell the truth, if there’s anything I detest it’s a revolving door. Every new (to me) piece that comes in is a liability until I figure out its utility, and the time I spend getting used to a new pedal or whatever seems like a 100% time waster. It’s fun, but not really that conducive to making music. Plus, I’ve pretty much had to get used to every single guitar I’ve ever owned. Good for the odd riff, though, sure, but I require some kind of connection to the stuff I play, even if its a fight for a while.

Every guitar I own I expect to keep around for years at a minimum, and I pretty much always do, unless its a basket case I was in over my head on or something I bought to specifically flip. Most all the instruments I have are vintage and seem way different from each other, and I’ve played them too long to see them as the generic humbucker guitar, the generic Fender, the jazz guitar, etc. They all have distinct personalities that I learned to roll with, even when compared to other guitars of their type. I feel like i could start a different band around every one.

One thing I am up to my damn ears on is 50s and 60s vintage 12” 6v6 combos. It seems like all the stuff I used to buy for $350-$500 is now worth a lot more, so I get sort of paralyzed when I go to sell it because I know I’ll never see one again. I would work all this overtime and then buy a new vintage amp for $400 instead of spending $200 to fix something I already had.

Anyways, I have 15 amps and 20 guitars or 15 guitars and 20 amps. I forget. I only ever play one pedal at a time and I still have a stupid amount of those. Definitely not a pedal guy. Then I’m not even going to count the studio stuff w/ the expensive preamps I’m embarrassed to even mention in these parts. There’s a some nice stuff, but there’s also a closet full of broken solid state Traynors, stuff so fucked up it’ll never be right, old guitars that need refrets that will cost more than the guitar is worth.

I play and record as much as I can while still keeping things cool with a wife and a job and a 3 year old, so no regrets here. Look at how fucked the world is and then try and tell me that tripping over guitar cases is a real life concern. I’m sorry, but its not!

Less is more in my opinion.

For every effect pedal FMMickey242 does not buy, I will buy 3.