OK, so we all know that throwing money at a project doesn't necessarily make it better. Plus, we all love finding a little device every now and again that makes our recording lives so much nicer. For those of us on a budget (ahem, myself for instance!), we're always on the look-out for these kind of bargains.

So, my question to you all is - what was your favourite cheapo device that brought great return-on-investment?

Mine is my Alesis SR-16 drum machine which I bought 10 years ago. I don't care that some of the sounds were probably stolen from the sound crew behind Miami Vice because most of the samples are great. It's got pressure-sensitive pads, good quantizing, tons of memory, a piss-easy interface and it's been taken a beating regularly with nary a complaint for a decade now. Not bad for $200.

I've heard friends of mine rave about the Sans-Amp, the Boomerang, and various microphones, monitors and tape machines in the same vein.

What's yours?

Orban 2 channel sibilance controller: $47
B&O BM 1000 Omnidirectional Dynamic: $69
Consecutive pair of Oktava ML-19 Ribbon mics, 1984 never used: $500

$500 for 2 Studer A810 1/4" 2-tracks

They both needed a little work, but they are now great sounding/working machines. I've been mixing on them for years now.

I got an Altec passive equalizer (in service in studio B) and a Wilkinson LA2C (some kind of stereo compressor I could never get sound out of) for $10 at the Maxwell Street market in 1980-something. I have used the Altec occasionally, and Greg has a plan to make it a unity-gain device (it has a nominal 12dB insertion loss as a passive filter), which I hope will make it an amazing, brilliant, timeless classic device which weill be our excuse to raise our rates.

best,
-steve

I got an old shure radio set mic for something like 29 cents in a goodwill bin. It's great for that cheap destroyed mic sound. It's also so lo gain that if you're not close mic-ing you get that old-timey hiss from my preamps!

Actually, it works great as a close amp mic. Not much low end, not much high end, but MAN, that guitar will sit "right there" in a mix.

I've gotten lots of crap for cheap or free, but none of it is astounding, just convenient or abuseable in a cool way.

ben adrian
mid-fi

3 years ago i got a fender deluxe reverb modified with a vibrolux output transformer into twin speakers. it's a hybrid of the best 3 amps fender ever made, and it cost me $280. best sounding amp ive ever played - everything else, ive been screwed...

I really dig the 18" SDCH (?) cymbal that some neighborhood kid was shooting BBs at in my parents' back yard when I was about 13. I gave him $3 for it and never regretted it.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

I paid $425 for my Veleno.
$5 for a 50s Bogen 30-watt PA amp that sounds great as a guitar amp.
$90 for a Prophet 600.
$20 for a box containing a Foxx Tone Machine and a Boss FP-1 Flanger.

Does "free" count as a purchase? Probably not, but I paid to repair it.

It's a Simms 100, valve guitar head. My Dad's nieghbour had it sitting beside his garbage bin waiting to be dumped so I kindly offered to take it.
It cost me about £12 to buy a new smoothing capacitor and it's the best damn sounding amp I've ever used. I use it for bass mostly, with a 400 watt 2 x 15" cab. It's a bleedin monster.

Good Q. Stew

$425 for a Veleno? what moron sold you that? jesus...