[sdiy] The extreme low cost of audio gear... my little comment somehow got out of hand :P

[nN AAt e e]

> I wonder if the market they sell to (entry level)
> has an effect on the treatment of the gear. Often
> low priced stuff is abused by people who don't care
> (cause it was cheap) or just havent learned better.

all of the gear i own could probably be considered entry level... even my
most expensive stuff i have is lower end models [MPC-1000, Clavia Nord
Micromodular]. The only exceptions being cheap cables, i've never had
anything die on me or break that wasn't either modified or altered. my gear
gets lugged from my room to my basement on a pretty regular basis, and it is
still in good condition. my "gig-ing" guitar [heavily customized squire
affinity strat with a gk-2a] is in better condition than ones i've seen that
are only played when the owner goes to guitar lessons, and i've thrown mine
across rooms and down stairs before! even my amp is a Kay tube amp from the
60s, and it works great, with the original tubes!

one of the things i hate the most about "musicians" are people who are just
"cookie cutter" music students, because while they may be getting expensive
training at Berklee or have a lot of theory training and skill, they may
never be as creative as the people they immitate. there was a kid who used
to live in my town, who would always put me down for listening to such
diverse music [everything from world to synths to pop to noise]; his
favorite band was van halen, and he plays guitar. i won't deny that he was a
good guitarist, and i don't know anyone else from my town that could play a
van halen solo as clean as he did, but that was _ALL_ he did; the one band
he ever had, was everyone else playing rhythm while he played the same dozen
van halen solos over them for ten minutes. not once did i ever hear him try
to write a song or riff; now he is apparently going to some music school in
france.

he is also the perfect example of my other "musician" peeve from before that
whole tangent... in the three or so years he lived in my town, he went
through at least five different guitars, amps, and other assorted gear. he
would own a guitar for a few months, and then decide he wanted something
different or more money, so he would sell the old one [several times this
happened to be 900 - 1200 dollar Ibanez GEM guitars], and then buy something
based entirely on looks for much less money which he would then change his
mind about a month later. his dad would always re-buy the expensive guitar
for him, and he wouldn't even be grateful for having the chance to have a
better instrument. he had some strange idea that you needed a PA setup to
play live or record, so he had his dad buy him a very decent mid-price one,
less than a month later he offered to sell it to me for under two hundred
dollars. i don't know if it is because he was pretty spoiled that he didn't
appreciate the things he had [his dad couldn't understand why highschool
students didn't get paid to do plays with drama or play on the football
team]. the best example of his lack of passion or appreciation: while at a
friends house, he tossed a TV remote which hit my classical guitar and made
a noticable mark in the back of the guitar; it was days old and a quite
expensive gift from my uncle -- he didn't even bother to apologize.

imagine if a friend of yours bought something like the new buchla, and let
it sit in a closet for the rest of his life -- instruments, even cheap or
low quality ones, are still instruments that someone can use, and they
should be treated that way. i've discussed this before with some people on
the list, that when someone has no use for gear anymore [due to old age,
interest, or death], that giving it to someone who is truely interested in
it is one of the kindest things you could do. i've given old gear of mine
away before and even though it wasn't high quality stuff, they still
appreciated it for how it could be used.

- nate -- who can admit that uncreative people can easily have more talent
than him, but may never have as much fun as him performing.