Was at our practice space and it dawned on me that we've used and abused my Yamaha EMX and S115V speakers for 8 years and it hasn't so much as blinked. I've lent them out for I don't know how many backyard shows - been dropped a bunch, run on crappy power, still great. I don't know what more I want out of a band PA system.

The Marshall 1960 cab with stock G12t-75 speakers at is permanent free use jamspace cab and also many a show cab.
Yes there are more interesting things, and speakers seemingly 'better', but god dammit I know exactly what you're going to do, and you WILL Do it. Somehow, at age 40, I will still explain to all other band members how your inputs work.

The Ibanez TS9
You have an an amazing big button and knobs that won't quit. You kind of make everything sound like you, but you are overdrive when needed.

The mic stand from the 70s
You are made of materials no longer available to consumers. You have survived. You have a heavy base that Colin from GBH would need all of his puny body weight to move.

Marshall JCM900
You are Rock and Roll for $500. After you got new tubes and a bias you sounded good enough to not care. You always have some noise, but get turned on and work.

I read somewhere that Taka from Mono landed on a blackface twin RI and a JCM900 as his rig because it’s what was in every hourly rehearsal space and what every backline company would be able to rent him no matter where he was.

mdc wrote: Sun Oct 05, 2025 7:25 am I read somewhere that Taka from Mono landed on a blackface twin RI and a JCM900 as his rig because it’s what was in every hourly rehearsal space and what every backline company would be able to rent him no matter where he was.

Man, I wish I could just use the standard stuff and not feel good about it. That said, the pathological gear curiosity is fading, and I'm generally cool with making music with whatever I have on hand. I just need to not have so much down-time in between making music.

I don't know if I have any under-appreciated gear. I will say that my RME UCXii is one of my best purchases. It's a buy once, cry once situation. It's a bit un-sexy and has a learning curve for all of its more complex features. However, since I got it I've used it nearly every day. Most days, it's on for at least 8-10 hours between day job work and personal work. I don't think that it has ever had any issue that was its fault. I appreciate it greatly when I stop to think about it, but it works so well I rarely stop and think.

D'Addario strings? I buy a 10 pack whenever they come up on stupid deal of the day, or some other special sale. If my guitar ever sounds funny, I can just swap strings as a first test. They have always worked great for me and I just never think about strings anymore.

Boss TU-2 and SD-1. I just leave them laying around the studio. Need a tune or a quick boost? Right there. Good enough, never fails.

Back in like 2013, a friend wanted to put together a band to play Master of Puppets in its entirety for one show. I was drafted to be Kirk. I only had a strat and a tele at the time, and they were both strung with 11s. I was like well, those aren't gonna work.

So I made my wife drive me out to some guitar shop in the burbs and I bought a used Jackson dinky for $350. Put EMGs in it, swapped out the Jackson trem for a real Floyd. Learned all of MoP, practiced it like crazy. Of course the show never happened! But I liked the guitar so it stuck around.

Fast forward a dozen years, now I have a whole slew of Warmoths to play, and they're all killer. I really don't play metal all that often, and the Jackson wasn't getting played much at all and at some point last year I'd taken some parts off it for another guitar, so it was just sitting unloved in a gigbag in the basement.

This week I got the urge to play it again, put it back together, strung it up and JFC I just could not put it down. Hours and hours for 3 days straight, I had to take a day off to give my hands a break.

I don't know what it is, there's just something about it. It's 90s Japanese, my wife has a strat that's 90s Japanese, neither of these are fancy, they're cheaper models, and my wife's strat is beat to fuck, but both of them, for whatever reason, they've got the juice.

Anyway that Jackson is nicknamed the underdog, and I just like that this cheap guitar I bought on a whim can totally hang with the fancy guys.

TylerDeadPine wrote: Sat Oct 04, 2025 10:46 pm
The mic stand from the 70s
You are made of materials no longer available to consumers. You have survived. You have a heavy base that Colin from GBH would need all of his puny body weight to move.

Dude. Yes. I have a couple of old round base stands where not only the base, but the upright are BOTH steel, as opposed to some bullshit where they try to thread soft aluminum into a steel base.

I would be kind of fucked if any of this utilitarian stuff just up and died on me:

Midas Venice for monitoring, effects returns. Wouldn’t want to work without it.
Neumann headphones - I post about these all the time, but if their monitors are similar to the headphones where everything sounds bad until its right, I’m in.
Radial and Little Labs phase boxes (I think the Little Labs is more transparent, so I like that one best) - fixes phase without futzing with time
Electrical Audio DI - reamps, di, long cable runs, ground buzz fixes.

Also shoutout to the little Radial 2:1 mixer. Summing two sources down to a single track does something to the sound that I really like, and it seems much different from just putting the other sound on the next fader and positioning it in the same spot. Could just be the way I perceive things knowing how the board is laid out, but I don’t care, I like it and it lets everything breathe while still being able to get a multiple mic perspective.

I feel like this doesn’t count as much, but I really like the Audioscape 1176, LA2A, and Pultec and Roger Mayer 456hd. Really great vintage sounds reminiscent of our fav records without making your source sound like its been cartoonishly cooked. Plus its midpriced gear I would totally buy multiples of I could swing it… like I’m sure they’re great, but I almost dont care what a real 1176 sounds like because I already know what the Audioscape thing does and would just prefer more channels of that.

Along the same lines, Spectra complimiters like the c610 can be used as mic pre, peak limiters and compressors that can get near omnipressor levels of weird for $1000 ea new, so they’re expensive (500 series version ~$600 used) but still have lots of utility for the price.

MOTU AVB Audio Interfaces. If you need a lot of flexible IO at numerous locations nothing works as well for even twice the cost. I have a 16a, Monitor 8 for phones feeds, and a Ultralite for all my keyboards, scratch vocals all on my AVB network and I have never had a single glitch. This family of IO is a decade old and IMO still nothing works as well. Looking at you Dante.

Conductive Labs MMRC: If you deal with a lot of MIDI and don't have one, get it and solve like 90% of MIDI problems. They make a small one the "880" if you don't need like a thousand MIDI ports.

Analog audio over Shielded Cat 5 Connectors. It's the way.

Melda Audio Plugins: Some of the absolute best plugins being made today and nobody really uses them. Their Free pack is fantastic and they have some specialty plugins like their big Reverb and stuff that are simply insane. The Turbo Reverb is basically a GUI for creating your own algorithms and it's nuts.

Boss LS-2 Line selector. Best pedal Boss ever made.

Kniferide wrote: Sun Oct 05, 2025 10:42 pm Boss LS-2 Line selector. Best pedal Boss ever made.

Maaaan why didn't anyone tell me about that ages ago.

TylerDeadPine wrote: Mon Oct 06, 2025 2:08 pm

Kniferide wrote: Sun Oct 05, 2025 10:42 pm Boss LS-2 Line selector. Best pedal Boss ever made.

Maaaan why didn't anyone tell me about that ages ago.

I have 2 and a cheapo Joyo knockoff. I use them for everything.

Mosky ISO 10 power supply - a truly isolated power supply with 10 outputs for £40. I’ve used 2 for 4 years now with no noise and no issues.

Boss GT-3 - had one for maybe 20 years now, have used it for many many many covers gigs. Analogue drives, good enough modulation/delay/reverbs. Plug n play.

Pyramid Pure Nickel Wound strings - £3.60 a set from Thomann - I used Daddarios for years and gave these a go when I was ordering other stuff from Thomann. Love them. They feel rounder somehow.

Blackheart Handsome Devil - 15w head or 1x12 combo, basically a Fender tonestack into a AC15 power section- very well built. Cheap cheap cheap secondhand.