Do Forum Guys Obsess to much over details

  • Thread starter Thread starter ttosh
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I would gladly trade my gear nerdery for ability, and I also would like average guitarists to care a little more about gear/tone.
 
glassjaw7":29lp8l9t said:
Some people love playing, some love gear and having a tidy rig, and some love both. The Steve Stevens rig above is a perfect example of a dude who loves both.
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And has the money to do it ;)
 
I love trying out new gear..mainly amps. Most of you know I've been through alot of amps that are considered "the holy grail" or whatever but...If any of you went to my bands rehearsal space and saw what I really play through...you'd be goin... :confused: :confused: :confused: :confused: :confused: :confused: :confused: :confused: :confused: :lol: :LOL:
 
sure....its a hobby for most on here.....when u r a touring musician on a medium level you dont have time to get on stage and set up the basement setup..... u have 5 mins on and off.....Less gear works better.....PLus the Audience dosnt give a shit what the guitarist is using they r interested in the VOCALIST and always has been......
i take my soldano slo,soldano 4x12 cab my lespaul and a cable nowadays!!!! thats it.......i'm JUST A GUITARIST
 
Meh, it's no different than with car guys or computer/electronics aficionados.
You obsess over the details of everything you love or care about.
 
joolzriff":1bzpp167 said:
sure....its a hobby for most on here.....when u r a touring musician on a medium level you dont have time to get on stage and set up the basement setup..... u have 5 mins on and off.....Less gear works better.....PLus the Audience dosnt give a shit what the guitarist is using they r interested in the VOCALIST and always has been......
i take my soldano slo,soldano 4x12 cab my lespaul and a cable nowadays!!!! thats it.......i'm JUST A GUITARIST
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Yes but the singer wants the band to sound good so they care what is used. Good point on the time to get on/off stage but this setup was in reference to Pink's guitar player who is a monster and probably gets more than 5 minutes to setup and soundcheck etc...

You did state touring musician on a medium level in your post, and the point is definitely valid there most of the time regarding setup.

btw Soldano and Les Paul = Major Win in any venue!
 
D-Rock":3mvztbqi said:
Meh, it's no different than with car guys or computer/electronics aficionados.
You obsess over the details of everything you love or care about.
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I agree totally... I think some of the pros obsess more over their playing than their equipment based on some of the rigs I have seen. And as others have pointed out some pros like Steve Stevens obsess over both evidently. The thing that amazes me is the ones who have rigs that we would not want to show on the forum that sound freaking amazing!!
 
steve_k":21vfex9i said:
Dallas Marlow":21vfex9i said:
Honestly, I think some people do, but then theres people like me who just obsess over every aspect of the instrument, not only equipment wise but also playing, styles, ways of thinking about it, learning it etc.

The biggest reasons gear is important to me is reliability and sounding good. As tough as it is to say for me, reliability is all but more important than sound, I had a fuse go out in an amp due to some shitty tubes the other night and it pissed me off to no end, it was a small gig so of course I didn't bring a back up, and right in the middle of my guitar solo CRACKLE-FIZZ emptyness... thankfully a buddy had another amp there.

Thats one thing I love about my DAR, *knock on wood*, it's been rock fucking solid, haven't even lost a fuse yet, I think a lot of the issues with amps are 75% of the time tube based problems, most modern production tubes just fucking suck from my experiences. JJ power tubes have been horrid for me, back about... 7 years ago when I first used them I had good luck with them, but around 3 years ago I felt they just went to total shit and had countless failures. One even blew up so hard it shattered a fuse, I opened up for replacement and had to scoop out the other end of the fuse along with shards of glass...

As far as cables/wiring etc., for a gigging musician I just can't fathom having a rig with unreliable parts, if I could afford diamond plated 9v adapter cables so nothing could wear them out I'd get them, simply so I never in the middle of a song stepped on a pedal that just so happen to jostle something weird and the little plug decided it was time to fail. That kind of stuff drives me nuts to NO END, so I don't know that it's so much even unnecessary obsessing as much as it is having expectations of performance and reliability, and looking for that next step up in quality.

To me the real waste of time is dealing with something when it breaks, troubleshooting takes far more time to me than buying and setting up everything properly right the first time around and not having to deal with it.
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You hit the nail on the head. For us, it is only us and things have to work. For others, they have techs to make sure it is always right and there is a B option. Like Justin explains in his interview and his board set up.

Lat year, I was playing at an outdoor event over here. We were headlining and the set up first and got our soundcheck out of the way. Meanwhile, during the day, they can and set up an awning over the stage. It just so happens the crew sat a metal post right on my Midi cable from my board to the rack. Took the stage flipped all my pedals on in the rack and fired the amps up. No effects.....WTF. I had phantom power to the Ground Controller, as obviously not all the wires in the Midi cable were damaged. Just the one's that I needed! I now use 1" plastic tubing cut in 4' sections to run all my cables through and this stuff is painted dayglo orange so any fucker that comes across the stage see's it.

Another mishap and I know this has happened to anyone that has played live enough and that is someone coming along and catch a speaker cable and pulling it from the jack in a cab. I went online to Parts Express and bought a bunch of speaker jack plates/cups that are predrilled for Neutrik locking jacks and replaced the jacks on my cabs with them.

Then there's the infamous soundcheck ground loop and buzz! I carry my own transformer/power supply/voltage regulator and plug everything into one source far away from other shit.


Steve
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Excellent point and cool story. Been doing a little research as well on Justin eh? :rock:
 
Absolutely yes! That's not to say it isn't fun to do so but it can certainly go OTT in the forum world.
 
"Your boutique tone goes out the window on the first snare hit"

I read this the other day and I think it's mostly true.

I try not to obsess over tone, particularly since live tone is a totally different ball of wax from at home tone... but it can be hard not to when you go a long time between gigs with nothing to listen to except for your live rig at home.
 
Tone is the most important thing to me, but I only judge my tone from band and stage performance. You can make anything sound good on it's own, but in a full band is where it's actually going to count. If I'm standing in front of my stack on a stage and it sounds like shit, I'm going to be playing horribly and be in a grumpy mood all night. It's important to me that I am constantly satisfied with how I sound.
 
we really all do have a incurable sickness about this stuff. but it's all good, a healthy obessing on gear gives me the same tingle like i had looking at the sears catalog at all the star wars stuff i wanted for christmas( and wouldn't get ) when i was a kid. :cry:
 
there is a huge difference between the pedal boards of "enthusiasts" and "professionals".

enthusiasts obsess, pros generally don't.

at least the ones i know anyhow. most couldn't really care what kind of cable, whether or not their LP has chambering or what that is, or have ever considered a strap to be "sustain robbing".

they laugh at that stuff, because it's really funny.
 
DEWD":2c8ecqgs said:
Yes, and 98% of the time it's a worthless obsession.
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We start hearing about little details to worry over...then we start to worry over little details...lots of worry on the forums.
 
I have done a lot of gigs where the rig was supplied over the years ..... I feel fine with any semi-decent amp. Sure some tools work better than others. Good luck having your "special amp" worked on if you have a gig tonight.
For many of them it is way beyond obsession and more like ridicules from the perspective of most people.
 
Randy Van Sykes":224fuoba said:
DEWD":224fuoba said:
Yes, and 98% of the time it's a worthless obsession.
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We start hearing about little details to worry over...then we start to worry over little details...lots of worry on the forums.
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Such as A/Bing two patch cords in an effort to analyse the difference when simply moving your cab 1 foot to the left or right can produce a larger result?
 
DEWD":1r3knkqc said:
Yes, and 98% of the time it's a worthless obsession.
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If it makes you happy then it's not worthless. For many it's the chase and the journey, not the destination. I would love to sit in a room full of gear for a week straight and solder cables, route pedalboards and racked pedal trays, and try countless combinations of amps in WDW setups. It's something I enjoy so who cares? :dunno:

The problem with comparing the average forumite to someone like Derrico, is that most of us will never get the chance to do a tour of that status. If I was offered a chance to play with Pink, I could take a Deluxe Reverb or Bassman and a small pedalboard, one guitar and be set. It's not like we need lots of gear to play, it's just fun and some people are more techy than others.

Just think, if everyone was grab-and-go simple, then we wouldn't have people like Dave Friedman designing killerrigs and amps. This topic has way too many variables to be a yes or no answer. :confused:
 
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