I used to buy used gear and fix it up if I found any issues, but two recent acquisitions (tube spring reverb and fancy EQ) have really bit me in the butt and necessarily made me more concerned. My usual tech was out of their depth in figuring out the tube portion, and a kind EE-hobby friend looking into the EQ found some cut traces and pooled liquid he had to ultrasonic off of the PCB, and still hasn’t diagnosed the problem I thought would’ve been easier.
Getting back to topic, one definite point about “gear that will be unobtainable” is that layout and schematic/repair will definitely be unavailable if you ever need to fix it up.
Lots of classic synths were actually very expensive when launched, went cheap for a while, and are now medium priced. Check historical retail prices for some classic synths…
Yeah, the only true unobtainium stuff is already so far out of my storage space and price range (and quite cheap for inflation!)
University modulars being dumped for scrap was a time that won’t come again so at this point it’s just "what was a small batch from a tiny vendor will someone develop a mythos around because of its unavailability?
Stuff is made more cheap by integrating and transferring complex tasks to software. That’s not the same as badly made, but it makes repairing more of a hassle and probably not worth it for a lot of cheap audio stuff.
Even well built digital stuff will one day develop defects and if it’s the wrong chip you’re out of luck.
Yeah it’s not cheap by any means but as soon as my hands touched the Norand it felt like something that would be extremely coveted if it were to be in short supply for the long term (it’s already an easy scalp markup but fuck scalpers). That said it’s Norand’s first entry and they killed it imo so would imagine they’ll make something else that will get in the way of it’s second hand price surging