It sort of reminds me of people I know with tricked out kitchens, the best knives and whatnot, yet only cook once a month and often not very well. Yet some Italian granny who churns our amazing food on the daily while cutting onions imprecisely in their hands with a cheap paring knife.
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Thatās funny, we are in the process of tricking out our kitchen because only one person can stand in it at a time right now!
I am often pretty shocked by a fancy kitchen that has been clearly designed by a person that does not cook (e.g. no hood vent, no prep area near the fridge or stove, dishwasher that opens in front of the sink, etc).
I guess the analog here might be a stack of gear thatās hard to reach, but at least the gear room isnāt the centerpiece of the house when it goes on the market.
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I was working in this house a few years ago that apparently had a 500k French made oven and stove with gold plated knobs and whatnot. I thought after that the person hired to cook for the family probably was cause more anxiety than anything using such a thing.
I didnāt mean to imply that everyone with nice kitchens canāt cookā¦ Funny though, I done most the cooking in all of my adult relationships and have dealt with really cramped kitchens etc., which never deterred me but canāt say that sort of attitude extends to other aspects of my life.
edit, just looked it up:
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Field Notes & Moleskines, I have learned, are too nice for my illegible scrawl and it takes a lot of relentless āitās a notebook, itās for writing notes in and youāre being an idiotā about it all to break the psychological barrier. I have managed it in a few instances but I still have a minimum of half a dozen untouched Field Notes and at least a couple Moleskines
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I get this too. Eventually I get over it, but it can take a while. Occasionally I give in and buy the thing again, and almost every time I do that I regret it too because I quickly realize why I sold it the first time.
Iām starting to lean toward the one in one out policy for things in the same category because I just donāt have room or desire to store a bunch of shit that Iām not using, and Iām shocked at how much more it makes me consider changes to my setup.
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I canāt honestly remember getting sellerās remorse about anything, really, but there are definitely things I would have like to keep if circumstances would have allowed for it (hardware synths, mainly). I donāt find those situations particularly irksome though because I donāt view it as something I had a choice about: either I didnāt have the space for them or needed the money (or both).
Iām in an interesting position at present whereby I found this place a real GAS enabler (to the point where Iāve not logged in for months) and had to thoroughly examine my social media usage and prune the things that triggered those urges too. Circumstances have dictated that I ended up needing to sell basically all my gear in the last few weeks in order to raise money and it turns out that a complete absence of money is the actual perfect silver bullet for GAS 
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You are more important than all the things you surround yourself with.
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I find that funny, in that while iām not punk-film Pentax K1000 level spartan, I donāt need a ton of equipment to do event photography or backup wedding photog.
Optimizations based on ability and ideal outcome are MUCH healthier, butā¦ iāve been a photographer since i could hold a camera and have a lot better ability to share that creative collateral with folks on a scrolling timeline than I do longer music (and in an attention economy.)
Itās all about energy, right?
I know I can get good hip hop beats when just working with a Rytm or MnM in isolation, when iām doing that and songwriting and writing synth riffs i start thinking-
āWhat if i rigged up a Grids, RandomRhythm, AND Stolperbeats?! Surely generative would offload some of the cognitive energyā¦ā
Answer-
Iāll be frustrated waiting for the RandomRhythm to be better than hand crafted beats and waiting for a Stolperbeats preorder to come in the mail and the cv modulation automation of parameters will never match the expectations in my head, so Iād end up flipping Euro modules which takes a while since the market can be extremely illiquid.
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yeah itās pretty much with everything, go slow and master your stuff is the right way, but I was just pointing out that GAS is not exclusive to music/synths, Iāve seen people buy $10-20-30k worth of equipment and spending tons on weird software and filters just to realize that it wonāt make them good photographers 
and also imo photography is worse then synths because you can buy a $2000 70-200 and drop it on your first day outside and there goes the lens 
or you buy insurance for everything and then itās so expensiveā¦
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Itās so outside of my world, itās fascinating.
Grantedā¦ Iām considering picking up a PA/mixer to get more local, public events going (even if @Annihilation_Squaresā underbridge-rave setup is much more sane and reasonable sounding.)
I wonder if any of these forums have threads for minmaxing busker-style configurations, weather protection, optimizing loudness and space.
Anyway, stuff.
The occasional solution to and more often cause of all malady.
A subset of my owned gear is regularly used, but not all of it. However, that is rather intended.
I bought a lot of synths, drum machines and outboard gear over the past few years because the market was rather minimal not so long ago in regards to options. After software became a more viable option for home studios in the early 2000ās, many companies went out of business, focused on gigging musicians, or catered to the high-end studios. As one of many examples, I recall going to the store to purchase an Akai MPC-5000, Roland MV-8800, or Yamaha RS-7000, and they were no longer manufactured or replaced with new models. It was heartbreaking, as I tend not to buy used gear and that was the only option available.
After switching to an all in-the-box setup in 2002-ish, I still regret selling most of my hardware gear for rather cheap. Flash forward to the present, the market is flooded with hardware gear options at reasonable prices (and often lower build quality, unfortunately). The said situation may or may not last, but I am not taking the risk of it depleting again. Therefore, many of my synth, drum machine and outboard gear purchases are more of an effort to future proof my studio needs and wants, as the gear manufactured today seems more built-to-fail than built-to-last.
That said, when it comes to my primary gigging instruments, bass and guitar, I still use the same 3 to 4 that I had for ages as the said market was not impacted by software in the same manner as synths, drum machines, and outboard gear.
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At the risk of going all āold man shouts at cloudā thereās definitely an element of: the more I use the newer stuff, the more I appreciate the older stuff. For all that the MPC One could do, it only made me hanker after my old 2000XL in many ways.
As suggested previously in the post, perhaps thereās an element of nostalgic contrarianism in there: less āthe best camera is the one you have with youā and more āthe best piece of gear is the one you donāt have at hand (because then you canāt see all the shortcomings it has)ā
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Iāve tried to narrow down the causes of GAS. At one stage I wasnāt very happy with my life situation, that period did see an uptick in expense. At one stage I thought i might be compensating for an inability to play my instrument properly, so Iāve worked hard on my playing but GAS is still there. I thought I might be compensating for an inability to program synths but I studied this too, got a lot better, but still experience GAS. I thought I might be compensating for a lack of talent, but composition, songs and Melodieās come easy to me and still more GAS. I thought for a while it might be based on a fear of missing out, but honestly I have several keyboards with enough overlap or redundancy to never fully explore all my synths in my lifetime. When I was in my early 20s in the early 80s I had a dream I was surrounded by synths and making music genuine of me. This dreams roots were born from the first time I played a real synth. On hitting the first note with headphones on I immediately felt relaxed and at ease with myself with absolutely no tension in my whole body. Iāll never forget it but now synths are the only thing in this world I covet.
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So Iām more important than my wife and kids?
I knew it.
Canāt wait to rub their smug little faces in it.
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Your wife and kids are things, not family? 
Gear = things
Useless decorations = things [aka garbage[aka environmental destruction]]
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Yes, my family is everything to me.
Which is why it feels so good to hear Iām more important than those complete bastards.
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Love that!!!
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that is very inspiring, thanks for sharing
i wonder if Growing did a similar thing. gonna do a deep dive on early 00ās sampling techniques
it is the most inspiring thing to see people work within limitations. which is why the devil & daniel johnston and american movie are my favorite documentaries. or that Undulations channel on youtube
@cixelsyd this is what im saying. its not unnatural to want the best tools for your craft. you just have to balance it with reality, which we are perfectly capable of doing usually
@PeteSasqwax i definitely look back on the best times i had making music and it was when i first got my es-1 before i tried anything else. or when i just had a digitone and a bastl thyme (only started buying gear in like 2018). i get a lot of GAS for that older stuff though. sometimes i think i should try it again but im pretty sure i wouldnt use it.
i do think its a good idea to focus on establishing core tools/basics and trying to settle on the best fit, but that takes trial and error and new products provide new possibilities
this might be my main GAS deterrent. iāve never stored any gear. everything i have is plugged in and in use. that would alleviate some sellers remorse but you can almost always buy it again or sell the thing you replaced it with. i think its smart in a way, but desk space limitations are a good boundary for new gear options
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In the beginning I did a lot of swapping gear out and rebuying stuff I had tried.
I needed that to start forming ideas about what I really wanted.
Over time it settled down and I got really focused and comfortable using what I had. I started to embrace the self imposed limitations over the new shiny things.
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exactly
i feel like im finally settled into a great setup. i have one āspotā where i am considering swapping a a thing for a phase distortion synth, but other than that im set for the most part
finding a main polysynth i really loved took the longest but now that i have the M, iāve found that i dont get frustrated by limitations and i find new musical & unique timbres that i can use every time i sit down with it. that was very difficult to find. i have bought and sold the digitone and a4 at least 5 times each, and two of most other moden affordable polysynths
generally, working in hardware i feel like you dont want to use one synth for every sound. so i have the monosynths and digitone. dn covers a lot of ground. i get my pure analog from the cheap monos. drum machines covered. and octatrack was the first real setup ābrainā i bought, so that workflow has been set since then. the other elektrons always feel fluid, but iāll probably never not own at least one of (a4/dn/dt/st/mc) in addition to the keepers (ot & rytm). and found a great mixer that i traded for a guitar pedal
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