Guitar Gear

Though I don’t post nearly as much as I used to, I still check my admin dashboard to see what articles have been the most active in the recent past. When I looked this morning, I saw that an article I wrote about Wyres strings and how they’re the best I’ve ever played. That was back in 2009 and I still use them for acoustic. They provide a certain brightness that livens up the natural warmth of my APX900. BUT, I no longer use them for electric because I love the sound of Ernie Ball Slinky Cobalt strings. That’s not to say that Wyres electric strings aren’t great. They are, and the coated strings last a LONG time. But they’re just a bit too smooth-sounding for my tastes.

BUT, I no longer use them for electric because I love the sound of Ernie Ball Slinky Cobalt strings. That’s not to say that Wyres electric strings aren’t great. They are, and the coated strings last a LONG time. But they’re just a bit too smooth-sounding for my tastes.

But the point to this post is that in our search for that “Tone Unicorn,” what we might find as the do-all, be-all gear one day, may just go into our archives down the road. We will rave about gear that we come across or acquire, then a little bit down the road, we’ll rave about a similar product. As the title of the article suggests, it makes us look a bit fickle.

I laughed out loud when I read the headline to that Wyres article. My blog was only a couple of years old then, and to be completely honest, I have to admit that I was in the midst of GASsing out, wide-eyed with wonder over all the new gear I was evaluating. I was getting amps, guitars, effects, accessories. Each one was the latest and greatest at the time.

But now that I’ve calmed down – and now that I don’t have the “budget” for all that new stuff, I look back on all the gear that I got, and how 90% of is just sitting. For instance, I have a lot of overdrive pedals. A lot. Some are these awesome boutique pedals that I spent hundreds of dollars on. But I now just rotate between three that serve my purposes. And truth be told, I’ve mostly been using my $65 EHX Soul Food exclusively as of late.

Part of it is that I’ve found my sound and though different gear might color my tone in different ways, I still sound like me.

But I ask myself this: Were I again to have the means to acquire even more gear, would I go on another GAS binge? I’m not sure, but chances are I probably won’t. Part of not having the budget for new gear meant that I had to learn to play with the stuff I already had. Turns out that I already had some pretty awesome gear, and other than replacing worn out stuff, I don’t think I’d get worked up into a frenzy.