Guitar Gear

Back in the early days of this blog, I used to look forward to news from NAMM, anxiously waiting with bated breath for quips and news articles from manufacturers and magazines. NAMM was always such an exciting time. But now? Not so much. It’s not that I’ve lost interest in gear. If anything, I’m even more interested in gear than ever (though I realize due to time, I just haven’t been able to write as much about it as of late).But I  think what has happened with my attitude towards NAMM is due to a few things.

First, I’ve found my sound. I know that whatever gear I play, I will sound like me. Talk about finding the tone unicorn. Because of that, I’m not as compelled to buy gear on a whim. Back when I started this blog, I was completely new to tube amps, and GuitarGear.org was my online diary of the gear that I was buying and trying. But as I started to find my sound, the list of things that I’d look at to help shape my tone narrowed significantly. It’s now at the point where I’m treating effects purely as that: effects. I don’t use them to achieve my tone, but to provide different textures as I need them.

Second – and perhaps this may be erroneous on my part – I kind of feel that there are only so many ways to skin a cat, as it were, and so much gear that comes out simply seems to be a variation or incremental improvement over previous versions. That’s not to say that there isn’t some great gear that’s hitting the market. But my attitude – bad or good – doesn’t help compel me to dig as deep.

Thirdly, my gear focus as of late has been on improving my stage and recording gear. Last year, I actually started having GAS attacks on some awesome guitars and effects I ran across. But life happens as they say, and I had to replace some road-worn stage gear, and I needed to upgrade my DAW for home recording. My next major purchase is going to be a Heil Sound PR35 mic for stage and recording. After doing a gig with the PR35, I just could not believe how good that mic sounded! The cool thing is that while it won’t break the bank, it’s definitely not cheap.

Finally, I’ve just been too freakin’ busy with my career these last couple of years to evaluate gear. In addition to my day job as a technology architect, I still gig over 100 days per year, so my schedule makes it fairly prohibitive to research gear. I know, that’s probably not much of an excuse. But truth be told, I’m having the most fun I’ve had in my 30-year career as a software engineer that I’ve ever had, and I have to be honest, I’ve been pouring a lot of my energy into my career.

So circling back to NAMM… I have seen some pretty cool things, but the things that have piqued my interest have been in the recording and pro audio areas; areas that are outside the scope of guitars. But despite that, I’m still a bit “meh” about the whole affair.