Guitar Gear

I’ve encountered many guitarists over the year who announce that they’ve completed their board or rig or whatever saying things like, “My board’s finished! I can die in peace,” or “Finally completed my rig.”

But experience has shown, both through my own personal experience and through years of observation, that the states of finished and complete are transient. In other words, it just takes a matter of time before things get changed up – again. Generically, people have called this GAS. Yes, it can be that, but GAS also implies a somewhat compulsiveness in varying degrees.

For most people, GAS is picking up a pedal here and a pedal there, or occasionally a guitar. But GAS can get pretty ugly where people go way beyond their means to purchase gear. Admittedly, I was riding a razor’s edge of going beyond my means. It’s not pretty and in the end, I sold off at least 80% of the equipment I bought (yeah, it was a lot).

But from a more reasonable perspective, one of the reasons you’ll never be finished tweaking your rig is simply time. Assuming you’re constantly trying to improve and occasionally branching out to try different genres and styles of music, chances are very good that there will be a concomitant shift in your gear needs.

For instance, when I really started getting into reggae over the last few years, I stopped using a lot of my dirt pedals. I used to have at least three on my board to stack and/or give different overdrive colors. I now only keep one – if that – and many times just have modulation pedals. I also set my amps up differently. It’s now all about maximum clean headroom.

Though I have lots of gear and can swap out a bunch of stuff, who knows? Maybe I’ll make another 90-degree turn in my musical journey and get some more new gear.

The point to this is that as we evolve our skills and interests, what we might think suffices for us now could be totally different in the future.