As published in a Pro Audio Review Magazine “Studio Sense” editorial …
Let’s Make a (Gear) Deal? by Rob Tavaglione
Considering that about 99% of us audio engineers are frugal nickel-splitting cost-cutters, its clearly necessity that’s the mother of our ongoing inventions, repairs, shopping and general deal-seeking. I have taken great joy in equipping my studio with lots of gear that has been either snatched up cheaply, rescued from disrepair, re-purposed or made into something far more useful than its cost. Sadly, such penny-wise studio outfitting isn’t possible anymore, as the day of the “DIY sweet audio deal” is behind us.
The audio gear collecting mantra of “don’t waste any money, build what you can, look for under-valued projects” seems to have started with the legendary engineers of yore who built their way out of problems. Studios typically designed their own consoles and it wasn’t unusual to find everything from preamps, compressors and monitors built by the very white-coats who worked the sessions. Even into the 70’s and 80’s EVERY studio had at least one custom piece; headphone boxes, cue systems, patch panels and monitors the most common.
For those of us less inclined than all that, there was always the concept of clever scavenging. Everywhere you looked it seemed like there was a piece of gear crying out for some well-informed TLC. Yard sales with German mics, pawn shops with marked-down “sold as is” steals, attics with 50’s relics in need of moderate repair … a person with a soldering iron, little aversion to risk and smooth negotiating skills could walk away with treasures for pennies on a dollar.
The key was knowledge; knowledge in that if one knew the true value of a piece, one could find “the deal”. Such knowledge depended on information that was hard to come by, so one relied heavily on a circle of techs/colleagues to pass down the vitals … “its simply been sitting too long, re-cap it and you’ll be fine” … “change out the $3 battery in that SPX90 and lose that erratic behavior” … “those things constantly blow transformers, avoid them regardless of price” … we shared the knowledge, even as we always tried to “one up” another with better deals and cooler conquests.
Frugal ingenuity doesn’t pay off the same today. For starters, all the classics have been snatched up. Collectible gear makes it no further down the food chain than estate sales, no more U47’s at pawn shops. If such gear does make it all the way to the general public on eBay it surely isn’t undervalued. Between checking “completed listings” and other sites (ie.PrePal.com, Gearsource.com, Soundbroker.com) it’s pretty easy to determine the actual market value of most gear. Intrinsic value is harder to measure.
Understanding the cost of repair-ability is the key to such value … but the cost of repair of so much modern gear is N/A, as in non-applicable, as in “cannot be repaired”. You know the drill I’m sure … “that’s just a wiggly output jack, I’ll fix it” … you open it up, find the bad jack’s connection … “aw hell, it’s soldered directly to the PCB without support and the mostly plastic connector is actually broken, it’s not a standard jack – it’s got this little right-angle thingy to make it fit into this super-tiny space”, the company doesn’t sell the part, “sorry friend – disposable audio”.
The last frontier for audio gear deal making is Craigslist, and that’s well … Craigslist. Everybody knows what the gear is worth, but if you can buy it “today, cash only” as a “low-baller” you might walk out with an underpriced bargain. Then again, you might end up feeling stupid in a Holiday Inn parking lot, with no gear and no wallet! Software and the virtual world offers no solace for the hardcore deal-seeker either, as you don’t even own such purchases and there sure as hell ain’t no way to re-tube, paint and resell a Pultec emulation!
Oh well, at least there’s still PAIA kits, relics to be resuscitated and loads of reference material out there (easily accessible and free these days) for those adventurous minds who want to build and solder their way into audio bliss. I encourage such behavior and think it will serve you well … such hard work will be truly necessary as one can no longer pawn, swap or stumble into a sufficient gear collection.
Leave a Reply