Play what you can buy at your local guitar shop
Posted by scottfrein on August 15, 2008
Boutique gear is great. High end gear that sounds a step above the normal stuff. You can tweak your sound to sonic perfection. Your rig sounds exactly as you imagined it. But what do you do when a piece of boutique gear goes bad? Many boutique builders have waiting lists. Some are more wide spread but still only available at choice shops around the country.
So what happens if you’re $300 super singer overdrive pedal or $3000 point to point wired 18 watt clone goes out on you? If your a gigging musician you are in a tough spot. Now I know all the cork sniffers are saying ” Boutique gear doesn’t break as much as production gear”. I am simply approaching this from the perspective that gigging musicians will and do have gear break. The other problem that may arise is that the said boutique gear does sound just a little better. Guitar players are a finicky bunch and one little change in the signal chain could throw some into a full fledged Buddy Rich style freak out.
I do own good gear. I play what I consider to be good sounding and reliable equipment. That being said, save the DIY pedals I made myself there isn’t anything in my rig that I can’t replace with something from a local guitar shop. I’m not saying a direct replacement, but close enough to get me through a gig. I have purposely designed my rigs this way. I don’t get caught up in hand wired amps, NOS tubes, $200 audiophile grade cables, or carbon comp resistor and tropical fish cap loaded pedals. I simply get the best tone possible out of what I have. This serves me well and in the noisy rock and roll world, nobody in the audience is going to know or care. If a pedal goes out, I either carry a replacement or I can buy one. Try that with a KLON
I will say that in a recording environment I could get behind the idea of higher end gear, cables, etc.. to try to capture the purest tone possible. But I’ll leave it in the studio and take my tried and true off the shelf stuff to the gigs.
Scott
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