Dana's Thoughts - (always under construction!)


What Makes Gear Lust Somewhat Tolerable
-September 23rd, 2003

After spending way too much money over the years on every piece of gear I could imagine, I at last found at least something that makes it a bit more affordable. Its pretty easy, actually: I realized that in the marketing of electronic musical instruments, the industry has decided that the half life for any instrument is maybe three years, unless they hit an absolute winner. Even then, the pressure of the marketplace is so great that they may have to update whatever it is, to convince us all that last years cant-be-without-it box is now hopelessly out of date. So I believe in many cases, if you see a killer piece of gear, unless the gear lust has you by your short-hairs, you should do something that most any musician I know just hates: wait. Case in point: I bought an XL7. When they came out three years ago, they were selling for something like $1200 (!), so I never even considered them, and really forgot about them until I got interested in groove boxes.

Then when I got the Korgs and the DX, I looked again and lo and behold they were selling for something like $699, or even blown out for $599. Finally, when I bought mine, I got it very slightly used for $450. So its cheap right? But the other thing I did after I was interested - before I put my money down! - was to check to see if there were any user groups on this box. Turns out there is a dandy Yahoo group. I did a lot of reading on the group, asked a lot of questions, and found out that Emu is actually a pretty good company, since they had done numerous upgrades of the operating system of the box, with most of the suggestions coming from the user group - ordinary people that actually use the equipment.

So here is the mantra: read as much as you can, ask as many questions as you can, and most of all, if you can, wait. Chances are you will be much better off. And don't forget after you get the box, dig into it and find out all you can about it. It will probably do much, much more than the things that attracted you to it in the first place.

One last thing - if you get something good - hang onto it! I still have my guitar I bought in '78, my sax in '82, the one and only mixer I have ever owned - so not everything is expendable.