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Gear You Regret Buying?

Sorry, there is no one I can really whinge to about this, so I will post it here on this forum. The worst and most useless purchase I ever made was one of these!

reel-lawnmower.jpg

But more to the point, the 8 track Tascam 488 portastudio cassette recorder I bought just before everything started being recorded on hard disk recorders! And then the Zoom MRS-1044 Hard disk recorder I bought just before everything started being recorded on computers! And the Boss GT5 effects unit (good product) for guitar, but only because it dropped in value and was superseded within a short period of time by way more inexpensive versions.
 
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Sorry, there is no one I can really whinge to about this, so I will post it here on this forum. The worst and most useless purchase I ever made was on one of these!

reel-lawnmower.jpg

I actually think that is more practical than the lawnmower we bought, which is electric and requires you to drag around a heavy-duty power cable behind you while you mow. Didn't really think that one through....
 
I actually think that is more practical than the lawnmower we bought, which is electric and requires you to drag around a heavy-duty power cable behind you while you mow. Didn't really think that one through....

It was practical for me at the time, lighter in weight, more environmentally friendly to use, no paying for petrol or electricity, made me do more exercise, but the only problem I had is that it didn't cut grass very well! Yeah, years ago, a neighbour of mine had an electric powered lawn mower, I was always worried that he would run over the cable and electrocute himself haha.
 
only thing worse than a corded electric lawn mower is a battery powered lawn mower. I could get maybe 30 minutes run time, which translated to three days (or more) of mowing. UGH!

I still have a reel mower, but with 3/4 of a acre it isn't very practical. It does, however, do a fantastic job - if you keep the blades sharp and use it slowly.
 
only thing worse than a corded electric lawn mower is a battery powered lawn mower. I could get maybe 30 minutes run time, which translated to three days (or more) of mowing. UGH!

lol! You poor man! I didn't even realise they existed. I guess solar powered lawn mowers will be next.
 
My answer to the original question:

1. Several f-ing expensive internal computer cards - such as Pro Tools TDM (NuBus and then PCI) - that became obsolete with new Macs (and I'm old enough to remember when Macs were hopelessly out of date after three years).

1A. Two or three expansion chassis.

2. Anything to do with storage before SSDs. Every drive either broke or was too small in no time flat.

3. 50 billion obsolete cables that are now in boxes I should throw away.

The common theme is that they're all computer peripherals. I can't think of a piece of music or audio equipment I regret buying, although I can think of some I regret selling.
 
1. A 1980 Gibson RD with a Photon Guitar Synth that I traded a dead-on mint 1970 SG Special for. (Easily the dumbest and most impulsive gear decision I've made.)
2. TC-Electronic Triple-C
3. Powercore and every plugin that came with it.
 
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3. Powercore and every plugin that came with it.

While I loved my PowerCores, I only ever bought one plugin for it - MasterX5 - which I still miss everyday....

*sniff... I'll always love you, MasterX.... sniff*

But I got contacted by a guy from Adelaide and he bought two of my five cards off me - and he recently contacted me wanting more! So if you have PCIe cards for sale, hit me up and I'll give you his info.

As to gear I regret, there's too much to list - but one that's staring me in the face right now and pissing me off is the Gotharman's Little Deformer mk2 with SP-Box. It's little sampler / sequencer box with an arcane user interface, along the lines of the Elektron stuff, which is impossible to use unless you make it your religion and use it all day, every day. Otherwise you'll never remember all the shift-key functions that are required to use the darn thing. The only reason I bought it was because of the SP-Box, which was a breakout box with a grand total of ONE mono audio output, but had the exact D>A and filter chipset from an SP-12. I foolishly figured this would be the key to getting that old-school-sampler crunch, but it's so fiddly to use that I only lasted one afternoon on the thing before putting it in the "to be sold" pile.
 
NI Maschine
Thought it was fun to program beats by tapping pads (and it is fun) but it's so inconvenient to use this thing as a plugin that I spent much too much time trying to integrate it into a workflow but it really never works as helper, more like an obstacle. And in the end I never used it in a single track.
 
While I loved my PowerCores, I only ever bought one plugin for it - MasterX5 - which I still miss everyday....

*sniff... I'll always love you, MasterX.... sniff*

But I got contacted by a guy from Adelaide and he bought two of my five cards off me - and he recently contacted me wanting more! So if you have PCIe cards for sale, hit me up and I'll give you his info.

As to gear I regret, there's too much to list - but one that's staring me in the face right now and pissing me off is the Gotharman's Little Deformer mk2 with SP-Box. It's little sampler / sequencer box with an arcane user interface, along the lines of the Elektron stuff, which is impossible to use unless you make it your religion and use it all day, every day. Otherwise you'll never remember all the shift-key functions that are required to use the darn thing. The only reason I bought it was because of the SP-Box, which was a breakout box with a grand total of ONE mono audio output, but had the exact D>A and filter chipset from an SP-12. I foolishly figured this would be the key to getting that old-school-sampler crunch, but it's so fiddly to use that I only lasted one afternoon on the thing before putting it in the "to be sold" pile.
I actually loved the TC plugins. (I did sink a ton into them though...) I actually thought MasterX 5 was f-ing awesome, (as was P.C. Virus, MD-3...), whether they'd run and remain stable was unfortunately another story though... Always hoped TC would migrate to UAD but seems like we're way past that being a reality now...

Thanks Charlie, I only had a couple PCI cards and put them on ebay when I moved to move to UAD. (As well as all plugins.) I get why someone stick with them if they're working for them though, not only were they excellent, they still stand up to some of my current favorite plugins...
 
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Always hoped TC would migrate to UAD but seems like we're way past that being a reality now...

Tell me about it. I've been waving that flag to both the TC guys and the UA people for years. I'm a UA endorsee and I've known a lot of those folks for decades, but so far no luck. I think once Behringer / Music Group gobbled up TC they basically cut any products that they didn't like - including any cross-company licensing agreements like the ones that allowed my beloved TC/Dynaudio AIR speaker systems to exist. Gone in a flash due to possible conflicts between Dynaudio products and other Music Group products. Last time I was at NAMM and chatting with the TC guys all they could do was basically shrug and say, "I dunno man...."

I've also begged Clemens and Jan-Hikkert from the Logic team to license (or just reverse-engineer!) MasterX5 / Finalizer technology and call it "MasterComp" for Logic, and I've had them over to my studio and demonstrated the unique sound, ease of use, and strangely "floating" auto-makeup-gain thing that MasterX5 does.... but so far no MasterComp.

Oh well.
 
NI Maschine
Thought it was fun to program beats by tapping pads (and it is fun) but it's so inconvenient to use this thing as a plugin that I spent much too much time trying to integrate it into a workflow but it really never works as helper, more like an obstacle. And in the end I never used it in a single track.

Just as I was thinking about something that I regret, I saw this.

Even though I got it in a bundle at the time, NI Maschine Mikro MKII + Komplete 10 at the time for 600 euro. Only bought it for having a Kontakt license. The Maschine + Mikro are just catching dust. Don't have the desk space for it anyway. Sometimes I'd like to believe I would have been better of by just buying Kontakt at the full retail price. The Mikro also freezes my PC on bootup if I leave it connected. Eventually I gave up on trying to make it work for me, as you said, so inconvenient to use as plugin.
 
The Mikro also freezes my PC on bootup if I leave it connected.

I've had tons of trouble with my NI Komplete Audio USB interface. I sold it and bought one from Focusrite that works MUCH better. I'm unlikely to give NI hardware another go.
 
I've had tons of trouble with my NI Komplete Audio USB interface. I sold it and bought one from Focusrite that works MUCH better. I'm unlikely to give NI hardware another go.
The only problem I ever had with any NI hardware was that damn audio interface of theirs. Worst purchase ever.

The only other regret I have is that I bought a Theremini on impulse. I used it once and its been sitting in the closet ever since. One day I promise I’ll get around to using it!
 
Tell me about it. I've been waving that flag to both the TC guys and the UA people for years. I'm a UA endorsee and I've known a lot of those folks for decades, but so far no luck. I think once Behringer / Music Group gobbled up TC they basically cut any products that they didn't like - including any cross-company licensing agreements like the ones that allowed my beloved TC/Dynaudio AIR speaker systems to exist. Gone in a flash due to possible conflicts between Dynaudio products and other Music Group products. Last time I was at NAMM and chatting with the TC guys all they could do was basically shrug and say, "I dunno man...."

I've also begged Clemens and Jan-Hikkert from the Logic team to license (or just reverse-engineer!) MasterX5 / Finalizer technology and call it "MasterComp" for Logic, and I've had them over to my studio and demonstrated the unique sound, ease of use, and strangely "floating" auto-makeup-gain thing that MasterX5 does.... but so far no MasterComp.

Oh well.
It's a bummer alright. TC made pretty incredible plugins. The MD3, VSS3 and original Character are still some of the nicest sounding ones I've owned. (the new version of Character sounds nothing like the powercore one unfortunately.)

It's frustrating they've released some of them for PT, but not AU or VST... Glad VSS3 is out again though, just wish they'd release the rest of the Powercore plugin line as natives.

MasterComp sounds like a pretty frickin great idea. Hell I bet a multiband version of PhatFX could do a damn good job of recreating the sound of MasterX 5. (Feel free to put in a word :grin:)
 
Sorry, there is no one I can really whinge to about this, so I will post it here on this forum. The worst and most useless purchase I ever made was one of these!
reel-lawnmower.jpg
I heard that they are the way to a perfect lawn.
All you need to do is run one of those over the lawn *every day*...
... which of course never happened when I had one.
They really don't like grass that's in any way long.
 
The add-on effects card that was available for the Akai S5000/6000 samplers. I remember listening to the reverb for the first time and being disgusted. Waste of space.

Novation Launch Control. (not XL) Nicely designed bit of hardware, but the internal memory kept randomly re-writing itself and drove me up the wall.

Any Alesis midi keyboard controller. (I've had 3.) Random note dropouts and velocity craziness. Never again.
 
Doepfer lmk4+ hated the clunky feel and massive case. Luckily it completely died for no reason and now sits in my garage.
 
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