What's new

Gear You Regret Buying?

Ever buy old gear with these obscure (ROM) batteries that had to be soldered off / on? By the time I got around to paying the music store for the repair job (2yrs later) , the battery had died again..
I once also bought a used Yamaha QY300 sequencer and when I did a "factory reset", it erased every single pattern, including the factory ones! Had a diskette, but the drive didn't work..Any how that's old junk now..
 
Digi 001 and Digi 002, before I finally bailed on Pro Tools for Logic. Since then, two generations of Apogee Duet and some good mics have served me very well for analog input. I know a lot of people really love their hardware and it’s very impressive to walk into a studio that looks like the pro audio department of a big music store, but I’m happiest keeping it to a bare minimum.
 
A Muse Receptor. A cool box but more for live use I think, well built, but not a really deep feature set and it crashed once and I had to send it back to get reset. A PC would have been a better choice but this was 15 years ago and the cult of Mac was strong.
I loved the Muse Receptor. But agree it was primarily used for live playing. Ivory piano loaded onto a receptor was solid and reliable.
 
Presonus Faderport
Endless trouble reconfiguring Control Surface setup on Logic 10.4
Works for a while then goes nuts.
 
IDK what I was thinking, I just bought Korg's new Electribe Wave iOS app.
Maybye I'm just getting older, but man, all these beatboxes are starting to sound the same to me.
 
My introduction to MIDI and "Sequencing" was something I think called a Roland MT-32. The buttons were so hard to push and getting anything accomplished was a real chore. I sold it and never looked back. Never was real happy with that purchase.
 
Mine is somewhat recent. The 0-Coast synth. The sound was somewhat cool I'll admit but although it is a Eurorack size it comes bolted into its own case and cannot be removed...add to that the graphics on the unit are very difficult to read. I returned it for something from Pittsburgh Audio. I don't use these things for bleeps and cricket sounds either.
 
Back before most of you were born, I bought a hardware sequencer called the Yamaha QX1 for $3,000 1980-something dollars, which is equal to $9,642.40 today. I don't know what possessed me to buy it. It was the first of its kind and I visited the shop several times before I plunked down the money and took it home.

It was a great unit, but literally three months after I bought it, Yamaha came out with a newer, more advanced model at a third of the cost. I can't tell you how much that killed me. And while I got a lot of use out of it, to this day I regret spending that kind of cash on a piece of gear that was obsolete three months later.

https://medias.audiofanzine.com/images/thumbs3/yamaha-qx1-153652.jpg

Anyone else have any gear they regret buying?
The QX1 sure looked cool, though. I think owners felt power using it (if they knew how to, at least) until the QX5 came along, that is. But all the other manufacturers played the same game.

My useless piece of gear was an Aphex C2 with big bottom. Billed as a sound enhancer, it was more of a sound shredder. I sold it after three days when I realized I would never use it on anything.
 
https://www.expressivee.com/touche (Touché) - a stupid device and a stupid purchase
 
https://www.expressivee.com/touche (Touché) - a stupid device and a stupid purchase
Do you mean that collaboration between Buchla and Rosenboom?? If so, I didn't know you could even buy one. If not, then I don't know this thing.

An nevermind, I followed your link, this is something completely different alright.
 
Last edited:
Back before most of you were born, I bought a hardware sequencer called the Yamaha QX1 for $3,000 1980-something dollars, which is equal to $9,642.40 today. I don't know what possessed me to buy it. It was the first of its kind and I visited the shop several times before I plunked down the money and took it home.

It was a great unit, but literally three months after I bought it, Yamaha came out with a newer, more advanced model at a third of the cost. I can't tell you how much that killed me. And while I got a lot of use out of it, to this day I regret spending that kind of cash on a piece of gear that was obsolete three months later.

https://medias.audiofanzine.com/images/thumbs3/yamaha-qx1-153652.jpg

Anyone else have any gear they regret buying?

I bought a Yamaha QX7 sequencer in the mid-80's. It wasn't mega costly but I still needed to take out a small loan to buy it! I remember speaking on the phone to the hire purchase company, and when he asked me what the money was for and I said "a sequencer", after a silence he said "oh, I'm sorry did you say a sequinned suit?" :laugh:


I bought a UAD Apollo 8 Duo just a few weeks ago. I don't regret it totally, but had I known about the x6 being round the corner I would probably have waited.
 
@robgb You should change the title of this thread to "Amazing gear you've never regretted buying."

Hilarity will ensure.

It's interesting (to me at least) how often this regretful topic comes up. I wonder if some of the folks here spent more time on the user manual and walkthroughs apropos to the instruments(s) (not to mention actively using such in their compositions) as opposed to examining the vi's supposed faults right off the bat they'd be so regretful.

But it depends what each person is looking for on their musical journey, of course.

I get inspired over and over again by EW Hollywood, Stormdrum, Earth EDNA, Albion III, BHCT, Evo 2, Garritan CFX, the Hein solo instruments (haven't tried the ensemble yet) and plenty of others.

I guess I could make things more succinct in saying that for the most part I'm so darn happy with the majority of my virtual instruments I could just poop. I've complained enough about the duds.
 
Last edited:
Huh that thing looks kinda cool really. What didn't you like about it?

Well to be fair I need to spend more time with it, I spend a few hours trying to understand it and got frustrated. I want to use it as a CC controller for expression and volume, being two axis it seemed like a good way to control both, but I couldn't get it to work out. It can be CC programmed, but the way they handle the axis (it resets to zero) was problematic. It was past the return date so I just got some sliders which have worked better. At some point I'll find some use for it or eBay.
 
Top Bottom