Confessions of a Gear Head | My Struggle with Gear Acquisition Syndrome

started [Music] what's up everyone those of you that saw my title know that you also suffer from the same problem I'm sure many people on here do and it's the obsession of gear you guys see that I have a lot of gear as a matter of fact I'm holding a new guitar right now that I got from PRS now this guitar is a loaner I traded in the hollow body guitar for this custom 24 which is beautiful right but do I really need another guitar I was at a music store this past weekend and III was talking with someone here at the studio we were doing a session the other day and I've been looking for a white Les Paul Custom for well since I was in high school and I her since I was a freshman in college and I gave my white Gibson Les Paul Custom to my brother John who traded it for a creamer with us with a scalloped fingerboard which he still has so I've been telling him John I'm gonna get eventually I'm gonna get find a white Les Paul Custom now the Les Paul Custom that is really that people want is in 1974 the Randy Rhoads won the edge plays that same one it was the first year that they came out with a white custom the only difference is that in 75 I think from 75 to 82 they started making the backs CS and mahogany here are the backs and the necks out of maple the Les Paul's so it wasn't until the I think 83 or so that they returned to making the white Les Paul customs out of mahogany so the ones if you buy one from 75 to 82 it's got a maple back and and is very heavy so I found this at a music store the other day and got it it's the only other guitar that I've really wanted now the thing with these white custom I don't usually talk about gear around here but I'm gonna talk about gear today the thing about these white customs is this was white but now because of the aging it becomes cream-colored after about I don't know ten years or so stuff starts becoming that so you really want to you want to have an older one okay now this one when I played it has acoustically I was talking with this last night on a live stream and it has a certain chime to it even with these cords like that it it has a has a has a lot of volume and that's to me is the thing that that you can tell from a guitar that's been aged well that it actually has a acoustically has a loud sound my SG that's back there my 65 SG is is a very loud guitar acoustically so anyway so I'm doing this I found this guitar and then I went to a different store I was telling this story last night actually on my other channel which you guys don't know about so that I walk into this music store that I've been going to for years and and the guy says hey this guy has two marshall plexi z' for you and i said what what are you talking about yeah there's two hand-wired plexes here for you i said what what do you mean what this guy wants to give them to you or let's let you have them to keep for your studio and I said would D and he says do you know this guy said no I don't know this guy he said well when Rick Beato comes in give him these two marshall hand-wired plexi sir you know really expensive guitar amplifiers and he says why we wanted to check with you that seemed kind of weird and he goes why does he want to give them to you I said I have no idea why he wants to give them to me and the other guy there Jimmy knows my chilling is like well Rick's got a million subscribers on his YouTube channel and he probably want wanted Rick to use them in his videos or something I said I've got too many amplifiers I don't need I don't need another Marshall plexi handler plexi I mean look look at this right this is this is this is just this room you know so you can see I've got it I have a what is it a Princeton there and I've got a deluxe right under it so anyways I started saying to myself okay this is this is really getting ridiculous how many guitars how much gear do I need my friend Keith whose Channel five watt world has a great video how many guitars do you need and he and I always joked that I always tell them I need a lot of them because I like to play a lot of different guitars so this but this particular guitar is the first one that I that are the oldest guitar that I own I got this guitar in 1977 or so I got it from my guitar teacher Glenn and it's a early 70s guild acoustic guitar a classical guitar you know so you can play it if it were in tune [Music] it's a very nice guitar and it's it's something I've just held on to I mean I really have this guitar I have my Gibson acoustic but I mean honestly beyond that anything else could be replaced you can do pretty much anything with with any of these with any of these guitars I mean III one of one of the reasons that this started where I started to acquire stuff was for being a music producer and it really started with it started because I came from being in a band and in my band I had to Marshall stacks with 200 watt heads a jcm800 JCM 2000 and my 800 was in 1984 and then I had a couple Les Paul's so the so when I started producing bands most of the band's most producers at the time owned their own gear and and the it was just common for people to play the producers gear and then that's how you could control how good of recordings you would get is that they would just use your drum sets they'd use your face amps and use your basses your guitars your guitar amps and I noticed that I was always hindered by the the bands that would come in by the way 30% discount anything in my store RB 57 I just had my half-birthday I'm 57 and a half so that's where the 57 comes from but 30% off anything if you want to support my channel that's how you can do it so the so I was doing a session one time and and my assistant GL was was was we were saying how bad the snare sound was at the previous band that had been in the week before and I said man that guy had the worst snare ever so this next band comes the next Monday he gets up there he hits a snare and I was like this is terrible this is worse than the one with a week before so GL says to me what are we gonna do I said you know what I'm gonna go to Guitar Center I'm gonna buy a snare he said what I said yeah I got I'm gonna buy a snare so I go to Guitar Center and and I found a snare I find a Ludwig snare and I bought it and brought it back to the studio tuned it up and it sounded killer and all of a sudden we went from having a crappy snare and Andy the drums sound if you're doing a rock project if you're doing any kind of a project hip-hop pop doesn't matter if your drum sound is not good and inventive and and big it's really hard to get a high-fidelity recording so much of it is dependent on that so so I bought the one snare drum and then then it started then I started hiring a guy work that I rented drums from and and that eventually the the so he would rent I'd rent the drums names John and John would I'd rent the drums from and he would come and Tek them meaning tune them up for the sessions and we would use his drums well after a while B I thought to myself I should really buy my own drum set so then I started buying I bought a drum set there's red on here rat as a problem - I'm speaking I'm actually speaking up for all of us with this problem so I bought a drum set I bought I started I bought a bass amp I bought a bass I bought a second base then I started to buy guitars you when I when I built the studio I said Annette own any pro audio gear like microphones I didn't need that everything was was inch instrument centric and I always would tell people buy if you're a producer or you want to really make your recording sound better you need to have good instruments it's the one thing you can control forget about Mike breeze forget about microphones before any of that if you have a great instrument you can have a very weak signal chain and still get a good sound okay you don't have to have an eight thousand dollar microphone or anything this is this is really really important spend your money on instruments first then microphones then Mike priests but really instruments is the most important thing and a lot of the people that I looked up to that the producers guys like Brendan O'Brien that lived in town here he had a massive gear collection at southern tracks where he worked he had 350 guitars and Brenda did you know all the Pearl Jam records Stone Temple Pilots Rage Against the Machine you know all these huge records Brendan did and the bands would come in and they would use his gear they just did you know that that was an amps oh my god southern tracks it Brendan had a hundred amps in there now I didn't have the money for anything like that but every time I'd save up some money some extra money I would buy something that I thought was important and here's were the things that I looked for in a guitar you should have one Les Paul the this is you don't need to have any of these but but my this was my logic a Les Paul Custom because as a certain you know because the way it's made a Les Paul Standard a PAF guitar a p90 guitar like a Les Paul jr. a Telecaster because it has a different pickup configuration a Stratocaster something maybe like a jazz master that has a very radically different sound something with a whammy bar on it you know it could be something like the PRS here the custom 24 then you'd have I've got as far as basses back here I have a Fender precision bass I have a Fender Jazz Bass I have a Rickenbacker those are three common sounds and I have an ernie ball the ernie ball has as active pickups so if you're doing metal and it's also five string and so you won't if you need to tune down and constantly people would be coming in with all these different low tunings this before you know people are using seven strings stuff to which I did have one at the time but but I wanted to cover every particular sound that I needed same thing with drums okay so with drums you have maple snares you have steel snares and you have brass snares those are three really common and the to snare depths are six and a half and five okay so you'll typically have six and a half by fourteen and a five by fourteen snare and really you want to have one of each you want to have one maple of that like one maple five by fourteen one steel five by fourteen one brass five by fourteen the brass could be regular brass like like a you know I I mean you get if chrome over brass which is what a black beauty is you could have a real a bell brass snare drum which is a lot more expensive but but that would be a brass thing and then a steel snare of the same and then then you'd have the same of a with a six and a half well I would also have some exotic wood snares at the time I had a brady juror Jarrah's snare that's a stave snare put together with with with about ten pieces or so and these all had different sounds this is how I would this is how I would plan my recordings were okay what kind of drum sound are gonna go for what is the drum set gonna be am I gonna use a Gretsch kit am I gonna use a ludwig kit am I gonna use a vintage kit with reinforcement hoops right am I going to use a Tama Bobby says Tama Bell very incredibly expensive snare drum but great sound nothing sounds like bell brass and if you if you spend the money in the instruments you that you don't have to spend as much money on microphones I don't have super expensive microphones there's people I know that have $6,000 tube mics and things like that I don't have anything like that big large diameter mics I mean I've got decent mics I've got really nice mic pries but I spent my money on the actual guitars and amplifiers and drum kits you know the I have two bass amps that are really essential of three I have a B 15 style amp I have an SVT and I have a dark glass that you see me play in a lot of videos which you makes is the best for modern bass sounding for gent for any new metal any progressive metal dark glass makes the best bass stuff they make great plot foot pedals like this this is the Alpha Omega pedal here but that I they make a lot of different pedals this is another one that they make here I'd see I got them sitting right here so so this is what I would spend my money on is this I would spend my money on on really quality instruments and that's that is my recommendation for people is to is to is to put their money there because there's nothing that can change other than the than the player nothing's gonna change your sound better or quicker than having a really well maintained great sounding instrument period that's why you know when I'm playing this custom 24 here as soon as I took this out of the case it just came today the thing with PRS is is that they are unbelievably well set up this guitar is absolutely specked tacular right out of the case there is not a high fret there's nothing it sounds great it plays perfectly it's it's you know as far as the quality control PRS is first-rate the guitar sounds great and this is gonna you know if I needed one guitar yeah this could be it my one your tar could be my my Les Paul could be my 335 back there it could be any of those but that's the first place to spend your money I I was saying to Billy about how okay I'm not getting anything else after I get this he knows I've been looking for this white guitar right Billy yeah I told Billy I've been looking for this white custom anybody has followed my channel for the last three years knows I've been looking for a white Les Paul Custom I bought one a 74 on eBay and it got here and the neck was broken the headstock was broken off literally cracked completely through hanging there I took it out of the thing and I shipped it right back to the guy so so that's you know what when I look at this stuff I mean how many amps am I gonna play through well I actually use I bet you guys know this eight minutes watch this channel knows I've used pretty much every amp I've used pretty much every amplifier over there in a video in the last six months I have I literally have I wouldn't say I've used every guitar but I've used just about every guitar Billy if I used every guitar most right yeah I've I've used just about every single guitar here and but you guys know I play the Danelectro a lot I've used that many many times I have amps and my other in the studio that's 30 feet away to in the live room I don't use that Jubilee enough I know I don't so I somebody asked me if I would if I wanted to sell that the other day hey you want to sell your Jubilee stack and I said no so but this is a real this is a real thing this is this gear acquisition syndrome you know how much is enough it's it's it's something that I talk about with all my musician friends you know we talk about this constantly and the nice thing about this channel is that I can actually make videos based around based around gear because because I can you know I just I'm trying to think I just did that video with Dave where what we did the heavy guitar amps video yes those about two weeks ago a week ago yeah but a week ago I did a video with Dave Onorato and he came in and we used the it was a high gain amp shootout basically we used the Mesa Boogie dual rectifier we use the the orange rocker verb 100 we use the O we use the P V 6505 and we use the e vh and we trial it we tried to use the the GM 2000 but it blew the the tubes blue as a matter of fact I got to get that fixed so so just in one video we used all those right so so so that's you know I'm trying to do these things but I have been going through and I have been getting rid of stuff I've been so stuff I've been selling some Mike Brees that I never use anymore I sold six mike pries last week no no cs6 Mike Brees I'm having some stuff repaired you really need to do maintenance on gear not just guitars and amplifiers but you need to do maintenance on studio recording gear like Mike Frese and stuff I have a series of Burrill Mike pries that I've had for 15 years that all need to be serviced two of them the phantom power does not work another one the the the attenuator on it is incredibly scratchy it needs to be gone over by the company so I have it packed up ready to be sent back and you know I see people saying in here oh the Kemper helped with your gear acquisition syndrome tremendously I don't have a Kemper I have an X FX 3 that I'm checking out but I have a couple other things that I'm going to be making videos on like my my ox which is a as a IR responses and it's a reactive load and I also have a sur reactive load and I also have a tone King attenuator that actually acts as a reactive load if you have a cabinet simulator which I do you can use the cabinet simulator like this this is a cab simulator it's called the cab Zeus this has cabinets in it for those of you that have tube amps and want to use different cabinets you can buy things like this Billy can you help me with this here with the the server you can get because I think this is honestly the wave of the future here things like this and the Ox this is the sir reactive load here and it has impulse responses piete piete thorne told me about this he also uses the ox but what this does is you plug into it you plug your amplifier into the back of it and puts a load on the amp so you don't need a speaker cabinet then you take the line out on it and it has and you go right into your da W or you go right into a small monitor speaker and this is so you can use a tube amp and use your foot pedals but you don't have to mic a cab and you don't have to play on a hundred DB you know so you know attenuators and reactive loads and things like that are really are I think that this is really a wave of the future is these things like the ox you know a lot of people have gone to the helix and gone to the Kemper in axe effects for convenience but I think people that people that want to mic guitar cabinets or have the sound of on my cabinet and want to play through their tube amp which has a certain reaction it reacts a certain way I think that the way to do it that some people might be happy with is using something like the sir the reactive load there or using the ox so I have and I have cabinets that I can mic up I have the microphones and I can play incredibly loud because I have a recording studio here so anyways so these are things to think about I know a lot of people are transitioning they've spent money on guitar amps and things and foot pedals and then they're thinking well man I really can't play loud at my place I can't mic things up because I don't have a I don't have a mic pre you know or I want to get a universal audio and use those mic mic pries and things things like that anyways virtual amps I mean there's just so much different stuff to go to but it but you could really just take what you have and figure out what's the easiest way to get you into the aw and a lot of times it's taking what you have now and plugging it into something like that like a reactive load the sir or the ox or the tone King Ironman that I have which is an attenuator but it will do the same thing as a it's not really a reactive load but you can turn it down and use a cab you use a cabs simulator with it anyways but I I don't have to do that because I own these tube amps but I think it's a great solution for people how much I am i affected by choice paralysis Jacob says I don't you know I don't know I I could probably cut back on the high gain amps that I have I mean I have a 6505 I have a evh and if you guys watch my video you'll notice these amps actually sound radically different except when you start tuning down then they lose they're different that I think that they become less the differences become less obvious as you're as you are the lower you tune the instrument and I had this really interesting say Thank You J fry frakkin frackin frakkin thank you very much I had this interesting conversation with Dave Friedman from Friedman amps when I was on there tone to tone talk is that what it's called there there's their thing to talk tone tone talk well uh but he was saying that that lower gauge strings lighter gauge strings give you better tone through the amplifier because tone talk thank you Joe because they don't have as much bottom and when you tune down if you will if you're playing really heavy load metal you want to put a high-pass filter in front of the amplifier because the amplifier does not react well to amp to guitars ever that are basically like bases so I would typically go through a distortion pedal first which would high-pass the guitar with just a little bit of distortion on it change the tone and it would tighten the sound up tremendously or an EQ pedal before I went into the amp Missha from periphery has a pedal the horizon device what's it called the precision precision Drive and on it he has a high-pass filter Friedman has a pedal out there with that has a high-pass filter on it and this is why because you want a high-pass the guitar if it's really low tuned before it goes in the amplifier you will notice that it will be way way tighter so anyway so that's that's a that's something to to think about when you're when you're getting sounds and when you're playing as far as yeah high-pass equals low-cut snap off just said that yes that's right so I'm I'm working on some new videos I have a video I've been working on for the last seven days I'm not done with it somebody says show this guitar here it is again just kidding just got here it's beautiful I like painted guitars I don't like wood grain guitars I don't know why I just don't I never did most of my guitars are paint Billy are pretty much all my guitars painted all except for the 335 just about and the acoustic on that have you seen the acoustics anyway so I know a lot about gear I you know it was a big part of my time as a producer I produced all different kinds of music I did a lot of music but that was synthesizer based that would use drum loops things like that I know I have I have logic I have Pro Tools I have Ableton I've got all these programs Cubase I have a lot of different plugins because I've I've had to become familiar with them just because people would bring in projects and they'd be using oh I've got yeah I only have my stuff in on Ableton okay so we'd have to have Ableton to dump the things off and well I had Ableton in 2001 and I used to use it for - for drum loops it was just very common to use it back then that's one of the first things what is the metallic finish on this I forget what this is called this is say Billy with the finish on this is yeah it does have a sparkle that's what I like about it I like I like sparkle kits you guys notice I have in my drum videos you'll notice that I have that I have a lot of sparkle kits I just like sparkle what kind of Fender amp is behind me that amp is a is it a Princeton Billy there's a Princeton there's two fender amps actually there's a Fender under it there's a Fender Deluxe on the bottom that was modded by Peter Stroud and it has six l sixes in it so it's got a lot of its get incredible Headroom it's a great amp I've had it for years it was probably it's been it's black it's a silvery face but he made it into him into a black face and he put six L sixes in it has a tremendous amount of headroom and it's a killer sounding amplifier and on top is a new newer pending fender Princeton that I use for some of the videos here because it's a low wattage amp and it's good with pedals a lot of times in the videos here it's easier just to use an amp in the room and use the microphone here and have a quiet amp and use pedals to to to get distortion and things like that than it is to bring one of these other amps you just you just can't unless you use an attenuator you can't get them down low enough you know without blowing away the microphone and being too loud for me Diego says what's my advice for a high school Green Day cover band get the Dukey record and learn the songs on and I'm not sure how often do our restring my guitars Billy how often every string my guitars how often does Billy restrain my guitars I mean not that often my hands don't really sweat very much yeah they don't sweat that much so I change them not once a year more than once a year I change them when they start to get a thottie sound except for when I am using my danelectro and I never change the strings on that because I want them to be really dead what's the temperature in the studio about 78 degrees does this have low action not that bad these are nines on here though anyhow so this is a so this is this is what this is some of the things I've been thinking about I'm thinking about downsizing some of the stuff Billy has been and and g/l have been in the have been in the control room and we actually got a got rid of a bunch of stuff over the past couple weeks just things that we don't mean that we never use and getting rid of them it's um you know it's it's time to do that I think it's really I think it's important to do that if you're not if you haven't used something in if you haven't used something in a year then I think it's for me that's about that that's probably about the most I would say for me that that's a long time for not using something and it probably needs to go unless it's something I've owned for a long time somebody asked me earlier in the in the in the thing about my classical guitar and Christopher parking and Chris are parking who's one of the most famous guitarists of all time played my guitar my classical guitar I taught his wife guitar when he met her and then he came and met me and he's he's he was one of the most famous guitarists of all time classical guitars one of the greatest ever and he played on that he played my classical guitar right there yeah those of you guys to keep seeing 5-watt world jumped up here my my dear friend Keith Keith is actually gonna be here next week and we're gonna be on live hanging out talking about all this stuff so if you guys don't know five-watt world you should subscribe to its great channel one of my favorite channels I always am learning stuff from Keith he does incredible videos on you know ones that make you think and and ones about you know gear things that I never knew about yeah so Keith and I will be doing some videos so he's gonna be in town next week okay so that's it remember subscribe here subscribe to I Instagram you guys aren't subscribing to my Instagram it's very important Rick be out of one I'm trying to get up to you know I'm trying to really increase my Instagram here discount code that's how I make a living is you know through my store through selling the Beato book through selling my mugs and t-shirts so RB 57 is the discount code 30% off anything in my store please support the channel you guys are amazing if you guys have have gear acquisition syndrome there's nothing that I don't think it's a bad thing you just need to keep it just need to keep it under control always try to buy buy something if you're gonna get something new try to sell something that's kind of my thing that I've been I don't really I haven't really increased what I have over the last 10 years or so that much anyways all right you guys are amazing thank you so much have a great rest of your day and I have a new video coming out mm maybe not tomorrow at the pride day after tomorrow so keep an eye out for it one of my best ones I've done I think so see you guys take care bye

Channel: Rick Beato

Views: 126,800

Keywords: Rick Beato, Everything Music, Guitar, Gear, Studio, axe fx, Fractal, Suhr, line 6 helix, Kemper, Marshall, orange amps, prs guitar, gibson guitar, les paul, Classical Guitar, Fender, Bass, Kiesel, Ernie ball, amplifier, GAS, gear acquisition syndrome, darkglass electronics, universal audio, Ox, reactive load box, amp simulator, Tube Amp

Id: EbYMT_c1jbc

Length: 37min 17sec (2237 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 28 2019