I bought an A custom ride on ebay for $90. Wish I had heard it first... looks new, sounds bad.

Gibson Vintage Mahogany Les Paul. I don't like it at all.

Marshall MG series amps. Talk about getting by with just your name...

Worst buys:

Behringer Feedback Destroyer...Pure crap

Sure KSM32 Mic...Horrid...

BC Rich Warlock Platinum series guitar (around 1989)

dfegadAkai MPK midi controller

Yikes. Yes I remember the G5 being not only a hair dryer but having this absolutely unacceptable hi pitched wine that was constant. Drove me ape ****. Although i never regretted the purchase in hind site I can't see how I got anything done with all that sonic distraction. :-)

The Alesis 3630 was my first compressor. And you know what? I got good results out of it for my rock recordings. Thankfully I hadn't come here yet and read how crappy it was, or I would have given up and sold it before learning how to use it.

- Focus****e Platinum Trakmaster or sumthing like that
- Yamaha MSP5's
- Behringer mixer
- Cubase SX
- Waves WUP
- My room treatment
- Har-bal

Focusrite Platinum MixMaster
Man, what a peace'o'schit that was. I'd blocked that little nightmare out my memory until BorrelNote mentioned the Trakmaster.

Could you elaborate? Why exactly is the monkey peeing on this controller, haha? i had thought about getting one, looks so nice from the pictures.

-synthoid

Please elaborate on your Cubase SX debacle..........

Dbx376

I hope this doesn't spawn hate for some guitarists but the TC Electronics G-System. reason being, the latency for switching was around 150ms. man, I think I paid something like $1500 for it and was told by their tech support I should be happy cause they got it down from like 280ms or something. Instantly brought it back. no way is that even remotely acceptable in my book.

as far as recording gear goes, I got one of those multitrack recorders that used the data minidiscs for storage. this is going back to the late mid 90's. brought it back the same day I discovered you couldn't try recording a track more than 5 times. apparently, because of the way the minidisc stored it's data, it would actually limit the amounts of undos you had on any one particular track. wow, lame!

- MOTU 828 MkII USB. Owned for 3 weeks, never worked. The sound from the left channel was FUZZ after a week. Actually, the list of problems was so long, when I was telling the shop over the phone they just stopped me halfway through and organised a courier to collect it.

- Jaz drive. Sent 6 back for replacement. Always ended up with the COD (Click of Death) and lost everything on the disk. Gave up. Bought a (then) massive hard drive and a cd writer (the first 1x speed writer, it cost over £500 and had tray caddy.. ugh).

- Novation SL Remote. I realise 2 things having bought this. As a pianist, the keys suck. As a controller, Automap is sketchy at best and after 20 years sitting at a computer, I'm faster using a mouse than finding a knob that changes poisition constantly. Since my last PC format I can't be bothered to install Automap - so it's just a crap keyboard.

- Music Production course at SAE London. Not exactly gear, but having taught myself production for 3 years prior to going on the course I learned absolutely nothing. Even if I hadn't had a bit of fore-knowledge, I wouldn't recommend the course. It felt cheap, unfocused and rushed. With almost no actual practical time with machines and some fairly uninterested teachers. I stuck it to the end and ended up teaching 2 guys that dropped out.

On the motu you obviously got a lemon. Did you get a replacement and if so did you have problems thereafter?
The Remote ... for a piano player? no no. Not a good choice. Piano players usually prefer weighted keys. For synth players weighted keys is often not a good choice. The keyboard on the SL is actually the only useable part for me.

Holy jeez... thanx for the heads up. I was gonna buy one of those.

Interesting you guys had such trouble with the DSP-128, not a great sounding box per se, but unlike most other cheap multi-FX boxes from back then they went for muffled and dark sounding rather than metallic and fizzy so it actually worked pretty well for me.

I later upgraded mine to "Plus" specs with a user installed chip, and I never had a single issue with mine, from gigging to studio use in a rack on top of an SRV-2000 which got as hot as the surface of the sun.

One thing I give Digitech credit for was they had a great Midi implementation on that box, you could map and control EVERY PARAMETER, up to 8 at a time but you could assign every parameter in the box to a different midi CC and it worked great, only delays times would zipper but the reverb times were pretty seamless for what it was.

I actually owned a Quadraverb and then a DSP-256 at the same time as the DSP-128, always liked the Digitechs better from a build quality and workflow perspective, the Quadraverb "verbs" sounded a bit better but of course none of these were in the PCM-70 class.

The ART stuff from that era is just horrid, metallic, clangy, sound like ****.

Probably my worst F/X purchase was an original Quadraverb 2, it was buggy would randomly crash, then the display started getting dark at random in one corner, and then I couldn't order the update chip from Alesis for some reason, had to be from a dealer and the guys at GC just couldn't seem to do this because "it's not in our computer".

It also had this huge gawdawful external PSU and programming it was like Chinese algebra.

Sold it on Ebay for about half what I paid for it.

Analogeezer

When the MOTU did briefly work it had really annoying bugs. I couldn't face a replacement. I emailed their support telling them about my issues, and they wrote back simply repeating my question in the form of an statement. It was the most ridiculous reply I've ever received.

Problems included -

Fuzz coming out of left channel constantly whether plugged into PC or not.

Sample rate did not reset to project settings when playing a sound outside of the sequencer.

Crashes and has intermittant popping noises.

Prevents other USB devices working properly, they are all on their own socket (no hub). My Virus freaked out every other boot.

MOTU ASIO driver defaults to Main Outs instead of SPDIF, have to set up ALL the in/outs everytime I open projects.

Brand new Quad Core Q9450, 4GB Ram etc... Driver installation bluescreened the PC.

--

I have a real nice weighted full size piano in the studio so I can tinkle on that, but the SL is such a waste for me because Automap just doesn't work as expected. Going cheap if anyone is interested.

Man sounds like a nightmare ! And yeah, don't get me started on Automap . It is a pile of rubbish.
I really don't know much about piano controllers, but i have heard Kurzweil mentioned a few times in this regard, although I have no idea which model.

stereo pair of Samson co1's

hi there, just wondering...do you still have the said EFX 500?? And if so, would you be wanting to get rid, as you don't like it?

I have seen some amzing things done with this piece, when used by someone who knows what they are doing ei; James Zabiela...and i'm really desperately looking for one, but obviously at the right price. The EFX1000's are obviously better, but there isn't a cat in hell's chance i cold afford one of those buggerstutt

Cheers x

ps, ignore all my letters muddle ups and spelling mistakes...i'm on medication for a Pituitary prob, that mess with my head lolheh

Forgot about that.. its awful. Unintuitive and clunky.
Such a shame as B2 is SO good. Except now I have 4GB of RAM it complains when I load/preview EVERY SINGLE SAMPLE claiming I don't have enough memory. Whoever programmed it is an idiot. There is no apparent option to turn off 'low memory check'.

Gear I wish I hadn't bought:

1) 2 x Yamaha CP70 piano (tuning nightmares, rust, weight)
2) Alesis QS8 (overall sound, filters, programming, weight)
3) AKG C3000
4) All those cheap PCs

and while I'm at it....

Gear I wish I hadn't sold:

1) 2 x EMS Synthi AKS
2) Wurlitzer EP200
3) Fender Rhodes Mk1
4) SSB Banana (great german Oberheim look-alike)
5) Roland JX-8P

Keepers:

1) Yamaha VL-7 virtual acoustic synth
2) Access Virus C desktop VA synth
3) Oberheim Matrix 1000
4) ADAM P22 monitors

ADAT XT20
Alesis 3630
and sum behringer box my friend sold me believing him that it was great and he didnt need it n e more of course i had jus started recording on my own @ that time so i believed him

M-Audio D-man PCI (pre Delta series when m-audio was still midiman. This interface didn't work at all with motherboards made for AMD).
M-Audio Quatro USB audio interface. Another lemon. Didn't work, was pulled from the shelves shortly after it's release.

im surprised no one mentioned the akai mpd-16.

WHAT A POS!


damn thing didnt even trigger unless you hit the specific pad DEAD center. stupid.

tascam DA45HR. what a pos! i finally left the chassis open so i could easily pick out the dats it wouldn't eject. it's now happily acting as a place holder in my rack.

add to that the tascam CD player from the same series. bought it used, and it seemed to have issues liberating the disc when you hit eject (this unit ALSO spent a good amount of it's life with the chassis open) as a matter of fact, it sucked so much, i didn't even bother selling it for parts on ebay...i just threw it out the second story window and dragged it to the dumpster by the cord (i left it outside the trash bin where people throw equipment looking for a home...an hour later it was gone...and 3 hours later i saw it right back where i left it!)

Steinberg Groove Agent 3

The most clunky, non-intuitional, uninspiring graphical user interface I have ever tried
The whole thing reminds of an instrument panel out of 50th science fiction B-movie

The playing of the drum sequences is not bad but it sounds like recorded with cheapo microphones in an untreated forest cabin

Fortunately I never bought a real bad piece of hardware

Agreed. What a POS. However, GA works nicely as a click track.......or did, until Steinberg started allowing the use of VSTi's as source samples for the metronome.

digitech rp-10

was about 14 when i got it, was a LOT of money for me at the time. terrible