Yeah, really. I was thinking the same thing.

I've never had gear that I thought was garbage but I have bought things that ended up being useless purchases.

Trigger Finger - I bought this to enter drum parts and after using it once, I remembered my old Roland R-5 drum machine, dug it out of mothballs and have been using that ever since! I liked the feeling of the R-5 more for some reason. The trigger finger was an impulse buy and it sits, basically unused still in its box.

Behringer Bcr2000 - I have the Bcf2000 (fader) and it works great. I bought this based on how much I love the Bcf and still have not found anything I can use this for! All the knobs looked great but I still have no practical use for it! I've tried to program it with Sonar using Sonar's ACT thing where it's supposed to make it easier to program plug ins and stuff using a controller but 8 versions later and Sonar (based on what I've read on the message board) still doesn't have ACT functioning anywhere near what they've promised so long ago so it just complicates things and makes the Bcr more useless to me. Same thing as the trigger finger. It sits unused in its box.

A reprieve for the Digitech Vocalist II - I bought this years and years ago. Never could get convincing harmonies out of it and mothballed it for a long time. Eventually I took it out of mothballs and realized that if I tried to use it for effects and crazy vocal stuff instead of trying to get harmonies out of it (what it was intended for!) it's actually a fun little device and good for getting creative and strange things out of vocals!

The only real waste of money I've seen - but it wasn't mine (and I'll probably get flamed for this!) are Mac computers.

I was music director for a show that toured 8 months out of the year. On the first year of the show they had 13 macs backstage running the lighting, video, web streaming and everything and they just couldn't handle it. They were constantly locking up, crashing, freezing - everything Steve Jobs and mac fanboys claim they never do! Within 3 months of the beginning of the tour the tech director dumped all 13 macs and replaced them with PCs. The PCs did the job perfectly for the rest of the tour! I music directed that tour for 3 years straight, 8 months each year and up to my last tour it was still the same PCs chugging along running the entire show. Not that a hiccup here and there never popped up but if it did, the tech director could send a guy out to staples to get a part to fix it and have it up before showtime. In the end, based on seeing that first hand I'll never own a mac. Or as the tech director said, "Macs are only stable if you don't move them!" And before the mac fanboys attack me, this isn't a tour of kids in a van. It was a multi-million dollar tour with tractor trailers, full staging, lighting and a video production crew as well. The macs were encased in these fantastic road cases/racks that were built custom for them from the ground up and shock mounted here in NYC. I'm sure macs are great computers but hearing the tech guys backstage freak out as the macs systematically crashed or locked up taking the video or lighting with them put the fear of Steve Jobs in me! hahaha..

Besides, I have no PC or MAC brand loyalty. I love Commodore!

Behringer Stereo Line mixer. Not even good for utility monitoring. Sounded bad to begin with, then a year later started getting buzzing on different channels. The funny part is, when I would mute the offending channel, the buzzing would get LOUDER!

Lexicon Studio "professional harddisk recording system"

1) hard to get working at all from the beginning (driver issues)
2) no chance to get any driver updates from Lexicon for more recent windows operating systems, let alone the C-source code of the drivers (to rewrite the drivers)
3) expensive

Lexicon apparently just drops products and lets its customers hang in the air. Not my idea of customer support for professional devices. This was my first and last Lexicon product I ever bought.

Stinky poo reverb sound.

Bought a Lex 200 in 1984 and it had white noise at the output. Sent it back to Lexicon and they sent it back to me with a note saying: "No fault found"

What are they listening through, a wall of Sonex?

The problem was probably in the software versions and OS versions that were running.

I've toured with 2 macs for almost 5 years, and they have never given me trouble. Conversely, my good friend that toured with a PC rig had to ditch it for a Mac after lots of issues. He's been using his Mac happily for about 3 years now

The only Mac issues I've ever seen have been after updating the OS or failing to/too quickly updating a piece of software. People should always be wary of the versions they're running, regardless of Mac/PC. Computers can be fickle if you're not careful.

Definitely possible. I was just a bystander so for all I know, the entire tech department could have just been unfamiliar with MACs as I would assume you can get a bad Mac but it'd be odd for all of them to be exhibiting problems.

Plus it's not the greatest environment, period, to be running computers. Plenty of residue from all the fog machines on stuff, and the dodgy electric in some (so-called) professional venues - who always lied about the amperage they could provide! One venue in Pittsburgh, I think, lied about their electric set up and the show blew some kind of a transformer and blacked out the venue. They ended up running all sorts of electric cabling from an adjacent Marriott hotel to get things up and running again! I'm sure that kind of stuff doesn't do wonders for a computer's stability...

Frank

To each their own when it comes to sound (I like the RNC), but the issue is the TRS plugs on the RNC are designed for receiving a stereo signal, not a balanced mono signal. And, like any other unbalanced piece of gear, it doesn't accept balanced audio, only unbalanced.

- Alesis Masterlink
- Korg Triton rack mount
- ipod nano- 2nd gen
- Any Windows based PC
- Digitech Vocalizer
- EMU Virtuoso 2000 (although they made a lot of ****ty modules)
- Roland JV-1080
- Kork rack mount line mixer
- Hercules mic stands
- Hosa Cabling
- Alesis D-4
- Kurzweil 2500 XS
- Korg reverb (circa 1986)
- Monster cabling
- Big Friggin Drums version 1 (never got it to work)
- MOTU Mach V sampler (worst software ever!)
- Virtually anything Opcode- OMS was a real nightmare as was the editor for the Studio 5, a great innovative company that got close but no cigar.
- T.C. Electronics Finalizer 96kHz- more like the crapalizer- returned to GC for full refund-whew!

Hercules mic stands? I have like 8 of their heavy duty ones and I've never had a single issue. Rock solid, the squeeze and lift mechanism is wonderful. The only thing is the creep/sag if extended too far with a mic of too much weight.... which is a problem with many stands.

I have issues with the boom sagging- and does not tighten well, you cant swivel them- you have to turn the whole stand- and that stand leaves a pretty big footprint.

It's probably been mentioned already but if I could talk anyone out of buying a tc powercore then I would. Some great sounds but a piece of junk and TC customer support doesn't exist. Sometimes I think TC products are machines made by machines at "Skynet corporation". They don't respond like humans if at all.

my worst chain was

floor tom - c1000 - digital MPA - digi002

also

tascam vl-5a ( i used it at home)
yamaha 02R ( i don't like it at a music studio)
behringer eurorack ( i used to use it also at home)

This guy's only got 1 post, so you know it hurts!
I'm not sure how you could hate an ART mp pre, I mean it's like $30, use it for a drink holder if you're not happy. But I've read more than 1 person not happy with their Manley SLAM; yikes! Anything over $5k better make me so GOD when I plug it in.

My worst purchase? Roland GP16. I was young and excited, the GP8 was actually way better. I wish I just bought the 1x12 Mesa I saw in the corner that day

My pc. Custom built. Started at a $500 estimate. Got it in my studio after 2k. For 2k the used mac I would have right now would decimate all....

ART MPA Gold!

Why? I found after I upgraded mine it became a pleasure to use, it was however lacking in the gain dept though.

I upgraded the tubes in mine to NOS Telefunken and NOS GE 5 star.
I found the MPA Gold to be the noisiest preamp I've owned or tried!

There should have been a class action lawsuit for those stupid JAZ drives. I lost 5 out of 7 discs worth of samples that were the foundation of a ton of songs. I found my invoice for my original one and got a great deal - $400 for a 1GB drive, just for the drive. Click, click, click.

Easy. Focusrite penta. Awful thing.
Give it a go, it will make you sound ****e....

I don't get the hate for the c1000s either, I love mine.

I paid big bucks for an ADAT xt20 back in the day. I never really got much use out of it. It is still in the rack in the back just collecting dust.

M-Audio Tampa Mic Pre Amp.... what was I thinking?

People who bitch about ADATs, Mackies, and Alesis 3630s are really saying:

I'm 15 and I've never recorded anything.

Go back to the CRAP we had before those two companies and you would perform illicit acts to get your hands on a beat-up black-face ADAT.

Unless you were in a top-studio, you lived with PA-grade mixers, cassette 4-tracks, $3,600 1/4 inch tape 8-tracks, and stomp boxes for compressors, and bad dynamic mics.

Would I want to record today with an ADAT or a 3630? No. But you have to understand where we were ... it was a bad time.

True. There weren't that many affordable options at the time. But having worked with ADAT's (the black ones, not the new shiny XT20's), I feel that the transport mechanism on the Tascam's DA-88 or DA-98 was much superior.
But I have to agree with you. Not nearly as many choices as we do have now.

Roland VP9000 Variphrase Processor. It's absolutely crap and within a year or so it's chief function was being done better by a native DAW. Paid just under £2000 for it when it first hit the shelves and was changing hands for £500 within a year of owning it, wouldn't have minded if it was good but alas....

Line 6 Variax and Modelling amp... For some reason I thought that this combination would mean I've got ever guitar ever made AND every amp... What a knob!

TC Powercore Compact.... useless, just useless.

+1 for FMR RNC compressordfegad

Worst recommendation a Sweetwater tech ever gave me. And don't get me started on the ADAT expansion...

Strange the you people listen with your eyes. dfegad

There are alot of stuff that look horrible but sound good. I love these things.

Right there with you. I was running a studio at the time (1993) the Black faces came out. They represented a quantum leap and the first time that Project studios could sonicly compete (all other things being equal). It was such an exciting time .....deposits and the like. Yes, yes, I paid 4,000 for a new black face ...but I was in heavan. I'll go against conventional wisdom and say that I could still make good recordings with an ADAT today. In it's day, it was THE deal. BTW - there is still garbage being made on bling-bling coverters and boutique preamps today, thus .....

Now ...on to the topic of the day ....
Worst gear purchase ....EVER....Yamaha TX816 Sampler in 1988 (paid 1,800)
It was a toy, should have known better. My bad. Got burned on that one, still stinging to this day.
cdlt