After a whole year of struggle with that POS my vote goes to the Novation Nocturn49, Mac users seem to be happy but they have huge issues with windows... automap is super clunky, pads and pots randomely stop working for no reason, pitch and mod wheel dont work... the keys are ok... the build quality is cool, the plugins that come with it are nice and work properlly but Automap is strait up garbage (at leat in windows), I'm really disapointed and giving up on novation, I'm selling it and getting an Akai.

UA la-610mkII

Was very excited... first sluttier pre.... too bad it kind of sort of totally sucked

flubby.... like most of the mid-west

only sounded nice on one especially strident singer...

Gibson Les Paul Studio here as well. I paid the ridiculous local price for what I thought would be a good guitar but the build quality is awful and the pickup selector switch crapped out after a few months of gentle playing.

Tascam Porta 05
Rolland RX 17

cough cough!!!!
showing my bloody years now.......entry level Antiques!!!!

Sig

An ART Mach II SGE guitar processor in the 80's. It was unbelievable junk..it sounded great for 10 minutes...it was just

lol! me 2

damn, really? I like this thing...

I still have mine.......7 years and counting!!!!

I have to mention the Boss Acoustic Simulator as quickly bought tried and resold , a Beringher auto wah monstrousity that I haven't even tried to resell because it sounds so horrible. (UW-300)

A few months ago one of my ART PRO MPA's started crapping out and then both the lights went out on the VU's. A few weeks later the same thing happened on the other one.

Long story short. I bought a JDK pre (can't afford a blue tube yet). The ARTs went back to Sweetwater and I'm still trying to work out a credit. ART have stuffed Sweetwater around too with the RA. It's cost everyone lots of time and money.

I bought the SH201 from Roland a few years ago..

I tested it and an hour later it was back in the box. There is something about the sound that I just didn't like..

Last year I had an EMU 0404 USB crap out during a live symphony performance. Turns out only the headphone output was affected; the recording came out OK. The 0404 USB was replaced with an EMU Tracker. Today the Tracker quit after less than a year of light-duty use (it became very, very noisy). Fortunately it didn't quit during a live performance and I had an M-Audio Fast Track Ultra on a shelf in a closet which got pressed into service in a hurry. The Tracker is headed for the crapper and I just hope the Fast Track Ultra makes it through the next concert. I'm not too keen on buying any more EMU products if they're going to keep crapping out like that.

I've been lucky with gear purchases but I have had some duds.

Alesis 3630 My first foray into recording with compressors, and I quickly learned that something didn't sound right with them. They didn't sound good with ANYTHING. Then I landed a pair of UREI 7110s and saw the light.

Rhodes pianos Terrible piano action. Inconsistent build quality. The good ones are extremely hard to find. I went through three of them, the last one that is a keeper is a silvertop that had been modified - plays and sounds great.

Yamaha PB-1 preamp During my young and stupid days of the early 80s I bought this for my Rhodes piano hoping it would help the sound. It had the most lifeless sound and the EQ was hopelessly ineffective.

Elka DMP-18 MIDI bass pedals was in the market for a set of MIDI bass pedals and these came up on ebay. Total POS, a product of the early days of MIDI when most MIDI devices were not well thought out. You can't save custom configurations, you have to re-configure it every time you power it up. You have to play accurately with your feet - if you bump any adjoining keys, it cuts off the note you wanted to play. It has five buttons for sending program changes, but they TRANSMIT MIDI SYS EX?!?

Peavey guitar amp During my gigging days I had one of these mid-80s amps. Peaveys have a mid-range HONK that cannot be EQ'd out on the amp. And it kept blowing output transformers (I wasn't a loud player by any stretch).

Moog Liberation Great modulation options for performing but wimpy filter doomed it to wussy lead lines. Totally ineffective TOS organ-like "polyphonic" rank that only puts out square waves. VCOs won't go low enough for bass lines. No MIDI interface available or possible.

a MPC2000...waste of my time and money. It was a spur of the moment purchase later realizing that I can program MIDI better in fruity loops :/

Ensoniq ASR-X.
NOT a good choice for a first piece of gear.
Ok sound... but difficult UI, horrid sequencer, terrible pads, cheap knobs, and to add insult to injury... cheesy early 90's graphics (bad for even then). They even found a way to make it even worse, by painting the later models fire engine RED. Fine for cars, not so good for electronic music gear IMO.

It took hours to make anything sound descent, and I was so stoked to make the crappiest beats, which almost stuttered or dragged if you turned the knobs while the sequencer played.
Now you can make better stuff with freeware and a few mouse clicks, and yet you listen to it and you're like "Ah, it sucks." Delete.

Ensoniq was cool though, really innovative for the time.

Perusing Gearslutz, I often notice people making desultory remarks about Alesis gear. Having never owned anything by Alesis I'm now curious to hear how bad the legend would have me believe.

My worst purchase was a Korg MS2000. I only bought because I thought it looked nice :s

Custom iems from china. never f*ing arrived, lost plenty of money.

Years back for purposes intended, I enjoyed owning an Alesis MMT8(2), HR-16, HR-16B, 3630, and Micro Gate.

AWESOME THREAD!

Most of my personal gripes have been covered here already... (ADATs of both the Blackface and XT variety, 3630 comp, Mackie 8-buss, all things Behringer, etc... gotta love being on the supposed-cutting-edge in the early 90's!)

Probably the only relatively recent mistake (circa '04?) was buying a Presonus V-Fire interface for transferring a client's tracks from their Roland VS2480HD machine into my Logic rig... where Presonus, in their infinite and uncanny wisdom, stopped driver development while it was still on the market?!?!?! Seriously, WTF???

They pretty-much lumped themselves in with Behringer for me at that point... never again!

I couldn't agree more. What a horrid piece of **** that was. Wasted time and money on it, never really got used on any projects, collected dust for years, sold it for 1/4 of what I paid. Good riddance.

Alesis 1622 Mixer. Yes, what a piece of total crap. I forgot about that one. It was before the cheap mackie 1202, 1604 stuff came out.. it was one of the only cheap mixers available. All plastic, and the feel of the controls was horrid. I took mine apart to clean it and and found all the carbon tracks were integrated onto the PCB. Innovative idea but horrible results. It was by far the worst sounding mixer I have every owned or heard.

Eh eh eh, might end up actually puchasing some Alesis stuff, intrigued by the legend, and thus bump up eBay prices & interest for it?




Jokes aside, not ALL Aleis gear was crap, I have to say.

Actually, they were groundbreaking & pretty much revolutionary with some products - the ADAT included... just think of the quantitiy of great albums that were tracked to that & its' later incarnations (regardless of the physical limitations & jibes of the VHS tape/transport format itself or of the really not-so-audiphile early A/D & D/A converters on the first units), or think of the fact that the ADAT format on optical digital cables is still around, well & alive, and being used. And the HD24 & XR recorder is still a pretty good idea, a very practical unit, a not bad at all converter (the XR) and brilliant bang-for-the-buck.
Also, stuff like the HR16 drum machine (ever heard of a song called "Streets Of Philadelphia", by a guy called Bruce Springsteen? Drum Kit 1, sound set 1, if I remeber correctly), or that rack unit with the trigger pads & easy-to-do drum to MIDI triggering, or the Quadraverb and the Midiverb - they were really good units, at a really breakthrough good price, that managed to do good things and even a couple of "signature" ones.

That said, Alesis apparently NEVER understood dynamics processing, or the inner works & do-s&don't-s of an analogue mixing console or of a studio monitor speaker - so anything in their offering having to do with those three departments is best left avoided, in my opinion & experience.

A
F

Korg D888 Mixer and 8 Channel Recorder.....useless piece of ****. I had to return it 3 times to get the hard drive replaced. It was slow to render after takes and would just freeze after recording 8 tracks at once @44.1/16 during rehearsals.

Good idea, but stupid stupid stupid! I know Korg lost money on this item because I asked a service rep what the hell was going on, and he said his shop would get like 4-5 every other day back in 2007!!!

I wish it would have worked out because it was small, served as mixer and recorder....but you could tell they needed some more time to get it right. Then the Presonus StudioLive came out and that(along with a computer) kinda filled that void of having a good mixer/recorder.


Korg D888 | Sweetwater.com

Yeah I did that once..

Hands down, beyond any shadow of a doubt my bass traps come to mind first. Not because of any functionality issues, but in retrospect I should've built everything myself instead of being strung along for MONTHS by who I got them from.

...dirty insulation pimps.

There's been others that are less than great along the way, like when I recently bought Waves Tune LT to try that out because Melodyne was being problematic, but no bigger a blunder exists for my studio purchases than the bass trap fiasco.

Roland MT32. When it came out. Groundbreaking, like dishwater.
dbx166XL is mistakenly listed under Professional Products on the dbx site.
Peavey Max Bass Head is the heaviest thing I've ever lugged in my life.
GK1001RB is a total miswired timebomb (I recently discovered.)
Any Yamaha mixer. I just can't stand the things at any price.
All Behringer gear (except the ADA8000 which works as advertised.) ALDI have a better price point.
Focusrite Liquid Mix, just when they got it right they discontinued it.
All Novation keyboards, they hurt my hands and always sound like an incomplete Virus patch.
mLAN, I opted in late and opted out early. I could just smell the trouble coming. Goodbye O2R, i88x wherever you are...
Most BOSS pedals from roughly 1995 onwards.
Most tc electronics from c.2000 onwards. After the Finalizer's various incarnations, it just isn't the same company.

I never went ADATs, reason why ? they are pretty much a VCR, where does a VCR stay ? either in the shop or trash can.
I was into Akai DR stuff at that period.

Vintage EV 664 microphone. I honestly thought I could find some kind of niche purpose for it along the way, but the sound quality of this thing was SO SO SO bad ... took it back the next day. Just couldn't imagine taking the time to find something it suited or having to deal with EQing it to hell and back for something decent to come out of it. It was so bad. Like a toy microphone or something.

Really? I rarely like it by itself unless for a certain effect but I end up keeping it quite often as a secondary mic on elec gtr and kick. Definitely not a "hi-fi" mic by any means, I suppose it depends on what you expect from it.

DA88 Sync cards and trying to keep them operational and syncing 6 88's together. I have no hair today due to this issue.