Originally Posted By: JohnJohnJohn
one problem with expensive gear is the law of diminishing returns kicks in very quickly. is a $10,000 Neumann mic really 100 times better than a $100 Shure? Nope. Probably not even twice as good. So you can easily end up spending a ton for very minor improvements in your gear.


Absolutely true John. This is why us old timers here pretty much all use the 90/50 rule. Find something that gives you 90% performance of whatever you wish you could afford but can't and it costs 50% of that item. You have to do a lot of reading and haunt forums like this one to find the gear that meets that formula but once you do you're golden. Nobody but a few very snobby high end pro's will ever miss that 10% and you paid half what they did.

Now to take it one step further and again I know I speak for several others here, I buy virtually everything used like my Altec's and I basically stumbled on those by accident. I bought a pair of nice old Dynaco A25's off Ebay for my sister and the seller was way out east of LA and a guy in my office lives out there so I gave him the money and he picked them up for me. He's not a musician, not an audiophile, know's nothing about this stuff. But, when I transferred them from his car to mine he asked me "didn't you tell me one time that Altec is a very good name?" I said yeah and he told me that the guy has a living room full of speakers and that includes a very nice looking pair of Altec's. I called the guy up, he wanted $425 for them, he emailed me some pics, he had them hooked up so I borrowed a friends van and ran right out there and grabbed them. Good grief $425 for a nice pair of Model 14's?? I've seen beat up ones with the veneer falling off go for a grand on Ebay and nice ones much more than that.

That's how I buy my stuff but that's not for everybody. If you don't know what you're looking at and have a good idea of values you'll likely just throw your money away. You can still get good deals using the 90/50 rule as long as you don't have to have something now as in RIGHT NOW. Have some patience, look for close outs and sales and you'll do all right.

Bob

Biab/RB latest build, Win 11 Pro, Ryzen 5 5600 G, 512 Gig SSD, 16 Gigs Ram, Steinberg UR22 MkII, Roland Sonic Cell, Kurzweil PC3, Hammond SK1, Korg PA3XPro, Garritan JABB, Hypercanvas, Sampletank 3, more.