Hi,

I have got to the point I just do not enjoy playing and recording stuff any longer. Perhaps this is just a phase, but for many reasons, I don't think this will change.

I think I would like to sell off a bunch of stuff I just don't use or need. The high-end guitars and amps should sell pretty well on Reverb. All the other thousands of dollars of stuff I am not sure how to get rid of. Software, high-quality computers, any ideas?

I find the only thing I am playing nowadays is the piano. I have messed up my wrist playing guitar and it is no longer fun to play. Too painful.

I have other hobbies that I like that I actually get well paid to do. Specialty electronics, on certain irrigation controllers that I make well over $100 per hour to work on for example. Puts $6.80 fuel in the boat...lol

Billy

If you are getting paid, they aren't hobbies. They are jobs.

Software, with the piracy available, good luck selling it. Unless it's stuff that is hardware dongle protected (like Pro Tools and their iLok) it can be had for free. The higher end computers should go quickly on Craigslist type outlets. You may have something specific to your area as well.

Best advice for someone in this place in their musical life if to make sure you are REALLY done with it. I retired from it once and sold almost all my gear and have been rebuying every since despite the fact that I barely write or play anymore. (To wit: The used Kurzweil I just bought. And am now tearing my hair out learning to use it. Though when I CAN figure something out on that manual written in Kurzweilese it is quite rewarding.)

The guitars are being sold off though. 3 are gone, 3 are on consignment right now.

The thing with selling computers is that they tend to not travel well, so you will probably be dealing mainly with local sales. The downside of that is that it needs to be crystal clear, possibly even in writing, that the sale doesn't include lifetime free tech support on them. I have run into that. Fortunately I have the attitude where I can tell people that whatever problem they are having, THEY are having and to stop bothering me.

I'd hold off selling your music gear. Especially your favorites.

Give yourself some time away from music, and see if it rekindles itself after a long break.

I've heard of people saying, "I wish I hadn't sold that".

But then, you know your situation better than I do.

Notes ♫

I tend to agree with the comments on being careful. 8 years ago I moved from my house way down in a southern state up north to the warmth a sun. (In Australia we go north to get warmth). I was moving into a unit with much less storage space. I gave away nearly all my gear thinking I would be out of music completely.

I kept my two guitars a Tele and Maton and a MIDI Keyboard leaving a Precision Bass, Rickenbaker 12 String and a banjo with my daughter. Amps, pedals, stands, leads, laptop and other assorted bits I gave away. Well my music career was over I’m retired with hands closing up, moving to where I’m not known. What do I need with gear.

I arrived, moved into the unit went out to a function and was asked are you ready to come out and play, we were awaiting your arrival. Because these days I do what I do solo and use tracks created basically in BIAB as backing I had to get a suitable PA, I needed something for pedals and a better laptop, new audio interface. Well the upshot is I had to buy a heap of stuff similar to what I gave away albeit updated. 8 years later I still do the odd show, spend most of my time fooling about with guitars, generating music and still enjoying myself.

In the the medium term hang on to what you can would be my thought. Looking at your posts over a long time you really seem to enjoy your music and your discussion on the topics. Don’t get out of it.

My thoughts

Tony

Billy,
Many companies allow license transfers these days.
Make a list of software that you don't have use for...
Register on KVR, there is a forum section there that allows to sell "preowned" software.

You can group some similar items as one unit etc. Usually people just put up a list with prices or best offer in a single post and delete items as they sell.

I sold and bought couple of software items that way. Worked for me. People do have history operating on KVR, so you can see if they are playing games or not.

Computers...ebay I think is the only serious platform or something like offerup, but there are many clowns on offer up.
------

Step aside for a few weeks, perhaps you will change your mind, or at least will have a better idea of how to consolidate in a meaningful manner.

Making music and selling gear are two different things.

In terms of the gear: Sell whatever does not make you happy. More gear can always be rented or purchased.


In terms of music making:
I think I have been where you appear to be. I had come up with a dozen reasons to move away from music making. But then I came up with that one reason not to stop. And I have used that one reason to keep the flame burning.

What could that one reason be for you? All you need is one reason! Think about it. Why have you been making music up to now?

Good Luck

Something to keep in mind here is perspective. Notes still plays full time. His perspective will be far different from a guy the same age who rarely plays at all, much less full time. I am only a couple of years younger than him, and I no longer play live, nor will I. Age and health are key factors here.

You can either dispose of your stuff or your estate will. Speaking only for me, I prefer to be in control of where my stuff goes.

As Notes said, just don't start cleaning house until you are 100% you are done. I "retired" in 1994 and sold a lot of stuff. 4 years later I started again and had to buy new stuff. I "retired" again in 2006. Then I decided I wanted to write again in 2009 and put a studio back together and had to buy new stuff. Then came the big dream in 2017 to buy an RV and just go live in the wind. Sold a lot of my stuff, including my Nord Electro4. I started to miss that board and found another one (this time with manual drawbars instead of electronic). Then a bunch of modules. Then more guitars. Then this. Then that. Now at just shy of 71 I am done with it, partly dictated by my health. The guitars should go to someone who will play them. 3 I am keeping because they are willed to specific people when I croak.

All about perspective. There is no rush for you to divest, Billy. List it all and sell as you get respectable offers. You are not that desperate 29 year old who has to sell a guitar to pay his rent. My take on selling is to use Reverb or put the stuff in stores on consignment but that's more because I don't like people and don't want them coming to my house. Reverb, eBay and your local Craigslist if you don't mind having to see people.

I picked up my best guitar and plugged it into the best amp I have built. The results are a great playing guitar, a great-sounding amp, and a guitarist who is beginning to irritate me...lol

I am not in any hurry to make a decision. I also have sold some stuff in the past only to replace it. If I sell things now there is always the possibility I will buy more in the future. It just seems a waste to have great gear sitting around doing nothing.

Part of the issue is health and the other part is not having the willingness to do the work required to improve my playing to the next level. One other issue is the changes that have happened in the culture. It has become more and more difficult to find other musicians to play with. Very few people I meet are willing to put in any real effort to create well-done new music.

Actually, to some extent, the same thing is happening with my sports fishing adventures. I find myself dealing with "wooden men and iron ships". Many people nowadays are incapable of dealing with adversity or anything like real work. I have come to realize that serious sports fishing and serious music have much in common. A lot of very hard work. I caught a very large fish two days ago but I was not sure who was going to kill who.

Perhaps someone will show up in my life who can really sing and who really wants to sing enough to put in the work. If that were to happen all bets are off and I will need most of what I own. It is never over until it is over.

I use to be under the illusion that I had some ability to predict future events. Today I don't have much of an idea of what the future holds on many levels. Our business did really well last year. One of our long-time business friends did 100 million less than the year before. That is a serious amount of money. I often wonder if I will outlive the money I have or what crazy thing will happen next. On what planet do 18-year-old kids find it necessary to kill 19 ten-year-old school children.

I am finding myself to be confused and unsure about many things. I assume I am not alone.

Billy

EDIT: Thanks to all of you for your comments and suggestions. One really good thing about this forum is I never have to feel alone in the world.

Have you tried modifying your picking technique?

I have osteoarthritis in the wrist of my picking hand so bad that I have lost most of the range of motion. What allows me to play without excruciating pain is having modified my picking technique to use a lot more elbow and a lot less wrist.

Billy, my 2 cents:

If you need to move the gear to pay the electricity bill, then make a start.

If you reflect on how much effort you put in to craft your skills, and the gear that made it enjoyable - and you can still afford electricity - keep it, look back on it, thank it for the enjoyment it gave you.

Just because you're not using it right now, doesn't mean you won't ever want to reconnect down the track, even if at a different level.

Don't be in too much of a hurry to offload unless really necessary. Some of those decisions might have associated regrets a little further downstream.

(OK, this ended up being my 20 cents. Apologies )
Trev

Regarding gear, contact some sound production companies in your area and offer everything as a single purchase rather than deal with things piece meal.

They provide equipment to a wide variety of venues and events and could likely have a use for everything from DI boxes, cables, mic, stands, amps, stomp boxes and guitars.

So... we all go through phases.... Phases where we lack the inspiration to do things that once excited us and gave us a reason to get out of bed in the morning. (besides needing to pee really bad....lol)

I've been there more than a few times..... when I quit playing in a band for a living, I sold a bunch of gear.... I had a really nice PA system that was at the time a bi-amped rig with a pair of folded "W" bass bins and a pair of JBL horns, a great stage rig consisting of a pair of 4x12 cabs and a nice DCA-800 to run them.... plus lights, spotlight, and other misc gear and equipment. I sold most of it pretty quickly and at a fair price. I kept my guitars and stage amp and some mics. For several months after the band, I didn't touch the guitar. I needed a cooling off period and time to recharge my batteries. At the time I was selling the gear, it was my thought that I was done with music. I was wrong.

Fast forward a couple of years.... I had a rekindled desire to get back into music but not in a band. Those long drives home at 4am just didn't hold the appeal any more. I bought the gear needed to build a studio. And even that had a cooling period. I stopped recording for the better part of a year and a half or so.

My recommendation is to evaluate what you can reasonably afford to sell to clear up room and kinda give a point of demarcation..... a line in the sand.... and put the rest in the closet for a while. If nothing else.... a pretty guitar makes a great piece of art wall hanger and gives you the opportunity to play it occasionally when you dust it off once a month. Classic gear and guitars goes up in value so holding onto it for another year or two won't hurt you one bit. Because if in a year, you feel that spark reignite... all you have to do is pull it out and set it back up and press the power button.

Think it through before you sell or give away your gear.

Billy,

You mentioned there is no one to play with, what happened to the young singer you were working with?

You mentioned you don't want to put in the time and effort to advance to the next level. Okay, I made that decision years ago and haven't looked back. If everyone is a master, who is there to enjoy the output?

Plus, Jim, let's consider if "the next level" is even attainable when we get into that "of a certain age" category. I USED to be one badazz, well sought after musician in the area. I played keyboards, sax, and guitar, and I sang extremely accurate harmonies, and I could sing front on certain songs.

However, that was half my life ago.

Now, I can't really hold a guitar neck without ridiculous amounts of pain. My brain doesn't move my fingers like they used to. As out of shape as I am, I have no wind to play the sax anywhere near as well as I used to. And if you don't use your "voice muscles", they get soft like biceps and abs do, and I can barely sing.

So once we reach that point, and accept that we have reached that point (denial puts up a good fight), it then comes down to whether you want to have a bunch of stuff you can't/don't/won't use anymore or turn it into cash (and accepting the financial loss that comes with selling used gear) to use for other things.

I can still play keyboards reasonably well, but now I let the equipment do a lot of the work. Stacking sounds together thanks to MIDI and better equipment of the time means I can sound big with one hand instead of two. That's why the guitars are being sold off. None of them are high end, and the three that are higher end are willed to people. As I said in another post, most of my stuff is specified in a codicil to my will to be given to specific people when I croak.

Also consider this. As far as holding on to gear and holding out for a specific price, by our age is there a big difference between $500 and $450? Are we all still stuck on the depression mentality of becoming the richest corpse in the graveyard? As always the disclaimer is that I can only speak for me but it gives me more pleasure to know an instrument is in hands of someone who uses it than seeing it sit in my studio. Knowing that my stuff will go to people rather than be sold for 10 bucks at a probate ordered estate sale. But again, that's me. I have watched too many people work like animals to pile up money that was taken by the state when they died. My house, my car, and my music gear are all set up in a way that they bypass probate when I die. (I will put in the asterisks here so the system didn't have to.) **** the state. I gave them all they are going to get when I worked.

Hi Jim,

One of the singers had a wonderful voice but was not wanting to put any time and effort into it. The other younger girl was so inconsistent in pitch that it just did not work.

It is not that I am completely unwilling to study and get better at guitar/piano, it is just I am having a hard time finding the motivation.

Miami is not exactly the music capital of the world. When I lived in LA people were much more available. There are people to play with but they are 120 miles from where I live round trip.

I have no intention of selling everything. I just have way too much stuff I am not using and have not used for years, tube amps for example, and computers I don't really need. This is not really about needing money but money is always useful.

Billy

Welcome to the world of microwave music. People who want to meet for the first time on Monday and play a gig on Saturday.



Capital Records ain't calling for your new album?



Miami is "A" music capital. You just need to play Salsa, Rhumba, Cubano, Clavè...



Well, just a suggestion. A lot of this is based on knowing how old you are. Wouldn't it be great to work with a Small Business Administration type organization in your area to find a (carefully vetted, legitimate) startup that may not have the funds to spend a couple of grand on computers on which to run their business and donate them?



In varying degrees, I agree. It is useful when you have a use for it. You don't appear to have a use for more money. Your posts are constantly reminding us that you have yachts, planes, 23 pianos, 97 guitars, 112 amps, and a gajillion dollars. Will enough ever be enough?

Sadly, my opinion of you has changed greatly with every post you make where you flex your money muscles and rub us po' folk's collective noses in it. I doubt I am the only one who thinks it but I am sure I'm the only one who will say it. Something tells me you never lived month to month like 75% of America has to. I don't think I'll be responding to you again.

Billy here is an idea. Can you donate your unused instruments to a school or college and use them as donations on your income tax?

i fished today with some dive friends .
caught plenty of amberjack and barracuda.
had the opportunity to try out slow pitch jiggiging

yet i'm ready to give up my days on the ocean for music.

its all perspective.

stay strong.

i'm going back to the desert to smoke some weed.

fight the power

I think that almost everyone who has played music for a long time has thought about giving it up at one time or another. There have always been lots of issues to deal with around the music world and even more so on the internet. Music has always been a part of my life and will continue to be in the future. At what level I am not sure at the moment.

As far as musical instruments go, I think they should be in the hands of people who want and need them. I am not a big fan of collecting stuff just to look at it.

I have been giving some of these instruments away for some time now and will continue to do so.

It is unlikely I will move away from the ocean to go back to Arizona to play music and indulge in special effects...lol

Billy

The common thread here is health. If your health isn't allowing for a lot of playing much less gigging then it's basically over. I'm 76 and extremely lucky concerning health and I'm certainly not bragging because I had little to do with it other than being smart about never smoking and being careful with my diet. Other than that it's all genetics and you can't pick your parents.

I'm still gigging a lot, no pain, no shortness of breath, I can still haul my gear onto the boat to Catalina and do two very loud classic rock gigs back to back at the Marlin Club last Friday and Saturday. Just got back today and other than needing to nap about 29 times today I feel fine. I'm well aware I'm one health crisis away from it all being over so I'm still doing it now because I totally enjoy it. I'm the oldest member in 4 bands including a classic big band and I'm the biggest ham you ever saw. My favorite joke was from Milton Berle who said he's such a ham that when he opens the refrigerator door and the light comes on, he'll do twenty minutes in front of a dead chicken. That's me for sure.

Don't get too much of that from doing taxes and fighting with the IRS on behalf of clients although they do appreciate my efforts. And it's certainly not the money, I'll make ten times the money on one representation case than I do with gigs in a month or more like three months. Something about me doing a screaming, animated organ solo on Gimme Some Lovin and having a group of cute coeds and their boyfriends ohhing and ahhing me. Not that I'm a dirty old man, I look at them like my granddaughters. Then it's a big band gig at a country club and it's their grandmothers ohhing and ahhing me when I do a nice piano solo on Time After Time. But it's still a rush so I'll keep accepting those bookings until something happens and I have to cancel or somebody else has to cancel for me.

Bob

Thank you Bob! It was such a hard day. I so needed that good laugh!!!!!

"It has become more and more difficult to find other musicians to play with. Very few people I meet are willing to put in any real effort to create well-done new music."

THIS is why I sold off most of my stuff. I ran a decent local studio & played live for decades. When the croke-eee crap & DJ's came in most of the dude's I knew just gave it up....and a LOT where outstanding players...

Now it is impossible to fine even a jam session....it is sad in Southern Ohio to find anyone....BUT I keep a "small studio" setup so when the bug bites I can go & create....creative people NEED to have the outlet, no matter the age.....

I've been gigging since I was in Jr. High School, and that was a long time ago. I'm past retirement age and have no intention of giving it up. I must be the exception.

I did try a couple of 'day jobs' while investigating what it is to be 'normal'. During those day jobs, I continued to gig on the weekends and live for the weekends. Normal just didn't work out for me.

Even when I had a gig with a title of Cable TV Field Engineer, I still identified myself as a musician moonlighting as an Engineer (actually, I was a technician with an inflated title).

I took the job because I could fly out Monday, fly back on the Thursday Red-Eye and have Friday, Saturday and Sunday off for gigging. The electronics I took in school allowed me to get my foot in that CATV gig. But it wasn't for me.

My technical chops on the sax have not improved in years, buy my ability to play expressively and tastefully have. My voice is still strong, because I use it a lot, in fact, it's better than it has ever been. Voice was the most difficult instrument I learned. My lead guitar chops keep improving. It's my 8th instrument, and I have a lot to learn. I don't have time to practice it a lot on home, but I'm doing 15+ gigs per month, and if you can't practice on stage, where can you practice?

I used to fish a lot in Florida when I was young. But now the fishing isn't what it used to be. We would throw back the fish people keep like the jacks and take home the snook, grouper, red snappers, mangrove snappers, yellowtails, and lookdowns. Everything else was catch and release. Nobody used more than one pole, and it was more of a fishing game than a waiting game. I lost patience for that, so I suspect it's a lot like Billy losing patience for music and going fishing.

I feel like I'm living a charmed life.

After I divorced my first wife, I vowed not to marry anyone else who isn't in the biz. Second wife, Mrs. Notes is a fantastic singer (I'm decent, she's great) and she plays guitar and synth. She has intense work ethics like myself, has fun entertaining, and is the kindest person I've ever met. We hardly every disagree.

But that's all about me (sorry).

The point is, time is the only currency we have. Wasting time doing something we don't want to do is throwing away that currency. Life is finite, we only get so many minutes. Do what makes you happy as long as it respects the rights of others.

But don't sell your gear until you are sure that's what you want to do. Especially items that are no longer in production.

Insights and incites by Notes ♫

Absolutely. When I was playing music for a living that's exactly how I would look at gigs. Time to try out that new lick, or technique that I worked on in my living room. The stage was one big laboratory for me to experiment to see how things really worked in the real world and people's reaction to it. And.... I got paid and had fun doing it.

Wait. You're supposed to get PAID???