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G.A.S Rehab Center Online… Have Gear Acquisition Syndrome? We can help you! by Igor Saavedra
If you want to get better, it’s really important to follow all the points listed on this treatment that I’ve designed specially for you; health is the most important asset in life, so I’m confident you’ll do the right thing.
SPECIAL GEAR ACQUISITION SYNDROME TREATMENT
1. Put things into perspective right now; don’t forget you are supposed to buy gear to play music, and not the opposite.
2. If you spend all the money in gear you won’t have money for gasoline, or eating right, or fixing your car; don’t compromise those extremely basic things that are equally important for being able to work as a musician.
3. Don’t brag about your new gear or your next gear purchase in front of your wife/husband. Some exceptional and supportive partners do exist, but in general terms, the last thing you want to do is to talk about prices in front of them; you and your relationship will end up paying the cost for your lack of discretion. Strings or diapers? Always choose diapers please!
4. Listen to the content of your daily speech, when it comes to music… do you talk mostly about chords, inversions, scales, nuances, dynamics, technique, arpeggios, phrases, patterns, etc. or are you talking the whole day about compressors, equalizers, cables, instruments, pickups, gig bags, strings, amplifiers, etc.?
5. What is good for others doesn’t necessarily mean that this will be also good for you! Sounds easy and obvious, but this specific aspect is usually not taken into account very often. Read carefully about every detail of every piece of gear you are thinking to acquire. For example, I am sure you are aware I have my own Signature model of La Bella Strings… after you read why I like them and why I’m recommending them for you, if those reasons fit with your specific interests please go and buy them, but please don’t buy them just because I use them; apply this concept to all the gear sponsored by all those great bassists around.
6. Constant fast & cheap reselling of your “one week old” gear can kill your economy very fast. Be wise, take your time to make any decision about buying or changing your gear, analyze the pros and the cons, and enjoy what you just bought at least for a while.
7. A very good way to prove that you are indeed suffering from serious G.A.S. is by just taking a look at your gear to see how much of it you are actually using. If it’s less than 50%, your case is really serious!
8. There’s life out there besides acquiring gear… Traveling is great, having quality time for going to a good restaurant, inviting somebody to the cinema and spending some money on music text books is not a bad idea don’t you think so? Have you asked yourself how much money you spend in gear and how much money you spend in music/bass educational material? I’ll tell you that the results of that simple question can really scare you.
9. If you really love gear so much, then learn deeply and seriously about it and not just “use it”… you’ll end up finding out that in most of the occasions you don’t need a lot of the gear, and that you might be actually killing your natural sound if you don’t know how to use it properly.
10. Maybe you are not going to like what I’m going to say right here, but believe me it’s like that, and I’m almost sure that any “G.A.S Rehab Specialist” will endorse this opinion.
Forty-five percent of the quality of your sound is generated by your “conceptual sound” or said in a different way “previously knowing exactly the sound you want”, maturity and experience are some of the main ingredients to achieve that, but also practicing, studying, thinking and listening carefully are very important ingredients. The other 45 percent is generated just by your fingers, this means being sensitive about the nuances involved with technique and achieving the right “touch” so to extract “all” the sound contained in your instrument, which believe me, is much more than what you think even if it’s a $100 bass. The resting 10% of your sound will be provided by that gear you love so deeply, in the sense that the only thing that this gear has to proficiently do is not to interfere with the sound achieved on that 90%, and just let it flow from your brain through your fingers and come out from that speaker. Believe me, it takes really high quality gear to provide that, but don’t forget the proportion involved… I said it once in a previous article “What do you want to become, a real bassist or a bass proprietor?
See you on the next!