Gear you purchased that were disappointments

S

sound125

New member
I'm sure that some of you have purchased gear that simply didn't live up to the hype and ended up being a disapointment.

Some of my disappointments are:

1. FMR RNP. This dual pre often gets rave reviews, yet, I found it to be lackluster for a walwart based box. In short, there's nothing that the RNP can do that a DMP3 can't do, if not better. On the plus side, I really like the RNC and feel it is a great addition to any studio setup.

2. Focusrite Trackmaster. I did a side-by-side comparison of the Trackmaster and Audio Buddy and the Audio Buddy sounded almost the same, with one notable exception, it had a great deal more output than the Trackmaster. The only thing I like on the Trackmaster is the optical compressor which is very smooth and pleasant sounding.

For Pete's sakes Focusrite, break out with some iron and consider adding it to the input side, because your budget pres sound awful.

3. Studio Projects C1. This mic has to be the most hyped product around, yet, it has a harsh upper midrange quality to it. There's absolutely nothing smooth about it and any Audio Technica LDC would be a significantly better choice.

4. Joe Meek - Three Q. This box is proof that adding a Burr-Brown component doesn't make it a good preamp. Apart from having no headroom and a sterile sound, the EQ section has set a new standard for noise and harshness. The comp does offer some coloration, though.

With the exception of the Six Q, which is a decent channel strip, I much prefer the older Joe Meek line, despite the anomalies. For one thing, the boxes I've used have a vintage sound to them, even though they are one trick ponies.

So, what are your disappointments?
 
Initially I find most gear purchases a disappointment because the difference made is usually pretty subtle and none of them make my actual performance much better (which is probably the crux of the matter:o) and never the magic bullet the manufactureres are pushing you to believe and none of them take you from zero to hero.

however as an experiment a couple of months ago (albeit not truly scientific, and mainly to prove to myself that all the gear was not purchased for nothing) I strummed some acoustic guitar chords into an SM27 straight into a Profire 610 and played them back dry on the DAW straight out through the monitors

Then I set up my now usual chain for acoustic and strummed the same few chords. setup was 2X GOBOs to control the room acoustics a little, SM27, BLA Auteur Pre, BLA Sparrow converters into DAW with SSL channel strip engaged, track routed out to BLA PM8 Summing mixer and from there to the monitors.

With all of the extra goodies engaged the difference was pretty apparent and, in my opinion, worth the gear purchases. Any one of these things by themselves on a single, solo track however would be a marginal difference and, until you get used to that aspect of audio gear after the hype you read about the magic qualities of some gear, disappointing!

Of course YMMV
 
I bought a Tascam M-216 mixer in the early 90's and no matter what you did it sounded like total shit. That mixer turned me off of Tascam and I will never buy anything from that company again. Later on I was in a studio that had a Tascam 16 ch reel to reel and it had the same junk sound as my mixer.

Anything from Tascam or Peavey I refuse to look at.

I know people will disagree but I've yet to hear an AKG mic I liked. A mic needs to fit the singer though - I've seen Freddie Mercury being recorded with a 414 and some singers pick a SM57 over a Neumann.
 
Paradise postponed !

Over the years, I've bought quite alot of second hand stuff - there used to be quite a few second hand instrument and gear shops down this way. Hardly any now. I bought a set of tablas that never ever sounded like tablas ! They just sounded like giant deep fluff. It was years before I could bring myself to admit they were crap and that I was disappointed !
The first few keyboards I bought were, to coin a phrase, total shit. I remember buying a synthesizer once and I can only conclude that all it's sounds had doubles standing in because it was a heap of junk. The only consolation was that the money had been given to me !
I've had two Hondo basses, one was a flying 'V' type, the other kept going out of tune. The 'V' was flubby and punchless. In the end, I gave it to a kid who promptly turned to crime and ended up in jail {he later got into production though}.
I used to have a Roland TD6 electric drumkit. I customized it by buying a separate mesh head snare {for rimshots and realism for whoever was going to play it} and I bought a TD10 'brain' for it because at that time, for some odd reason only the 10 had 8 outputs. All the others I looked into had 2 or 4. I loved the snares, kicks and toms, wonderful variety. But the hi-hats and cymbals just never did it. On their own they were cool but in the heat of playing and recording they just sounded like staring at the sun on LSD.....I so wanted the drums to work but in the end I went back to my first love, drumwise - the acoustic.
My first digital multitracker was the Zoom MRS1266. I bought it around the same time I got the Roland drumkit actually. Where others paddle, I dive deep ! It was a superb piece of kit, after 12 years on my Tascam 8 track portastudio, it was like a voice from heaven........until I made three discoveries. Firstly, it wasn't actually 12 tracks. That slightly irritated me as that's how it was marketed. Then I found that if you were bouncing down, you could only monitor what you were bouncing which was no good for me as I'd need to know where in a song I was in case some jiggery pokery was called for (I do accept that I may not have figured out how to do this because even now, all these years later, it seems inconceivable not to be able to monitor stuff not being bounced). The killer was that there was no varispeed which was vital for me, both in terms of being able to vary textures and play stuff that was too fast but not too hard once slowed down.
:laughings: :laughings: I could go on ! It seems that many of my purchases have not been as sweet as I would have liked them to be. But in reality, most of it was my own fault and part of my experimenting and sifting and sieving. Kind of paradise postponed.
 
Hmmm . . . early on I bought a Rolls headphone amp. That was a real piece o' crap. Now I have an Oz Audio :) think I've had it for seven years, and I do horrible things to it, and it doesn't mind at all. That and my Miles Tech amp are my favy bits of kit.

Hmmm . . . I have a couple of dead bits of rack gear, but I liked them while they lasted, so they don't count. Even my RME converter has a few channels on the fritz, need to order parts to fix that . . .

Zildjian ZBT cymbals. Yikes. I still don't quite have the cymbals I want, but at least they are all cast . . .

I kinda dig Peavey stuff though, at least the old US made stuff. Not the guitar amps so much, they didn't break but you'd wish they did :drunk: I have a pair of wedges, one powered. I chucked the drivers, the woofers were OK, the piezos were a joke. With proper Eminence drivers, it sounds great :cool: The Peavey power amp is stock though, other than I replaced the TS jacks with transformer-balanced XLRs, and the speaker jack with Speakons. I dig those, they've done their share of gigs although they just jam in the studio now.

Some people hate Neutrik patchbays, but mine works without complaint. I tend to be gentle on mechanicals but really hard on electricals. Such is life . . .
 
Oh, he blew a couple of speakers and stepped on a $20 pedal for two years before it broke.
My only disappointment has been a really cheap $40 Nady Preamp that gives me nothing but hiss.
However, my greatest surprise was a Nady 8 Channel Preamp which cost me $100 and is absolutely incredible. 75dB of gain on each channel.
I reviewed it at Musician's Friend, I think.
I also bought another marvelous 8 channel ADA converter/preamp for $200 from some company who shall remain nameless. Excellent buy.
 
I've bought a few pedals that were disappointing - all except my Morrison Big Fluff & Dunlop JH Wah that is.
I've been disappointed in almost all of my outboard gear because I haven't used it since becoming DAW/PC based. I have some nice stuff that I just don't use anymore: Electra Voicette EQ, Ibanez renometre, even the rack: these things sit, plugged in but unused.
I'm addicted to UNDO!
Non destructive editing & effects are very seductive.
 
Art Tube MP - pure hiss, although not the worst thing ever

Pretty much any 3.5mm terminated mic for > $40.

Pretty much any NOT 3.5mm terminated mic for < $50.

Samson Q5, but for $30 who cares.

Presonus HP4 - getting one was a hassle. Making the Q5 look good at 3x's the price?

Rycote Lavalier Wind Jammers. I guess if the mic was tucked under someones arm pit they'd be alright. But for mics with a lavalier sized mic element on a stand, almost naked for all intents. I'm not sure if it's $50 each or the pair, but I ordered white and got black.

Radio Shack XLR cable. Not that it doesn't do the job, but it's so stiff, it might as well be a coat hanger.

Radio Shack Boom Arm. Broke the threaded screw with finger power only. And not all that secure to start with.
 
I was pretty disappointed with this:

extenze_product.jpg


Maximum strength... took the whole pack at once... didn't make that big a difference. :(
 
Anything Electro-harmonix

I appreciate the hype, advertising and cool sounding descriptions.
Each one I ever got was a complete tone sucker.
Sorry E-H
 
grimtraveller said:
You could've gotten a good woman for most of life for a whole lot less ! :laughings:
Click to expand...

Absolutely!

That Extenze stuff is useless, I ended up rolling the box up and putting it down my pants and that seemed to work pretty good. :) :) :)
 
Getting back to the original topic.

For those of you that have purchased products and are dissapointed in them, here's a chance to let the sales reps who like to hype their products know why you don't like them.
 
This is certainly an amusing thread. The Boss GT-10 comes to mind, not a horrible unit but not worth 500 bucks in my opinion. I returned it. I had an old QSC power amp that sounded more like a fuzz box, complete garbage.
 
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