You know what is weird

LazerBeakShiek

LazerBeakShiek

Rad Racing Team
Nowadays Im in my middle ages. I don't get something I see a lot of. The Gear. How are the teens equipped so well?

Man , when I was 12-13 I saved for a used electric guitar. Bought it through the local paper. Washburn Electric for like $80. Then I went to ask Mom, for a loan for an amp. She told me...'Learn to play it first'. A older fella I worked with happed to have an old 8" SS Fender frontman I acquired for time.

You see teens with Multiple racks full of Helicon, Lexicon, DJ record things, etc. And yea, they sound pretty cool playing with it.

I dont care how many dime bags of drugs you sold kid. How did you get $17,000 in equipment before you can even drive to work?
 
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I think maybe it is due to parents seeing more potential for their investment.
It is entirely possible now for a young person with a lot of charisma to start a youtube channel and make some money.
I imagine back in the day you were more likely to be perceived as "fooling around" and not "taking yourself seriously" if you didn't get a "real job".
More accepting of the arts now I guess.
 
I read an article a while back about how people want to be rich and famous, but don't really want to earn it. People see entertainers as the best way to do that. (We all know that most entertainers worked hard like anyone else to make it.)

When I was a teen, the attitude was "we will let you have a guitar, but if your school work suffers, the guitar will disappear." Now, an infant farts, it is an internet sensation, and the child has a recording studio within 48 hours.

The equipment is cheap and ubiquitous. Back in the 1980s, even small studios did not have pro recording mics. I didn't see one in person until probably 2005. Now every pawnshop I enter has several good condenser mics. Guitars... In 1977, a pretty crappy guitar was $150 in my area. Inflation adjusted, that is over $600 today. I have some amazing guitars that I paid under $200 for. The quality of stuff is great these days.

Two generations ago, lucky was a job you could stay at until you died. You hit 65, got the clock, and died in your easy chair at 68. Now people seek jobs they love, retire early, and maybe have a half century to indulge themselves. Me? I retired a bit early, and spend a lot of time dabbling in music. People understate how much life has changed for us, and how good things are.
 
There was someplace I was going with this. I cannot remember.

Oh wait. These girls had a light show, fake hair, wind machines. Not to mention stacks of amps and PA racks. The other bands in the show had similar LED Par cans and gantry for the lights. Times have changed. If I wanted colored lights...I would got thrown a can of spray paint and some old bulbs.

I had to build my first microphone in 1980 something.
 
Treasures from the past.

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I came up with the circuit my young self. Reohstat adjustment wheel. 9 volt circuit. Electret. Add a plastic straw. The output has come off from the resistor. That was it.

In my 40's , I am now armed to the teeth!
 
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I built our "light show" around '69 or 70. It had 4 100W colored spots per side, and the control box had a set of DPDT switches and a set of snap switches activated by buttons fashioned from the caps of spray paint cans. Flip the switches forward and the buttons would turn the lights on when pressed. Flip back and the lights came on and the button would turn them off when pressed. Our "roadie" (one of our friends) could play the lights with the music by tapping the buttons.

We couldn't afford a strobe light, so I put a spot inside a box with a slot, mounted the motor from my Erector set on it the top, with a 78RPM record on it with another slot. Turn on the motor and Flash Flash Flash. Instant Strobe. You changed speed by moving the gear lever on the motor! I think we used it for about a half dozen times. The 78 kept getting broken.

Mics were Unidyne B 515s with high impedence and a switch. Cost <$30 each back then, which was a steal compared to an SM57. Besides, our Kustom 100 PA had high impedance inputs so the 57s wouldn't work so well.

It took a lot of jobs to pay the $800 for that PA. Luckily we had a regular gig at the local USO which paid $140 for a Sat night/Sun afternoon. I think it took us about 4 months pulling $100 off the top of each job to pay the music store.

In comparison, today's stuff is CHEAP! That $800 would be about $4000 today.
 
oldmattb said:
I read an article a while back about how people want to be rich and famous, but don't really want to earn it. People see entertainers as the best way to do that. (We all know that most entertainers worked hard like anyone else to make it.)

When I was a teen, the attitude was "we will let you have a guitar, but if your school work suffers, the guitar will disappear." Now, an infant farts, it is an internet sensation, and the child has a recording studio within 48 hours.

The equipment is cheap and ubiquitous. Back in the 1980s, even small studios did not have pro recording mics. I didn't see one in person until probably 2005. Now every pawnshop I enter has several good condenser mics. Guitars... In 1977, a pretty crappy guitar was $150 in my area. Inflation adjusted, that is over $600 today. I have some amazing guitars that I paid under $200 for. The quality of stuff is great these days.

Two generations ago, lucky was a job you could stay at until you died. You hit 65, got the clock, and died in your easy chair at 68. Now people seek jobs they love, retire early, and maybe have a half century to indulge themselves. Me? I retired a bit early, and spend a lot of time dabbling in music. People understate how much life has changed for us, and how good things are.
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Not to start the new year under a cloud friend but life is only good for a very tiny proportion of the world's people and that 'good' has been won at massive cost to the majority of those people.

The vast production of cheap goods and rabid consumerism is 'killing the planet'. We hear almost monthly of child and near slave labour being used to make our phones and other electronic gimcracks.

I fear the next few years in my country are going to be terrible for anyone remotely 'poor'. We are said to be the fifth richest country in the world and yet we have more food banks than MaCdonald outlets.

Happy new year everyone.

Dave.
 
TalismanRich said:
We couldn't afford a strobe light, so I put a spot inside a box with a slot, mounted the motor from my Erector set on it the top, with a 78RPM record on it with another slot. Turn on the motor and Flash Flash Flash. Instant Strobe. You changed speed by moving the gear lever on the motor! I think we used it for about a half dozen times. The 78 kept getting broken.
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Thats awesome.

Lights were never a big investment for me either. A while back they had USB DMX controllers and software and I figured I would give them a try. For $10 it can turn a laptop to light board with free software. Sounded good.

The cheap DMX wash COB's that somehow are DMX controllable, were $11 each if you buy x8 units. That is probably cheaper than colored floods nowadays. They do a nice color wash, fade or strobe, UV, program a sequence, or react to sound. Slave them up with old mic cables.

Members of my family try to hurt my eyes with violently changing primary colors. They would never take it serious.

COBDMX.jpg

The stands are made for hanging a green screen curtain for podcast backgrounds. If I extend them +6 ft they fall over from the weight.
 
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I am not going to continue. This is far too serious to discuss on a frivilous audio forum.

Hope you had a happy new year. Millions didn't.

Dave.
 
I find that more and more these days, people who don't have, like to blame people who do have, for their shortcomings.
It's the easy answer to a lot of things...blame someone else, or try to take it from those that have it rather than earning it on your own.

When you consider a country like China...they are going through their form of "industrial revolution"...and just like the USA and GB and other more modern countries had a darker industrial past where people worked hard for low wages....they too will eventually raise their standard of living.
If their own government chooses to suppress that, and keep them at "sweat shop" earning levels, you're not going to change it by simply avoiding the products they export...if anything, it will make their lives worse if they can't earn even those low wages.

I think back about my own life, and how my family came to the USA with only two suitcases in-hand...or as my father use to say back in the day, "two luggages" before he improved his English. We all worked hard, and over the years increased the quality of our lives.
I have no guilt on my conscience from affording better things now that I couldn't back in the day. I never blamed anyone when I couldn't have better.

Kids these days have more than we did as kids. That is what it is...there's nothing to complain about, or anyone to blame.

Anyway...let's not get into some political thing here. It's the start of a new year today. :)
 
I will respond to you Miroslav because you have always come across to me as a fair minded man.

I totally agree with your concept of 'self help' but the 'political' niceties, Left v Right, taxation, re distribution etc are things we have to put aside if we are to avert disaster. My mention of China was only in the sense that the WHOLE WORLD has to stop making perhaps 80% of the 'stuff' it does now. Most of that stuff we don't need and most of the world's population does not and will not have it.

Of course, reducing production to that degree is going to mean a massive loss of jobs and THAT is the fact that all politiicians won't tell us or even face.

During the last war (that's 'king blown it!) everyone here had to put petty ideologies aside for the common good against a common enemy. The 'enemy' today is ourselves. I well remember listening to the Wireless and hearing sweets come off ration.

Dave.
 
ecc83 said:
I will respond to you Miroslav because you have always come across to me as a fair minded man.

I totally agree with your concept of 'self help' but the 'political' niceties, Left v Right, taxation, re distribution etc are things we have to put aside if we are to avert disaster. My mention of China was only in the sense that the WHOLE WORLD has to stop making perhaps 80% of the 'stuff' it does now. Most of that stuff we don't need and most of the world's population does not and will not have it.

Of course, reducing production to that degree is going to mean a massive loss of jobs and THAT is the fact that all politiicians won't tell us or even face.

During the last war (that's 'king blown it!) everyone here had to put petty ideologies aside for the common good against a common enemy. The 'enemy' today is ourselves. I well remember listening to the Wireless and hearing sweets come off ration.

Dave.
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I'm sure the things you thought were necessary, and the things that interested you in your younger days...the older generations the came before you, all thought the same way you think now.

I'm not sure what "disaster" you are predicting...but we can't live in the past, and while the future may not seem right to you, it seems right to the younger generations. Their needs and interests are different...and that's what comes with each new generation.
When they invented the steam engine and then the horseless carriage, and people were suddenly traveling at 30mph...many were shocked and feared the future...and here we are almost 200 years later, and all is well.
You either embrace the future or live in fear of it.
 
miroslav said:
or anyone to blame.
:)
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Speak for your self I know exactly who to blame.

In the USA they Sodomize kids in church, then force them to interact with there attackers for the remaining years. Then hide behind a prove it game, that lasts well into your adult years. The victims knew the truth and no one listened.

Everyones gonna burn. Hope your not guilty.

Yall know how I feel about it.
 
miroslav said:
I'm sure the things you thought were necessary, and the things that interested you in your younger days...the older generations the came before you, all thought the same way you think now.

I'm not sure what "disaster" you are predicting...but we can't live in the past, and while the future may not seem right to you, it seems right to the younger generations. Their needs and interests are different...and that's what comes with each new generation.
When they invented the steam engine and then the horseless carriage, and people were suddenly traveling at 30mph...many were shocked and feared the future...and here we are almost 200 years later, and all is well.
You either embrace the future or live in fear of it.
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It is the Younger Generation that MOST fear the future! Teenagers like Greta Thunberg. The "disaster" of course is climate change.

I do not fear technology, I made a modest living from it and try to live by logical, "scientific" principles (not 'ideologies').

You mention "the steam engine" friend Miroslav? Who did it benefit? Not the vast numbers who died and had their lives cut short hewing the coal. Nor the thousands that died in the Tin mines. Steam, coal and Iron built palaces and piled up huge wealth but not for the vast majority.

I am not some 74 yr old old fart harking back to better days I seriously think our kids and their kids to come are in big trouble. Back in that day, post WWll there was a saying "I'm all right Jack" (and by implication FU!) That sentiment seems to persist.

Dave.
 
How did we get here? There is plenty to bitch about. I can bitch about things for hours.

To put it short , yall put on a great show, but there never was nothin. So the best is yet to come.
 
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LazerBeakShiek said:
Speak for your self I know exactly who to blame.

In the USA they Sodomize kids in church, then force them to interact with there attackers for the remaining years. Then hide behind a prove it game, that lasts well into your adult years. The victims knew the truth and no one listened.

Everyones gonna burn. Hope your not guilty.

Yall know how I feel about it.
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HUH??? :wtf:

What the heck does that ^^^ have anything to do with the discussion about the world economic/industrial situation and why kids today have/want more gear...?

Stay focused. ;)

ecc83 said:
It is the Younger Generation that MOST fear the future! Teenagers like Greta Thunberg. The "disaster" of course is climate change.
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:facepalm:

You didn't really just go there....Greta and climate change. :D

My advice...stop watching the news so much, you will feel better, and the future will not seem so dark.

Every older generation talks about the end of days for the kids of the future.
Let them sort it out...I'm sure they will, just like all the generations that have come before did.
 
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