Outboard Gear?

[BurnBarfield]

Why bother wasting your money on all those high quality preamps and compressors that cost many thousands of dollars when they will only pale in comparison to everything you've already got

Hey man, I just wanted to clarify that you misunderstood what I said. I was not comparing what I have to units costing thousands of dollars.. I was comparing my stuff to the stuff that most of the studios around here have, such as Alesis 3630s, Behringer rack gear, etc..

 

[xstatic]

Bands who check gear lists are more likely going to be a pain in your ass to record anyway. If they see a ton of rack gear lying around the studio your going to get a lot of idiots who are going to expect you to fix every little mistake or make them actually sound good.

Use the lost "business" as a filter.

My $2.00

Actually, I think you have it backwards on many accounts. If a band cares about equipment, that does not make them a pain in the ass. It could very well mean that they care about their product. If two studios do equivalent work with equivalent pricing, you would kind of be an idiot to go to the studio with the lesser equipment. The problem with just running on a computer is that you are far more likely to find someone with a setup like that that does shitty work (dime a dozen) then to find a well equipped studio doing shitty work.

 

[MCI2424]

problem is that if you buy a dummy behringer board to throw in there, any of your clients that know anything about audio are going to think you're studio is a joke because you have a behri console.

so you basically have to choose between the gullible masses, or the intelligent few.

Just change the nametag to "Neve" and you will get instant respect.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

There are a LOT of studios that have a lot of gear in their gear list just to attract custys. Often times there will be gear on a list that is only partly functional, if at all (I've known some pretty big studios that have had marquee gear on their list that hasn't worked in years). More often than that it may be perfectly functional, but hardly ever used except for special requst by the client, because the engineer you get has his/her own beaten path playbook and gear list that they prefer, and 90% of the stuff on the studio list is not included in that playbook.

That said, usually those studios with plenty of bells and whistles gear get to keep that gear because their engineers have a good client rapport and do a good engineering job.

What those of us on the project studio and indie levels need to consider is this: for us, "gear list gear" only works once if we don't provide a product and service that the client feels is worth it. It may get them in the door the first time, but they'll leave early and won't come back if they don't like us personally or our level of service professionlly. And such a result winds up as bad rep.

So, when looked at that way, the eye candy is indeed helpful if we are good at what we do. If we're not so good at it, the money is probably better spent elsewhere. At less than $50/hr, it'll take a looong time to pay off that Manley if you can't keep your rep.

G.

 

[Mixxit12]

We have quite a bit of gear in the studio that hardly ever gets used (ADATs, bazillions of compressors, effect boxes, etc.). We could scrap a great deal of it and get by just fine. We have a 64 channel Tascam board that is bascially a gigantic monitoring and routing tool (I record almost everything to our Pro Tools rig and mix later). I swear we'd liquidate some of the gear if it didn't have such a high "bling factor". Hinky? Yes. Important? Sadly, yes.