To trade in or not to trade...

[anppilot]

I wat to get a Motif ES Rack, but I have some stuff I think I want to trade in. Tell me what you think.

I want to trade in my:
Yamaha TX81Z
Alesis Midiverb
Alesis DM-PRO & 7pc Hart Dynamics Drum trigger set
Alesis QSR
Yamaha FB-01

I think I should, I never use that stuff anyway anymore. I can get something out of it and reduce the price of my Motif

 

[DavidK]

I dont know the drum set, I have owned all the rest at one point. Brings back memories.
That's a tough call, since you wont get much. I saw a dx7 in Guitar Center for $399 last week. Lets face it: that's ridiculous, they probably gave the owner 50 bucks. . If I owned all that stuff it would depend on what they gave me. If it was $100 off, I wouldnt do it. $300 and I would. $500 and I would be real happy, but I doubt that would happen?

 

[The Green Hornet]

Yo pilot of superfluous gear:

Dave is certainly right about "not getting much $$ for used gear." Here is a suggestion that may benefit you depending on your situation.

Offer to donate your unwanted gear to a junior college band, or a college in your neck of the woods.

I just did this and donated a practically unused Roland KC-500 keyboard/mixer amp. My former alma mater was happy to pick up the amp and I just used the full purchase price as a tax deduction. This will save you $$ on state income taxes and give you a good feeling of helping students play music or record it on your gear. You can check out your state laws and benefits for donating.

What I liked was the having the unit picked up and taken away, which gave me a much needed space increase in my studio.

There are also city tax and federal tax benefits. If you don't have the bill of sale, you can price out the gear.

Make sure you have a paper signed by whoever picks up the gear, his number, or the college number. Then, you should get a letter of acceptance from whoever you donate the gear to.

I think this is a good way to have gear you no longer use, have a long life and help students in the world of music.

Green Hornet

 

[altitude909]

Trade in will get you next to nothing, go for ebay. TX81Zs go for about $50-60, the midiverb about the same, FB-01 $20-50. The QSR should get $200-250 if its in good shape with manuals. Dont know about the drum kit, the brains sell for over $300 though

 

[mikeh]

I've regretted almost every instrument trade I've made. I almost always got way too little and almost always found a point in the future where I thought "gee I wish I still had my (fill in the blank)". I've actually gone out and bought something for more than I sold it for (my Juno 60 comes to mind).

Normally if I really want to make room, I'll find a young "rookie" musician and sell something cheap (or even give it away) to give the young guys a break (as an old musician I feel that is an obligation I choose to honor)

If someone simply needs to get rid of gear (because they need the space) or if the few bucks value on the trade is a big deal (and with many musicians that indeed may be the case) then ya gotta do what ya gotta do. But the price offered on trade is almost always an insult.

I've never bought or sold on Ebay - and likely would not want to deal with the hassle. I do like Green Hornet's idea. A way to help young musicians and actually have the Government offset the value - (a win/win).

In my town we have a specialty high school of the arts - which is named in my will to get all my gear when I die (if they can pry it out of my cold hard grasp)

 

[The Green Hornet]

Yo Mikeh:

VERY COOL! VERY GENEROUS!

And,

You will never be old--MUSIC KEEPS US ALL YOUNG!

Green Hornet

 

[anppilot]

good advice guys. i think i am going to trade it in anyway just to get rif of it.

I also forgot, I wanna trade my MR-RACK in and m1r rack, mc-303, what do you think? A friend of mine told me to keep it since it is still pretty tight these days also.

See, I ran out of midi ins and outs on my unitor-8, So i thought about of adding another unitor-8, then i thought that i would need a bigger mixing board. You know, one thing leads to another. I'm using a mackie 1202, not vlz, the old school original one.

I've learned a long time ago that its not about what you have, its how you USE what you have. I had a friend that had a yamaha v50 workstation, a fostex 280 4 track, a pa amp w/SPRING, Yes I said SPRING reverb that he used as a pre+reverb and a shure sm-57 and could make sh_t happen !

But I am trying to simplify my studio and get the most out of it. Thats why All im gonna have in it (sound wise) is my jv-1080, fantom xr rack, jd-990, jp-8080, triton rack, access virus a, and hopefully the motif rack es.

And speaking of "its not what you have but how you work it" speach, I'm still using cubase 3.7r2 with a pIII 500 512 MB ram pc with a delta 66 w/breakoutbox. LOL. But it works. As long as I dont use a lot of plug ins, I'm ok.

Cause I'm receiving a settlemant in a cpl of weeks for $8,000 and I'm getting my Motif off of that, and SERIOUSLY contemplating getting a new pc and new recording software.

It's such a shame. I know cubase vst 3.7r2 inside and out. Hell, i even printed out the manual, all 600 pages. My dearest wife bought 2 3" 3-ring binders and those sheet protectors and set me up.

But I'm limited to about 12 tracks with full efx. But i cant run protools le or cubase sx 4 on a win 98, 500mhz, 512 mb ram pc.

I want to have my clients take their tracks if they want to another studio to get mastered. Thats why I'm thinking of protools le, but i love the integration of controlling patch assignments from within cubase.

I also like the ability to use my unitor 8 with protools le which i was told it cant be done.

But i heard also that protools has gotten alot better with midi implication.

 

[altitude909]

But i heard also that protools has gotten alot better with midi implication.

Compared to cubase, it still has a LONG way to. If you rely heavily on midi, dont bother

 

[ofajen]

Offer to donate your unwanted gear to a junior college band, or a college in your neck of the woods.

I just did this and donated a practically unused Roland KC-500 keyboard/mixer amp. My former alma mater was happy to pick up the amp and I just used the full purchase price as a tax deduction.

Uhhh, just a reminder here that one should use a reasonable estimate of a donated item's true value in money; either a depreciated value of the item or some reasonable estimate of current market value, based on similar sales, in order to comply with IRS regulations regarding charitable donations.

Cheers,

Otto

 

[DavidK]

My dearest wife .

Thats why All im gonna have in it (sound wise) is my jv-1080, fantom xr rack, jd-990, jp-8080, triton rack, access virus a, and hopefully the motif rack es.

Wow, you have a wife AND all that stuff?? Lucky man.

 

[SonicAlbert]

I think you are making the right move in traading or selling that gear. The key is that you said you don't use it. If that's the case, then the gear has no place in your studio, it's just taking up space and getting in the way. It's far better to turn that gear into money and then use that to purchase something you will use.

Although I do want to ask: do you think there are enough new and different sounds in the Motif ES rack to distinguish it from the Fantom XR and Triton rack? Or are you just buying the same sounds over again for the most part?

 

[anppilot]

DavidK - Yes, lucky man am I ! And shes a fox.

Well, I think that the Motif Rack ES and Fantom XR Rack ARE indeed close in stature to each other, HOWEVER, I look at things from a standpoint/viewpoint these days from most people. Check this out. I'm not into quanity (well not at least these days), just quality.

Total in the past, I've have/owned a:

Roland
JV-880,
S-330 w/rc100 controller
JW-50
XP-30
S-90
JV-1080 w/4 exp boards
JD-990
JP-8080
D-110
MC-303

Yamaha
S80
FB-01
TX81Z
TG-500
SY-77
RM-50

Ensoniq
MR-Rack
Mirage

Access
Virus A

AKAI
S2800

Alesis
QSR
DM-PRO

Emu
Planet Phatt

Korg
M1R
Triton Rack

So yeah, I've had it with having a ton of crap. Gonna get rid of the M1R, MR-RACK, TX81Z, MC-303, DM-PRO, & Hart Dynamics 7pc drum trigger set.

Maybe I'll come close to getting my Motif for 300-400 dollars or so.

But I am planning on getting a new work desk for my studio. Here it is.

That desk Is HOT ! I figured I would put my Triton, Fantom XR and Motif ER Rack on the left 4 spaces, and on the right, my JV-1080 & JD-990.

I forgot to mention, I have another DAW#2 that is mostly dedicated to Gigastudio32. I also use it for wavelab 5.0, soundforge xp, sounddiver, Fantom XR editor and it'll run my motif editor also.

So back to QUALITY. The Fantom can be expanded with 6 SRX expansion boards. Which is awesome.

Let me explain. Imagine a:

Fantom XR Rack fully loaded with: Supreme Dance, Ultimate Keys, Platinum Traxx, World Collection, Complete Orchestra, & Studio SRX

Motif Rack ES Fully loaded with: Piano Plugin Board & DX7 Simulation board.

Triton fully loaded with: MOSS board, Studio Essentials, Vintage Archives, Future Loop Board, Dance Expansion, Concert Grand Piano, Trance Attack, Orchestral Expansion.

My JV-1080 has the Dance Card, Techno, House & Hip-Hop card + 3000 patches I collected off the net

and my JD-990 has the Vintage Synth exp board + like 1000 some patches I found on the net.

The Access Virus A I have, I recently downloaded 2400 patches off the net for it,

And last but not least, my Roland JP-8080 has about 1500 patches I recently downloaded for i.
t
OH MY! Thats alot of sounds.

So, I have succumbed to the fact that I will be trading it in for the hell of recouping something out of the stuff.

And other part of the money I'm receiving will be to get a Focusrite "Platinum VoiceMaster Pro Processor" channel strip for mics.

 

[DavidK]

Total in the past, I've have/owned a:

Roland
JV-880,
S-330 w/rc100 controller
JW-50
XP-30
S-90
JV-1080 w/4 exp boards
JD-990
JP-8080
D-110
MC-303

Yamaha
S80
FB-01
TX81Z
TG-500
SY-77
RM-50

Ensoniq
MR-Rack
Mirage

Access
Virus A

AKAI
S2800

Alesis
QSR
DM-PRO

Emu
Planet Phatt

Korg
M1R
Triton Rack

Musta been fun. I have had a few of those. My current setup is very modest but works well:

Roland JV1010
Yamaha MM6
Alesis nanosynth

Prophet, DX7, B3 and minimoog softsynths, various vst stuff, a few samplers and a piano. My next purchase will be a library of samples. I will probably have to get a new puter first. I cant do what I need with Romplers, which is unfortunate because I hate working with samples. However, I havent seen anything in the hardware world that equals it.

 

[SonicAlbert]

Imagine a:

Fantom XR Rack fully loaded with: Supreme Dance, Ultimate Keys, Platinum Traxx, World Collection, Complete Orchestra, & Studio SRX

Motif Rack ES Fully loaded with: Piano Plugin Board & DX7 Simulation board.

Triton fully loaded with: MOSS board, Studio Essentials, Vintage Archives, Future Loop Board, Dance Expansion, Concert Grand Piano, Trance Attack, Orchestral Expansion.

My JV-1080 has the Dance Card, Techno, House & Hip-Hop card + 3000 patches I collected off the net

and my JD-990 has the Vintage Synth exp board + like 1000 some patches I found on the net.

This is what I'm talking about regarding duplication.

Why do you need a Motif rack with the piano plugin and a Triton with the Concert Grand Piano? That's a duplication that's just kind of a waste of money.

Same applies to Triton with Vintage archive and JD-990 with Vintage Synth board. There's probably going to be duplication there. Unless there are specific patches you really want to use from both.

Also, why do the Triton Orchestra Expansion and the Fantom XR Complete Orchestra?

Incidentally, the Complete Orchestra board is a compilation of their older JV board expansion. If you want the better Roland orchestra samples you need to get the SRX-04 Strings and the SRX-10 Big Brass Ensembles. I use those and the Complete Orchestra.

Another option would be to get the SRX-04 Symphonique Strings and then the Korg Orchestral board for the rest of the orchestra. That way you'd get the good strings and also ahve the rest of the orchestra on another synth.

Likewise, just pick which piano you like better, the Yamaha or the Korg, and go with that. No need to double up on something like that.

 

[The Green Hornet]

Yo Ofagen-ation:

Yo ofagen:

Thanks for you reminder about value. I guess that would make a Picasso worth nothing because it's so old? [some of them are pretty ugly too!]

If you check the price of the "replacement" for the KC-500, you would find out that it is higher.

Also, there is an established value usually agreed upon by the recipiant of the donation and so indicated in their letter of acceptance.

BTW: I run all this stuff by my CPA who a graduate from my former college workplace--a very bright dude.

And, there is the "condition" factor. Beer stains, etc. will, of course, lower the price. But, the unit I donated was NEVER used on a gig and only turned on for about 1 hour in my studio. So, I guess the "used car" slogan, "LIKE NEW" is applicable.

What this all lixiviates down to is if one tries to screw the Feds, one will usually have a problem sooner or later.

And, most of the tax relief from donating an object comes via city and state tax and these folks can easily check with the recipiant.

Some items are like gold. Would you sell your gold bars for what you paid for them ten years ago? Nay, methinks!

Happy Spring
Green Hornet

 

[ofajen]

Yo ofagen:

Thanks for you reminder about value. I guess that would make a Picasso worth nothing because it's so old? [some of them are pretty ugly too!]

My comment was a general one for all readers considering donating gear and not specifically aimed at your case where the property is like new. The basic standard is to declare the true value in money of the property. Generally, one uses either a standard depreciation table for that class of property or some reasonable estimate of current market value (what it would sell for today). That is the reason the old Picasso may have an enormous value.

Cheers,

Otto

 

[anppilot]

Yes I do agree with the fact of duplicating of orchestra and piano patches. HOWEVER. Roland and Korg to ME at least, have complete different sounds. To ME, Roland is warmer, and Korg stuff is more metalic and digital. They both sound great, but have different personallities.