what was your worst hardware purchase of all time?

[glenn303]

If you see one of these in the wild:



Kill it. Kill it before it takes another life.

That was my first sequencer, still have it too.

[trevox]

Funny reading back through this. A lot of people gave out about their hardware samplers because computers do all of that now (and probably better), but back when most of these were being sold, that was not an option. I bought an EMU esi4000 in 1998 or something and while I don't use it now (I do still have it), I don't regret paying the ridiculous amount of money I did for it because I got a lot of use out of it and would not have made the music I did at the time without it. It doesn't matter that I now assume a sampler is going to be incorporated into a DAW. That would be like saying my worst purchase is a €1,500 laptop because it was outdated after 5 years or less.

I don't think I have made any really expensive bad purchases, but have bought a pretty shit power amp (Samson if I remember), an awful 16 channel desk (also Samson!), a Behringer compressor and some cheap effect pedals, but I still have and use almost every other piece of gear I have bought. I gave away all of the afore-mentioned crap to mates who were starting out or said they would find use for it. I tend to do a lot of research before buying anything major and try to avoid looking at eBay or other online gear shops when pissed.

PS: Someone actually posted that their worst purchase was a G2???? Also, there has been a lot of Behringer bashing (including from me), but I would like to put on record that the Behringer ADA8000 Ultragain is a great way to add 8 external inputs/outputs to your setup (presuming your sound card supports ADAT in/out). The pre-amps are more than acceptable and it only costs €150 or so.

[pepezabala]

In the early 90s my band bought a video projector. remember, there were no computers doing visuals, the ideo was to project VHS as visuals on stage. It was huge and heavy, as big as a refrigerator I would say, made nearly no light and was a real pain setting up, it had three light bulps, one for each colour that needed to get calibrated with lots of little knobs that partly didn't work anymore. Thank god we could sell it after a couple of months and bought a Volkswagen van, started touring and had lots of fun with our visuals consisting of slides and super8.

[JuanSOLO]

Maschine.

[scrondle]

Yamaha RM1-X.

Was ill-informed of it's one-stop-shop-edness as a 17yo being spoilt for his birthday.
Apparently great as a sequencer for other equipment, but the sounds are woeful, so any hope of creating anything I'd like with it was slim, plus I hated the layout of everything..
Rotting away under my decks now.
Can't get rid of it... Just in case.

What if...? Or maybe...?

Hoarding is a balls.

[Piplodocus]

Maschine.

I'd have thought that would raise some eyebrows if it wasn't for your reply to my "Should I buy Maschine" post http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=178088!

[ikeaboy]

Tc electronics triple c, just before they slashed the price by a third and then my unit broke.

[roxxx303]

If you see one of these in the wild:



Kill it. Kill it before it takes another life.

This is the best mobile composing device till today! I own two of those babies!
You need a lot of rechargeable batteries but I love this thing.
It's a bit confusing at first, but if you know how to use it you have a complete music-studio on the go.
I even prefer it today, though having an iPad with hundreds of music-apps - but all apps are a joke compared to the depth of functionality which the QY70 provides (for example you can create Midi-CC controllers with linear functions, create arpeggios from chords, record a song from patterns in realtime, use about hundred groove-templates (Ableton Live had them at first in Live 8 (2009) - the QY70 is from 1997!).
Export your song to a XG-compatible midi-file and use it in your DAW with modern sounds!

It's a shame that Yamaha stopped the developement of these mobile studios.
This unit with a modern touch-screen, a velocity-sensitive-mini-keyboard, USB, arpeggiator and modern powerfull sounds would rock!

[c33]

I spent $400 on an m-audio microtrack recorder quite a few years ago with a defective internal battery that never really held a solid charge and eventually stopped powering up at all. I later discovered this was a pretty widespread problem, and the only way to fix it was to send it back to m-audio and pay another $75 for them to install the same crap battery. No thanks.

I eventually found instructions on how to take the thing apart and replace it with an iphone battery, so I bought an brand new one on ebay for less than $10 and paid an electrician about $40 to install it (as I didn't have any soldering experience and didn't want to risk completely destroying it myself). The mic that comes with it works great with the recorder (not so much if plugged into other equipment), and it does a good job of recording binaural-ish sounds (atmospheric, nature, etc.) for songs. And now that it's finally working again, it's been coming in handy when I get melodic ideas that I need to jot down quickly.

I also purchased an APC20 recently that I'm not using at all. Granted, right now I'm focused on recording -not live performance- but I thought the faders would make mixing easier and I find they're way too sensitive. I might sell it soon.

[madlab]

A television. (if I ever bought one).

[starving student]

the motherfuckin korg triton!!!!!
thank god those days are over

[TheRightBros]

probably the Yamaha DJX or Proteus 2

and I wish I never brought my gemini's 500xls and just went straight to 1200s. there are no such thing as starter turntables just cheaper ones
and a Celeron 1.0ghz pc I wanted to use for music

[Tone Deft]

buying Sonar Studio a week before seeing Live for the first time.