What gear are you sporting?

[Smokedaddy]

Well,

(Oh fuck am I really going to do this? It seems that I am. Apologies in advance, I'm going to make myself look like a total tool. I have a lot of stuff. By "a lot," I mean "a metric shit-ton. A bunch of it is just, well, stuff, but there are a few real treasures mixed in. Anyone else know how to drive big analog synths, the kind with patchcords and jacks? Didn't think so. Anyone else ever jammed with Jimmy Page, mixed Guns N' Roses, or had an appointment for an audition with Zappa? Buncha punks. I hate all of you.)

(OK, starting over

Well,

there's the Steinway grand,
the Sequential Circuits Prophet T-8 (look it up),
the Steiner EVI (look it up),
the three-cabinet Moog synth,
the Arp 2600,
the Korg T3,
the $3200 pair of Genelec nearfield monitors,
the two surround sound systems,
the yamaha mixer, the TAC mixer,
the rackmount compressor-limiter,
the four Shure SM-58s,
the three SM-57s,
the two Sennheiser 421s,
the Gemeinhardt silver open-hole flute,
the Selmer Mk VI (look it up in wikipedia) alto sax I bought new in Paris when I was 13 years old (now worth abt. 30x what I paid),
the Selmer Mk VII tenor,
the Selmer Super Action 80 soprano, bought in the same store in Paris 14 years after the alto,
the Roland SC-55 Mk 2,
the little Kurzweil synth-thing (I don't remember the number),
the Yamaha WX-7 MIDI breath controller (played like a sax),
the matching Yamaha something or other synth it wants to plug into,
the Yamaha WX-5 MIDI thing -- it was the next version after the WX-7,
the matching Yamaha VL-70m synth,
the Alesis Fusion 8HD keyboard (my main rig at the moment) - 88 keys, a nicely weighted action, a hard drive, and something like twelve audio ins and eight outs,
the banana-yellow Stratocaster (I suck at guitar, but the price was too good to pass up),
the elctro-acoustic Ovation guitar -- one of the kinds with all the little bitty sound holes -- see note above re: Strat,
the lute (yes, an honest-to-god lute -- I may stick in a picture of it just to annoy you),
and a few more old groovy analog synths, outboard rackmount effects/eq/preamps, racks to put them in, more amplifiers than you can count on your fingers,
speakers for days, sufficient headphones to plug every bodily orifice, mike stands, assorted percussion thingies, a few more guitars and things in odd corners, hundreds of pounds (I am not kidding -- you come here and move this shit next time) of cables, and probably a bunch of crap I'm forgetting. Stupid little MIDI boxes and things like that. Mike stands. Cocaine spoons.

The point being, you accumulate stuff, you don't just have stuff. Give it a few years, and many of you will be in the same wretched condition.

I moonlighted as a session player in Los Angeles in the late '80s / early '90s and had a couple of bands that made people blink. I made it into print once; sadly they don't have an online archive that goes back far enough and I don't have a copy, but the L.A. Weekly reviewed of one of our shows way back when and described me as "the most dangerous doubler in Los Angeles."

I will now go away, partly in shame, and partly because I feel an urge to either play Rachmaninoff, or L4D2.

Oh yeah, in case I haven't made enough of an ass of myself yet, I have one of these and you don't. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

 

[Watcher]

I will now go away, partly in shame, and partly because I feel an urge to either play Rachmaninoff

[youtube]ksZ-fk2LX7E[/youtube]

 

[Stratochu]

Back on my true and honest account for assorted reasons. So:

Couple weirdo portable 8-track players (will post pics once I get them out of storage & unpacked, boxes are buried in a garage on the other side of town it turns out)
160gb iPod Classic
Older (1996 I think?) RCA compact stereo with CD changer, dual cassette, AM/FM radio with mini-EQ, works like new
Sony DVD/VCR (currently not working since my TV is an early 90s CRT fossil with inadequate plug-ins
Philips-Magnavox 19-inch CRT TV
JVC wireless headphones (need to find a cord to plug into stereo or TV)
Coby AM/FM/CD shower radio (found the manufacturer logo)

and some Koss TNT77 headphones about as old as I am in the recycle bin that still sound good.

 

[Hawker Hurricane]

I've downsized my Mp3 Player recently:

Spoiler: Sony M-Series with Audio Technica ATH-EM7 Headphones

The Player itself is a revival of the old Shuttle-Switch Walkman "Music Players" from the mid-2000's that were marketed towards Joggers as a Skip-proof Music Player as they used a then-revolutionary Solid State Memory storage medium. I have one of the old ones for the same reason I have the headphones I'm using and it's honestly painful to sync due to antiquated software, lack of storage on the device itself, an ass-backwards sync method, and a rechargeable battery noted for having very few charges in it before it kicks the bucket.
The Revival on the other hand, has 10GB of Solid State Memory, not a huge amount, but an amount I can definitely work with and plink playlists off and on as my interests change. and it's actually an Mp3 player, as opposed to some weird library file it compiles and then overwrites. Basically it's a joy to use both when putting music on it and listening to music.

The headphones are notable for 2 things: They're the headphones the Protagonist wears in Persona 3, and they're the most god-damned comfortable headphones that have ever graced my ears despite looking like they're some kind of torture device with their heavy brushed metal, prominent bolts and ear-clips that quite frankly look like they should be painful but aren't.

 

[XYZpdq]

I got a super-cheap free shipping mp3 player off ebay from China. It plugs into the cig lighter and spits out audio via a built-in fm transmitter or a 1/8" line out.

Has those kinda-shit low levels that a lot of the really cheap mp3 players have, but it works good enough for my needs. Changing directories instead of just "next track/previous" would be neat, but for something cheaper than a value meal I'm not gonna push it.

 

[supdup]

This is a cool thread. Lots of good stuff you guys have.

I'm guitar player and have way too much guitar stuff. I have a couple of Fender Jazzmasters and a Jaguar. I also really dig vintage Fender amps. I can't afford the brownface amps, but the blackface and silverface amps are pretty darned good and that's what I use. I'm also an effects fanatic. I have way too many. But my favorite is a Fender Reverb Unit clone that I built myself. Nothing like that splashy, drip tube driven spring reverb.

For playback, I really like listening to uncompressed audio from my old iRiver H140. The amp section on that device sounds fantastic. It will also do optical audio if I wanted to keep it all within the digital domain. But my iphone is pretty decent too and is much more convenient to use. For analog playback, my old turntable died (motor starting slowing down) so I just picked up a Pro-Ject Debut Carbon. It's a really nice turntable for the price. I really didn't want to spend a lot on a turntable, no matter how much better it could potentially sound.

I run all this through a 90's Sony Stereo Receiver. It's one of the last Sony receivers to simply have a Treble and Bass knob for EQ. I bought it right when new consumer level receivers were moving toward preset EQs. I like flat frequency response and manual control. The Sony drives some Boston Acoustic CR-75 Bookshelf speakers. Nothing is Audiophile, but it's definitely a lot more accurate than some of the more expensive systems with subs and such.

For on the go, I use RHA MA-750i in-ear's. I had a pair of Shure 310's that weren't that comfortable and they eventaully crapped out. I'll never use Shure's again.