social.noyu.me

one of the things that i feel weird about is i spent way over my self-imposed budget when i got my guitar. but thinking about it now, it only cost me half of what i spent on my current laptop? that really puts it into perspective. because goddamn is the guitar the better value

‪actually i overestimated the relative cost difference, it was five years ago when SEK was stronger against EUR; also both the guitar and the laptop were things i bought at a significant discount over retail price.‬

‪still‬

‪a non-upgradeable computer should not cost that much‬

‪i've been putting off big purchases for the last two years, because most of that time i've been unemployed, and i kept trying to psyche myself into buying a new laptop. and i couldn't do it. it was just obscene money. it didn't feel good.‬

‪the guitar feels good.‬

‪the guitar i have would have, if bought new, cost 10% more than a current-gen iphone, also bought new. that's just obscene. the iphone is not made out of mahogany. the iphone will not work in ten years. the iphone cannot spark joy. i think i'm just jokered on the tech industry‬

i was thinking, god, is this the most expensive thing i've ever bought. nope, not even close. but it's easily the most valuable item i own, and it might well be for the rest of my life. i do not see it as an investment i mean this more in a moral sense than anything else

‪i think what i'm saying is i felt a kind of joy about that guitar that a computer could never inspire in me and does not deserve to, and i knew in my gut that it was worth every penny in how it was built. there are guitars worthy of cynicism, but that one wasn't. it's how i felt‬

‪spending more or less money on something is not inherently more virtuous but you should probably save it for the purchases you won't regret, y'know‬

@hikari yep, even if you never sell it, a good guitar amortizes out to a bargain. I've owned my oldest guitar for 32 years. It was a very expensive guitar (~$3000 in today's dollars), and bought new. But, if it (or I) blinked out of existence tomorrow I've paid $93.75 per year to play an amazing guitar. Nevermind that I could sell it for $1500 today and recoup almost exactly what I paid for it, it's still less than a week worth of groceries per year. A good guitar is a great investment.

@hikari what guitar did you get?

@Tijn it's a fender custom telecaster special edition hh fmt (amber), it is a thing of beauty in so many ways i loved it immediately

@hikari oooh with a coil tap, that's nice.

If I ever buy another electric guitar (who am I kidding, of course I will) it's definitely going to have some fancy electronics like that.

@Tijn the coil tap to make the humbuckers pretend to be single-coil feels spiritually important as an alleged telecaster!

i am quite fond of the controls on it, they look great, they feel good, and they balance versatility with not having an overwhelming or confusing amount of options

@hikari Yeah, yet because of the coil tap it has more controls than any of the guitars I own haha.

That's why I really want to go nuts with the next one I add. I want all the options!

@Tijn don't forget you can mod guitars! i don't know what you have but if it's one with a pick guard covering a hollow chamber it might be practical

@Tijn i did try two other guitars in the store but both of them had too many switches/switch positions for my taste. disorienting and ugly

@hikari yeah, I wouldn't want that for my first guitar either.

In fact I only have acquired two electric guitars during the 25 years I've been playing, an Epiphone Les Paul and a Fender Telecaster, they're both pretty basic.

They serve me just fine and offer a wide range of sounds, but if I add a 3rd one I want it to be weird and have All The Things.

You're right though, modding is also an option! We'll see, I'm not in a hurry.

@hikari As a person with a guitar acquisition problem, here's a thing to keep in mind about guitars: If you buy it at a good price, you are just borrowing it from the universe. Unlike computers and phones and most other things, a good guitar doesn't really depreciate over time. You may take a hit if you buy new at retail price, but there is a floor to how low the value will ever go, as long as you don't abuse it. I've made a (usually small) profit on nearly every guitar I've owned.

@hikari I used to have a girlfriend who had a similar addiction to luxury goods. When we moved and needed to downsize, she sold a bunch of stuff at a huge loss, while I made several thousand dollars in profit on my vintage synths and guitars. She continued to compare her buying habits to mine (I admittedly have a problem, but I'm not losing money on it...it's just a waste of time to have all these guitars taking up space), but we both knew the truth after that.

@swelljoe yeah. before getting this guitar i had been having a bit of a music arc and acquiring various other musical instruments, all electronic. and i think they also hold their value, albeit maybe not as strongly. creative tools never lose their appeal so long as they work

@hikari synths are tricky, as they have a value curve that dips for the first several years, and then eventually they come around to being collectible in some sense. This is surprisingly resilient for the good stuff. If you'd told someone in 2000 that a Korg M1, Roland D50, or a Yamaha SY22 would be collectible in 20 years, they probably would have laughed. And, yet, here we are. It took a while for the records made with those sounds to become "classic" and make those sounds sought after.

@hikari but, they mostly never quite achieve their peak retail price, even after becoming collectible (and they're a lot more likely to break in hard to fix ways than guitars and basses). So, buying used at a decent price is always wise.

@saagar skill issue