Matt,

Yes....we've all dealt with music store envy at one time or another. My lessons learned:

1. Don't buy gear unless you plan on keeping it forever. I have a closet full of amps and guitars that I really liked at the time. If I would have held off and bought the really high end stuff in the first place, I wouldn't have collected all of this stuff that is pseudo high end (Mesa Boogie..."new" Fender stuff, Line6, etc.). I went "ugly early" and I'm stuck with my decisions. My buddy has a Badcat, some choice effects, and a "newer" vintage Les Paul & custom shop Relic'd Strat...and that's all he uses live and in the studio. He never longs for anything (although he collects real deal vintage guitars worth more than most cars as well). Buy the BEST stuff that is fit for the music you make....when you settle for less, you are doing just that. You will always desire more.

2. It always sounds better in the store. I think this is more of a psychological thing. A nice new Strat will sound awesome in a store, and Fender will always have some new gimmick claiming that their latest stuff sounds better than ever.... but once you play it side by side to a real good vintage one (or a good custom shop relic, which most likely won't be at the shop), you'll notice a lot of nuances that make the "tried and true".....tried and true. If you look at all the mods that are available for new guitars, they are primarily about making them sound like a vintage instruments.....so why not start with one instead?

3. Authenticity matters. After we made our first record...with Line6 gear, auto tune on the vocals, and drum loops.... While it sounded good to a lot of people (our "fans")....the folks with the trained ears (music industry people) could point out all of the inauthenticity in the recordings. Sure, we could tweak and re-do stuff, but at the end of the day, it WAS inauthentic...most of the recording was not REAL....it was an emulation produced by technology. We made a couple of recordings with a grammy winning producer, through mostly analog gear with no "out of the ordinary" studio magic, and guess what? Those same industry people said the new recordings had a truth to them (vintage guitars, vintage tube amps, 25+ year old acoustic guitars, tube pre-amps & big diaphragm condensers on the voice). That was a HUGE lesson for us. Now we record with as much vintage signal as possible, and we're honing in on our true sound and getting recognized for it.

I'm not saying this is exactly what you should do, but I am saying that it was a hard lesson learned for the type of music that I do. If you are doing Moby style dance music or techno, I'm sure these things don't apply, but as for guitar oriented, classic sounding rock....it sure did for us.

__________________
THIS SPACE FOR RENT