Pedal shedding idea

[hank57]

Recently I’ve put so many pieces of gear in boxes and/or stored them at my brother in laws shop and my wife’s garage. This means I am using less gear and only the pedals on two pedal boards.

That got me thinking that I should sell off the two three boxes of pedals I’m not able to use right now.

I know opening the box I’ll put a few aside like ones I built or my DOD Preamp 250 I bought for ten bucks in the 90s.

But I’d just clear out a good twenty or so pedals.

Have any of you approached selling gear in somewhat the same way? Like all the guitars on the left side of the room etc.

 

[bobio]

Ohh the humanity, why would you do that?

 

[LikeAMotherF]

Yeah, I did something similar recently.

My biggest problem is I usually wait a long time before I buy a pedal, and by the time u do get it, I know what I'm getting into. Very few disappointments. So I ended up with a lot of pedals, and I love all of them.

I had to group them into different classes; Bluesbreaker group, TS group, delay group, etc etc. And then I had to choose no more than half of each group to keep.

Doing this helped me. But it's still painful! Because I would keep them all. And I probably could, but it really doesn't make any sense. I live in an apartment in NYC, so space is at a premium. So relieving myself of clutter has more value in my life than having 8 delay pedals!

And besides, at least I get to keep 4 of them.

 

[Trick Fall]

Four, or five years ago I decided to sell off a bunch of stuff I didn't use that didn't have sentimental value and wound up netting enough that I was able to jump on a deal for a nice G&L guitar that I wouldn't have been able to get otherwise. Funnily enough, one of the items I sold was a Grey DOD 250 that I bought at Manny's for twenty bucks in the mid 90's. Anyway, I've had no regrets and I continue to sell stuff off with no regrets.

I haven't gotten to the point of one in, one out, but I like to try new things and the old stuff just becomes clutter. At this point, I know if I'm going to use something again. I bought a ton of stuff last year, but I totaled all of the purchases vs what I sold off and it wound up I only spent a few hundred out of pocket on new gear and now I have stuff I'm using instead of things sitting on a shelf. Plus someone else is getting to use something that makes them happy.

 

[stargazer747]

Not so long ago I had decided enough was enough, I had been bitten by the boutique brand bug and before I knew it I was knee deep in them, a brief but intense 4 to 5 year obsession. I'm not saying anything negative about them, they were all great and they have their place but for me they had become an obsession, especially ones designed with any kind of "Space" related artwork and names (I'm a child of the late 60s and an avid NASA-Apollo Moon mission enthusiast). And if the makers introduced some limited edition model with other artwork, well then I had to have them as well, and of course when a newer improved "Vx" came out, those too. I was more into collecting them rather than using them, buying & flipping at rapid fire rate, nearly daily. 24/7 I had my crosshairs locked in on their websites and social media channels watching and waiting for new models to be released and when their availability dates would be, making sure I was at the ready to be among the first to get one. The anxiety it brought me waiting for its delivery was at times overwhelming.

I was building "spaceship" (no pun intended) sized pedalboards some themed in order to accommodate all these FX; heavy, big, and bulky, crammed with as many pedals I could fit on them, difficult to maintain clean and noiseless and certainly not doing anything to improve my tone. Redundancy was an understatement. I was adding FX I'd never stomp on but had to include. Yes, it was a harmless hobby, I wasn't hurting anyone, not even myself, I didn't tap into my family's future savings to fuel my obsession, and in the end it turned out to be a worthy experience since I learned quite a lot about FX pedals.

But the behavior had to nixed and fast even if for only the practicality of it. Taking a step back one day, got a good look at what I was doing and what it's all about and in a moment of illumination, I finally made the decision that I wanted to change all of it. I did an about face, carried out an epic purge and rapidly sold off almost every boutique with the exception of 3x and went retro. Turning my back on boutiques, I returned home to the classics that I grew up on; Cry Baby, MXR, Boss, Electro-Harmonix, Ibanez, TC Electronic. Pedal companies that were there in the beginning with innovations never before heard of that were made famous by all my guitar heroes using them on iconic recordings throughout music history, how could they not be good enough for me? Well, the obvious reason being the age old cliche; "Thinking the grass is always greener on the other side. Downsizing and streamlining, I setup 3x very neatly wired small pedalboards, 2x Pedaltrain Nano Plus (light-weight aluminum, flat, single row) with 5x FX pedals each and a Nano with 4x. My tone improved tenfold not to mention an easier to use and manage as well as a more portable rig.

Moral of the story...Much happier now!

 

[hank57]

@Trick Fall my DOD is the yellow. It has the 1/8” power adapter plug. I didn’t use it for 12-15 years. When it turned up while looking thru stuff I read a few things about. Like Yngwie Malmsteen used it guitar>DOD> board to record an album. I don’t listen to him but it made the pedal cooler so it’s sticking around.

@stargazer747 OMG I love hearing epic stories like this. More is better more is better more is better- less is more.
Also it’s nice to have a different perspective and then you changed that perspective. Not everyone can change their mind that far. And it makes me feel like I’m not as bad as the other guy on tgp

Appreciate all the responses.

 

[stargazer747]

@Trick Fall my DOD is the yellow. It has the 1/8” power adapter plug. I didn’t use it for 12-15 years. When it turned up while looking thru stuff I read a few things about. Like Yngwie Malmsteen used it guitar>DOD> board to record an album. I don’t listen to him but it made the pedal cooler so it’s sticking around.

@stargazer747 OMG I love hearing epic stories like this. More is better more is better more is better- less is more.
Also it’s nice to have a different perspective and then you changed that perspective. Not everyone can change their mind that far. And it makes me feel like I’m not as bad as the other guy on tgp

Appreciate all the responses.

I did realize from the streamlining that what was a better fit for me was the minimalist's philosophy of "less IS more." I'm a set and forget kind of guy finding the sweet spot on my pedals as well as amps for both clean & crunch tones, beforehand I was just chasing around aimlessly following the crowd and not solidifying just what I needed out of FX which now I know to be what I call my 5x "bare essentials" one Overdrive, a Phaser, a Chorus, a Flanger, a Delay, and sometimes a Reverb (Wah for me is standard gear not counted as FX). A journey some of us need to make on our quest for tone in order to find our place, I guess mine was in the Past!

 

[IAE]

I just shove them in a massive international travel sized suitcase and put them under the bed. lol I have more under there than I use but sell them? Never.

 

[carl_in_vain]

I had to group them into different classes; Bluesbreaker group, TS group, delay group, etc etc. And then I had to choose no more than half of each group to keep.

I keep a depth chart broken down like this.

 

[bakelite]

I think you’re taking the right approach. I recently did something similar and my philosophy was that if a pedal is easy/cost effective to replace, then I might as well sell it. There are a couple (i.e. Sweet Sound Mojo Drive) that would be more difficult to replace so I’ll keep it even if it’s not always on the board.

 

[uncle psychosis]

My pedal mountain was getting out of hand, with cool pedals that "will be handy one day" making up a hefty chunk of the pile.

I found writing down the market value of each and totalling it up made keeping things just for the sake of it a lot less attractive. I'd rather have a new guitar than a pile of pedals that only occasionally get stepped on.

 

[stagolee]

Realizing I have too many pedals is easy. Determining which ones are the extras is the impossible part.

 

[monty]

My `system` blows. Filled a photocopy box with bullpen pedals. Then another. And another. Then 2 drawers. My system pretty much is based on me figuring out when the last time I used the pedal I`m looking for and then remembering when I filled the last box.
Sadly they are pretty much all keepers. Any I don`t find useful don`t manage to stick around longer that a week or so.

 

[Jess 1971]

I tend to purge stuff if it isn't being used and I'm not super enthusiastic about it. That said, I do a lot of home recording, so a lot of my stuff doesn't live on my pedalboard per se but is left in a cabinet for when I might want to record a particular sound. My collection of fuzz pedals is a good example of this. I was recording a track last year and when I got the idea to use a Super Fuzz on the lead, it was nice to be able to go into my cabinet and retrieve a Super Fuzz for this song. So sometimes stuff sticks around even if I'm not using it all the time. But if something is a dud and I don't really ever see myself using it, out it goes. I value my space too, so no sense having unnecessary clutter.