If you dream of owning racks and racks of guitar effect pedals and an endless array of guitars (many of which you will probably only play a couple times before they become one with their case until the end of days), you must be a guitar player. If this is true, then there is another thing that must be true. You have Gear Acquisition Syndrome (GAS). Congratulations! Now you have something to keep your mind occupied while all the guitars you own slowly decay back into the earth! Seriously though, if you have GAS, there is hope for you. In this post, I will first provide an understanding as to what GAS is and to why it is bad in the first place. I will then attempt to provide a solution to the problem. After both the above have been achieved, I will make the case for how having less guitar gear contributes to a better guitar tone. Let us begin.
According to a sketchy Wikipedia page, Gear Acquisition Syndrome (GAS) is a “term used to describe an urge to acquire and accumulate lots of gear.”The tenancy for many guitar players is to buy guitars and pedals and ‘justify’ their purchase(s) as follows:
“I need another guitar as the one I own does not have the tone I want”
“I need another pedal as the ones I own limit my tone/color pallet”
“[Insert obvious ‘justification’ here]”
It does not matter what ‘justification’ one uses. The truth of the matter is that a guitar player is purchasing gear they think they need in order to fulfill a requirement they think exists. Actually, this is not a new phenomenon. It is called consumerism.
To quote my favorite comedian George Carlin, “people [spend] money they don’t have on things they don’t need.” Now I won’t get into a critique on consumerism in this article, but Carlin sums up consumerism quite well. GAS is a byproduct of the consumerist mentality. Why is this bad? Well, let me explain.
Consumerism is not complete without product and service advertisement. Advertisements coerce people into thinking they need a certain product or service in order to fulfill an emotional need. If the advertisement is successful, people will buy said product or service as they are convinced either consciously or sub-consciously that what they bought will either satisfy an emotional craving or eliminate a problem in their life. For many guitar players for example, guitar and pedal acquisition acts as a skill enhancer and therefore is seen as a logical purchase. However, not only is this thinking flawed, but it is also expensive as it encourages the purchase of more gear with the false promise of better guitar-playing ability. Now I am not criticizing avid collectors nor players whom buy gear for the right reasons (reasons which will be explained later). I am criticizing the players who falsely believe, whether they realize it or not, that the more gear they have, the better they will play and sound. So the cycle is as follows:
Guitar player believes gear enhances playing ability
Guitar player buys gear to enhance playing ability
Guitar players’ skill not sufficient to satisfy them
Cycle repeats
There is an obvious problem here as the cycle continues until their guitars decompose back into soil. However, there is good news as there is a way to break the cycle! You say the answer is to “stop buying gear.” I say that there is a little more to it than just that.
In order to break the cycle, one has to change their actions. One changes their actions by changing their belief about the action. Combining the previous paragraphs example with the above logic, we can see that one needs to change the way they think about gear in order to change their gear purchasing habits. I suggest that guitar players believe that gear should be used, and therefore purchased, based on ‘necessity.’ What I mean is that one should take their circumstance and music goals into consideration when using/buying gear and only use/buy gear that reflects the players’ circumstance and music goals. This way, there is a direct correlation between circumstance and music goals one has and the gear one uses/buys. This correlation changes the guitar players’ using/purchasing decisions and therefore, breaks the cycle.
Now I know most of you are wanting to know how less guitar gear produces more guitar tone. For starters, it is a fact that that the more cable an electrical signal has to go through, the weaker the signal is when it reaches its destination. We can then conclude that the more cables and pedals that are between the guitar and its final destination, the weaker the guitar signal is at its destination. So, to preserve guitar tone, one should use the least amount of cabling and pedals between the guitar signal and its destination as possible.
In addition to this, if a player has less gear, they can spend more time experimenting with a piece of gear. A player gets to know and understand how the gear operates and what it does best/worse. Over time, a player can achieve the best tone possible out of a few pieces of gear since they spent time learning what it can/cannot do. If a player has many pieces of gear, there is a strong tendency to jump from one piece of gear to another which results in an average tone from gear to gear (and what guitar player wants and average tone?)
There is another advantage to using less gear which I have found out with experience. If a player uses less gear, there is less potential for problems. If a problem arises, there is only a few things that might be causing the problem and a quick fix is probable whereas if one had a plethora of gear, the problem might seem impossible to fix as the problem could be anywhere.
In this post, I have attempted to outline what GAS is and why it is bad for guitar players. The solution is to change ones beliefs about gear which will then change ones actions on the gear itself. Also, there are many advantages to having less gear such as less chance for problems to occur. To conclude, I hope I convinced at least one guitar players’ beliefs on gear acquisition. My hope is that GAS can be eliminated completely. Unfortunately, it is as common as its younger sibling which always smells, regardless of who you are…
I would like to hear your thoughts on Gear Acquisition Syndrome (GAS). Does it really exist? Do you have it? What are your cures for the epidemic?
Link to Sketchy Wikipedia Page – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:GreyCat/Gear_Acquisition_Syndrome
Link to George Carlin Quote (#5 in the list) – http://www.alternativereel.com/soc/display_article.php?id=0000000019