Gear Acquisition Syndrome | Hacker News Reader

Gear Acquisition Syndrome

library.oapen.org

138 pointsfhars159 comments

I think of myself as resistant to the pull of advertising and gear acquisition, but I've developed a related problem.

When I find something that I like, I want to buy multiples of it, even if there is a very low chance that I'll wear the item out or lose it, and it may become unusable in that time. I've had many objects in my life that I thought were great, and then they become unavailable and I spend an inordinate amount of time searching for them, even though what I have still works fine. Because my brain says "What happens when it breaks?" and then I have to settle for something new and inferior.

I bought a travel backpack ten years ago. It was an unusual design, but I understood its benefits and liked it immensely. Most people did not, so after the first year it was redesigned and then discontinued. I do not know if I can get anything similar to it again, and I doubt the company will repair it. When I now see other bags that are similar but still not as good, they are significantly more expensive (because of inflation) and I regret not buying several at the time. Even though mine still works great.

Same, but I don't consider it a problem.

If I find that I love a product, I'll buy a spare. If it turns out that I think the successor product is better, I'll buy that and simply sell my spare to someone with the opposite opinion.

This only seems like a problem if you struggle to afford these purchases, or lack space for the spares. Otherwise, it's mildly eccentric but sensible.

The problem is that it usually takes me a while to realize that something is good. Not least because I like durable things and ... well, it takes time to determine if something is durable.

I bought my favorite jacket 12 years ago in Tokyo. A very neutral/timeless thing. After 3 years the jacket still looked like new. Although I had worn it almost every day for 3 years. I searched for it online and found one for sale. On eBay. Used. And the wrong size. If I had known the jacket was that good I would have bought 2-3 more.

I still use it. It still looks almost new. Fantastic garment.

I use a lot of 30-50 year old camera lenses. Stuff was just built better back then. None of all this plastic jiggly crap.

Funny because 30 years ago (1994) we used to say the same thing about stuff built in the 50s :)

Really? Photography changed a lot from 1950 to 2000. I'd be very surprised if anyone would've preferred the 1950 grayscale and gigantic photography equipment over the 90s-2000 variants

There were a lot of amazing advancements from 1950 to 1980. After 1990 and autofocus the build quality of lenses started going downhill. The plastic focusing mechanisms negated a lot of the otherwise good optics.

The affordable category of lenses today also don't gave good optics. While there are good modern optics used in higher-end lenses, it's easier to get better used old optics that outperforms shitty modern optics at the same price point.

There are some nice lenses made today but they are extremely costly. A Sony GM 300/2.8 costs $6000. I got my late 70s Canon SSC Fluorite 300/2.8 for $400 and it's tack sharp corner to corner, and considering I paid only $400 for it, I'm not too worried about taking it everyhwere.

A Sony GM 50/1.2 costs $1900. I paid $300 for my Nikkor early 80's 50/1.2. For f/1.2 portraits sharpness isn't the thing you're usually after, and mine gives absolutely spectacular results.

Back in the 50s-80s almost every lens was built like a tank and they are now available used at a fraction of the price of modern equivalents. If you don't give a crap about autofocus (studio portrait, macro, landscape, product photographers all don't need autofocus), it's a very good deal. Plastic started to show up in the 90s and killed everything.

(If you're shooting sports and wildlife, yeah, prioritize autofocus, but that's not what I do.)

You said it better than me.

As for lack of autofocus, I’ve actually done action shots with a Petzval and various vintage manual focus lenses. Yes, it is tricky and you will miss a lot, but when you nail focus the result is glorious.

So counter opinion. Current lenses just seem to be a way batter optically than in the past. Sony are super expensive lenses but even if you go Sigma, Laowa, Samyang… it is not cool but some of the lenses are just better and you wont pay that much more.

I used to have Canon DSLR woth some of the better lenses for that system. Recently i got Sony and to my surprise there is pretty noticeable difference. Like i have some manual focus LAOWA and it just destroys comparable (much more expensive) canon lens from 15 years ago in terms of image quality and sharpness.

Yeah Laowa makes some good stuff. 7Artisans and TTArtisans is very hit or miss, good build quality but mediocre optics. Samyang I've found to be mostly on par with top of the line Nikkor manual lenses.

Voigtlander has some /really/ good optics for modern lenses, especially their Apochromatic lenses and the Aspheric Noktons. They are also a couple hundred years old so they know a thing or two about making quality lenses.

Zeiss has always had a lot of good stuff and a lot of it inherits from their history of manual lenses, but they seem to be quitting the industry.

OEM modern lenses almost all suck. Either shitty build quality OR too expensive.

Do you know of any manufacturers that still make (or have) interesting lenses for F-mount?

No. But Nikon made so many good Ai-S lenses that you can find lots of them on eBay and other secondary markets.

Note that for old lenses, price and lens quality don't correlate well. There are lots of fantastic old lenses that are cheap because they were produced in large numbers, and there are also a lot of optically shitty lenses that are expensive because they were rare or produced in smaller numbers and have collector value.

I have been following the advice of others more knowledgeable than me when buying AI-S lenses off of eBay, and I have to say that even on the D850, all of them have performed surprisingly well.

However, I'd really like more "arty" lenses with AF. MF causes me to lose a lot of shots I wish I'd nailed.

There are some products that turn MF lenses into AF, primarily targeted for video shooters. I haven't tried them though.

https://www.pdmovie.com/products/liveair3smart

You should see the garbage FD-mount stuff I had when I was a starving teenager. Hell, the camera's aperture arm only worked about 30% of the time.

The stuff from then that has survived til today is the survivorship bias.

Compared to other stuff of its time (Contax-Zeiss, Nikkor Ai-S, MD, even some M42 lenses), FD was indeed poor build quality, but it is still far, far superior to any of the trash in the more "modern" Canon EF line. Have you ever held a EF 50/1.4? It feels like a disposable toy. Back when I had one, it didn't even survive being tossed in a backpack for a city walk. Even a bunch of the EF "L" lenses are made of plastic.

Also, apertures in FD lenses are far easier to repair than EF lenses. They're just usually a lever or something that has slipped off its channel. In EF lenses it's often a fractured plastic part.

Well, when it comes to lenses there is actually some old equipment that is still desirable. You can get lenses that are optically decent for very little money if you can live with manual focus or lack of modern coatings etc. I have several lenses from the 70s and 80s that I like a lot - though they’re a bit more work to use.

Then there’s lenses that provide interesting distortions or have interesting faults. Like old Soviet-era Helios lenses. In fact some old lens designs have been revived for modern cameras. Like the Petzval lenses (which I also own).

Good modern lenses are great. Optically fantastic, robust, easy to use etc. But that can be a bit … well, sterile and boring.

Which is why several of the vintage lenses I own have been used in movies. They make for a unique look. (There are companies that re-house lenses for use with modern movie cameras).

Note the scene with the emperor in the garden in the second Dune movie for instance.

There are lots of vintage lenses to lust after. And some of them can be quite expensive.

(Then there’s the whole medium format world. Where you can get digital backs and build cameras that cost more than your car)

I do this with shoes. I won’t need a new pair for decades!

I did this with shoes. Bought 4 pairs of the shoes I liked. Right on schedule, they discontinued them, and I was so happy I'd done so!

And then when after about 5 years I said "hey, these shoes are getting pretty worn, time to move on to the next pair", I was 43 years old, and lo and behold ... my feet had widened and I couldn't even get my feet into the brand-new shoes. I had to put them in an expanding last for almost two MONTHS before they would fit.

Next time don’t store the old shoes - rotate wearing them so at the end of (shoe_lifetime * number_of_pairs) years you’ll have a number of pairs of evenly-worn shoes :)

I actually did this not too long ago and observed an interesting phenomenon that I had kind of noticed over the years, but never really tested.

I found a pair of shoes that I liked, but they wore out quickly with daily use (3-4 months). I bought 3 more pairs and rotated them and those three lasted for like 2 years.

As silly as it sounds, I wonder if there is something about giving shoes a "rest" that makes them last longer.

Yes. This has been well known in the running community for decades.

The foam midsole gets beaten down in a days wear, so resting gives it time to spring back. Additionally, the uppers get to dry out which inhibits bacteria & such and stops moisture from attacking the adhesives and stitching.

They might contain materials like rubber that degrade anyway with time.

Unfortunately, some items are inherently ephemeral.

I still regret not stockpiling a pair of shoes I got 14 years ago. My favorite pair of shoes ever. I went looking for them a year later, and of course they had been discontinued. So yeah, I've started doing this.

Stockpiling is a valuable technique to limit/defer the risk of being deprived of (whatever you're stockpiling,) while incurring a different set of costs (the time, energy, storage space, and inevitable degradation of the good you've stockpiled.) Set limits on these costs, e.g, "I'll stockpile no more than I can fit in my spare closet" and you can rationally stockpile within those limits to your heart's content.

There is an environmental cost that you are not paying alone.

See if there is a Repair Cafe in your area and maybe they can fix it for free. If in NC go to http://repaircafenc.org

Hi fellow traveller - I do that, too. Can’t say I agree that I think of it as a problem, though: it’s mostly paid off for me.

We’re surrounded by so much complexity - anything that helps to defray the cost of learning how to use a new bit of kit is appreciated. Most recently, I’ve been unable to resist the siren call of N100 mini PCs for a Proxmox cluster, but another example would be my teles: having 3 tvs all running the same OS (now long-unplugged from the internet) is just a massive timesaver. One practically needs a PhD and a lifelong Digital Foundry subscription to get the darn things set up just right - why spread that across two different brands or models.

Same philosophy with cars - although clearly that’s an area where most of us don’t own more than one. In my case, I chose the car with the best-established record of long-term reliability, and plan to never sell it. Read the docs, spelunk the forums, learn its quirks, then just live with it.

Buy one good thing - along with a few identical backups, if possible - then use it for ages. Then go outside and touch grass.

I do this too. I buy two of anything I like and save it in a “timecapsule” for the next decade when it is not available. It also lets me treat my possessions for use and not inconvenient preservation. if i really beat on it, i get a third so i have a replacement available.

It's funny to see it framed in the context of music when it's a pretty universal behavior, essentially limited only by how many cool upgrades exist for a particular hobby.

It's a particularly common affliction for photographers (better cameras, better lens, studio lighting, etc), but the same happens in lo-tech fields - say, woodworking (check out my premium chisels!) or even lawn care.

In most hobbies, it's just a money sink. It is uniquely destructive in photography because if you have too much gear, you can't carry it around and you end up missing out on shots.

Rock climbers, man. Total gearheads.

Maybe if they do alpinism too, or trad climbing. But it can also be just a neat little pile worth less than 500$

You might be able to squeeze in a nut set and a couple quickdraws after you spend $400 of that on the rope, shoes, and harness.

If you're into bouldering, you can just get a crashpad and shoes.

I've been getting into photography lately, and early on I was able to carry around my whole gear collection at once. It was an interesting new dimension when I started having to make decisions about what to take and what to leave behind.

Yes, as someone who is into synths and photography (apparently not an uncommon intersection), it's definitely common to both, even with the same term. And I'm sure they're not the only ones. As someone who likes bikes there's also this old joke of "what is the minimum number of bikes to have", the answer being "current number of bikes + 1".

From the research:

> The last fact worth mentioning is that the phenomenon is not limited to music. GAS occurs in many areas of everyday life. In music, it can be observed in hi-fi audio culture (Schröter & Volmar 2016), record collecting (Shuker 2010), home re- cording (Strong 2012) and jingle composition (Fisher 1997). Outside music, GAS occurs amongst photographers (Arias 2013; Kim 2012; Sarinana 2013), aquarium hobbyists (Wolfenden 2016), amateur astronomists (Chen & Chen 2017), cyclists (Peters 2013) and eBayers (Zalot 2013). Despite its high prevalence in contemporary culture, the phenomenon has hardly been researched.

Cycling, particularly road cycling, also comes to mind.

MTB is pretty fun to get the shiny gear too... But yes, particularly cycling, $3500 for just a groupset. Gross

https://www.bike-components.de/de/Shimano/Dura-Ace-Di2-R9250...

I’ve fallen victim to this, though perhaps fortunately with digital synth plugins that take up no physical space.

This is related to another problem of mine: ignoring things I’m naturally good at, and fixating on things I’m naturally bad at. In this case, I have no real musical talent, can’t play instruments in rhythm, can’t arrange a song, and I’ve nevertheless been pursuing this in my spare time for a decade with no results. Sometimes I buy new gear thinking it will help, but people with musical talent can do much more with much less.

On the other hand, I showed promise for visual arts but never pursued it. My frustration with being bad at something seems to overpower my desire to be really good at something.

I do a similar thing. I like learning new things so much, I spend most of my time on new skills that I perform poorly, instead of using & continuing to hone my expert-level skills.

Honestly most of the time the second I get good at something is when it stops being fun, I think this is pretty normal.

You don't need to be good at something to do it. What is good or bad anyway? It's comparison with others.

If you enjoy it, it doesn't matter if you're good or bad at it, if joy itself is the aim.

If your aim isn't joy, but success, then of course you'll lack joy.

It is very liberating to do something, knowing you're "bad" at it, but doing it only for enjoyment.

I relate strongly to the comment you're replying to, and I can tell you that it's very frustrating to have a vision of something you want to create and be unable despite struggling towards that goal for a long time.

It has nothing to do with other people. My art doesn't live up to my own standards. That's frustrating as hell! It's not a simple as comparison to others -- who cares about them if I just can't seem to create the sound I want to create?

> All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.

- Ira Glass

I very much suffer from the same thing when it comes to music. I'm a pretty decent guitar player, all round - but I still struggle mightily to make music I'd want to listen to. But such is life, I guess.

But if you're enjoying the process, then does it matter?

If it does matter and you're not enjoying the process or results ... why continue?

I wonder if you are getting more internal reward and stimulation from the challenge and novelty of something that is a struggle than from the steady success something you have natural talent for is offering. If so and that is troubling to you or puzzling, it may just be the way your brain is setup, but there are psychologists good at unraveling this sort of thing.

I'm skeptical of the claim for musical talent. Especially the case that you lack any 'real' one. Rhythm, interval recognition, composing are all skills that require practice and dedication. The lack of results point to a bad method, not lack of talent. Have you considered getting instruction?

I can relate to this. I have 8TB of orchestral libraries and other virtual instruments (many, many, many thousands of dollars), but after a decade I still haven't been able to crank out 8 bars of convincing symphonic composition. On the other hand, I can crank out a convincing and interesting rock song on guitar in real time... but I don't invest in that because it's "easy."

Sounds similar to what you describe: we shun the things we're naturally good at because they feel trivial and don't provide a sense of accomplishment, meanwhile we bash our head against a wall for years because the accomplishment of breaking through would be so amazing.

> I have no real musical talent, can’t play instruments in rhythm, can’t arrange a song

Have you heard of dubstep?

Actually, acid house might be the genre for you, since "it’s true that if you gave 100 monkeys a TR-808s and a TB-303 each, you’d probably get at least 70 decent acid tracks". [1]

[1] https://www.factmag.com/2014/01/22/20-best-acid-house/

I get its a joke, but dubstep is actually one of the harder EDM genres to make, in my opinion. As in, how much skill/work it takes to make a "mediocre" dubstep track, especially for the more commercially well known "brostep" variety. Minimal techno, ambient, noise or lo-fi beats are perhaps electronic genres that are (again IMO) easier to make mediocre tracks for. Great tracks are hard to make in any genre, of course.

It's a big problem for photographers too. Especially with the rapid progress of mirrorless cameras there is always the next camera or lens you need to get. I have bought lenses and never used them. I have also spent more time on looking for accessories for my 3D printer than actually using it.

Not sure how to combat GAS. I feel for people with a full time job it somehow compensates for the lack of time working on one's hobbies

My explanation is quite simple: cool toys are cool, and they give us the illusion of being better at our hobbies than we actually are. I sometimes indulge in some Gear Acquisition too -- but I try to be cognizant of the fact that if not done carefully, it only leads to a short-term happiness kick which quickly leads to another episode of GAS.

On the bright side I sometimes sell used camera gear for more than I bought it. A combo body and lens can sell more than the items separately if marketed correctly and when including sample photos.

That said, I still haven't bought a new camera body.

I've been there as well.

In reality 99% of the time you don't need new gear. However there is also a delicate balance where a new piece of gear makes you excited to go out and do your hobby more and it's that going out more than makes you get better at it.

I avoid GAS pretty easily by the application of a simple method I've developed over years as a hobbyist photographer: Be Aware of Non-Optimality. That is, in bearing in mind there is no benefit to the expenditure of resources to obtain equipment that by itself will not meaningfully improve my practice - and too, that having gear I do not use will make me regret its purchase, further diverging from an optimal state - I find myself no longer with the urge to replace a perfectly serviceable DSLR with a mirrorless that may be newer, but is not really all that much better at capturing the exposures I care to make.

I'm probably not explaining it as well as I might, but I am happy nonetheless to say I've found my GAS very reliably cured by BeAN-O.

the opposite is also true however. I've been attempting to combat GAS by avoiding a home data server. In reality, I've been needing a NAS for a number of years and have changed my photography practice due to limitations and challenges with dealing with extra data. I just solved this and it's been liberating.

I solve my photography storage needs by treating SD cards as write-once consumables. When a card fills up, I just buy another one.

Digital Photograph Acquidition Syndrome

That would get super expensive if you shoot things like airshows, birds in flight or sports where you can easily shoot 2000 images or more in one day. Or 4K video.

2000 images fits on about $3 worth of SD card, depending on resolution.

Less than the time cost of going through and deciding which to delete.

I guess it depends on your equipment. 2000*50MB gets you up to 100GB. A decent 128GB card costs you from $20 up. A card that's capable of fast bursts can cost around $100.

Yeah lmao I spent tens of thousands of dollars on my medium format Fujifilm GFX system. It just needs a couple more lenses then it will be perfected and I won't have to buy another piece of gear ever again!

I think a Hasselblad would enrich your life

> I feel for people with a full time job it somehow compensates for the lack of time working on one's hobbies

I identify with this. Have full time job, some disposable income, a few hobbies but no real time for them.

This has led to a lot of gear acquisition, buying tools or equipment that are beyond my level of expertise and I don't have time to make the most of.

I guess there's worse things to burn money on but does feel like if I had more time to actually do hobbies I'd discover I can get by with far fewer gadgets.

Amateur photographers often cover a lot more types of photography than pros, which makes GAS even worse.

A pro might specialize in sports photography and buy some nice long lenses with fast autofocus. Or they might specialize in portraiture and get a nice wide-open 90mm equivalent. Or architectural photography, and get a tilt-shift lens.

For some reason, a lot of amateur photographers will dabble in many different types of photography, each with their own demands on equipment.

I feel this quite a bit. When I was young, I had a ton of time and no money to acquire the needed equipment. Now, I finally have the money to get basically whatever I need within reason, but no time to use it.

I am typically able to resist the urge to succumb to GAS, but I don't always. I still have an incomplete atreus (http://atreus.technomancy.us/) in my basement; I set it aside when I bought a house, and haven't had time to revisit it since.

The good thing about lenses is that if you buy good lenses, they usually retain a lot of value, so you can sell them. And it isn't like you have to use them all the time. For instance, I rarely use my macro lens. And that's okay. But having it means that the 1-2 times per year I need it, I have it.

I (partially) sidestep this by buying gear that's already well behind the curve.

> Not sure how to combat GAS

What works decently well for me is to avoid advertising like the plague. Adblock everything: browser, DNS, anywhere I can do it. Disable targeted advertising wherever I can't outright block it, if that's an option.

Avoid visiting websites where there's a lot of advertisement disguised as news or useful content; often enthusiast websites on whatever your hobby is will have a lot of that, so find better sites.

Don't watch regular TV with commercials. Only use streaming services, and always pay for the ad-free versions. "That's so expensive," you say? Not when you consider how much crap you'll buy when you're bombarded with advertising all the time.

You can never eliminate all advertising from your life, but the less you expose yourself to, the better. Adopt a mindset that ads are a form of psychological manipulation (because they are), and make yourself hate them. That alone will make you somewhat less susceptible to it (or at least I like to think so). Be deliberate about purchases. Seek out things that you know you want because you want them; don't buy stuff because you saw it featured somewhere.

I haven't dabbled much in photography lately, but when I was active in it, budget was a strong constraint. These days my GAS is mostly for synths and budget is less of a constraint, thanks to the full time job you alluded to. I think this phenomenon of having money but no time leading to GAS is pretty common, from what I've seen. In my case, I often avoid it by challenging myself to use whatever I have at hand to try to recreate what I'd be getting with the new gear. Its often a fun exercise even if I don't succeed.

I'm still on my A7R2, it still works great, and while I sometimes wistfully think about the ultrasonic wiggly massive resolution mode (700Mpix or something) on the A7R4, I cannot in any way justify upgrading.

OTOH, I also bemoan the loss of my 70s OM1n 20 years ago.

This sounds like another guise of fear of missing out. You can't do X without gear Y. However, your brain doesn't realize there are other constraints on realistically doing X; free time, energy, creative spark, etc. But at least buying Y feels like a concrete step towards doing X and modern society has made it VERY easy to buy things. So, you buy Y and promise yourself you'll do X...someday.

Yeah it’s a way to feel like making progress without doing the hard work of practicing and developing your skills. Easy trap to fall into.

With most hobbies, a beginner will benefit far more from just doing projects / practicing than buying expensive high-end gear. It’s also the only way to find if you actually want to pursue the new interest. Which is very good to do before spending lots of cash.

From another angle, I think it's understandable that people like to have premium "signifiers" of their skill. A carpenter with a full set of well maintained chisels seems on first glance more likely to be a good carpenter than one who carves uses with a box cutter.

So there may be a natural drive to collect and display things that indicate skill in our chosen areas of interest.

Now, to twist this around a bit: is this "gear acquisition syndrome" a contributor to the constant churn of tools and frameworks in our field? Especially in programming, collecting and using new "gear" (libraries, frameworks, administrative tools) is essentially free - often the only cost is time.

I know a tradesman who works out of a bucket with a ripped up tool organizer inside that's held together with duct tape and zip ties. His tools are all falling apart and often doesn't have the correct tool and is one of the types you'll see using a wrench as a hammer non-recreationally.

But still he's one of the cleverest there is, has seen every issue in the field 10,000 times and knows exactly how to handle it... but the immediate lack of respect he gets when he walks into a building is stunning. It adds so much friction to encounter.

A flip side of GAS is that the market optimises for gear acquirers. A decent square taper bottom bracket is perfectly good for 99% of cyclists, and maintenance free for a decade or more. But gear acquirers are only interested in the latest and greatest ultra-stiff super-light external bearing BBs, so now square taper is dead except at the cheapest, shittiest grades. Which means that i, as someone who just wants my cranks to go round, am forced to enter their world.

I agree with you regarding press fit BBs, but aren't externally threaded BBs also better for casual cyclists and more reliable?

I don't care in the slightest about BB stiffness and weight, but I would much rather have a BSA threaded external BB. That way if something happens and I need to change my cranks (or god forbid, bearings) I don't have to worry about needing a specialized crank puller or anything like that, an Allen key is enough, and I never have to worry about stripping my cranks, and I never have to worry about my cranks falling out and marring from the bolt getting loose. Something like an ISIS spline two/three piece crank that's either self extracting or bolted like Shimano MTB cranks is perfect. Simple, cheap, no specialized tools needed, and no risk of catastrophic failure. And I'll never need to repack the bearings ever again. Plus, as someone who lives in a place where they salt the roads, I'd much rather deal with a rusty threaded external bearing BB than a square taper that might never come out of the frame.

The bearings in external bottom brackets are much less well protected, and so more vulnerable to water and dust and so on. That means they need to be regreased or replaced more often. I see people talking about doing that monthly, annually, whatever. I have been riding the same square taper bottom bracket since 2012, and it's doing fine.

The square taper per se may not be as good as a bolted spline or something. It is annoying to need a crank puller, but for me, it's been something i need once every five years or so, so not much of a problem in practice. So, compared to external bearing bottom brackets, a small disadvantage that buys you a big advantage. I have no opinion about the splined internal bottom brackets!

I've been riding the same external BB since 2015. The only people I've ever heard of replacing their external BBs are hardcore mountain bikers or people with exotic weird BBs. It's nothing special, just a run of the mill Shimano BB-52.

While the bearings are a bit more exposed, they're significantly larger which means they can be sealed better. In practice they are pretty well protected fully sealed bearings. There's not really that much of a reason they'd have to be less protected than internal bearings.

Me being a guitarist, I probably spent a solid 10 years buying and selling guitars. Thousands, literally. Some weeks I'd get a guitar in the mail, check it out for an hour, then list it, and sell it the same day. I have a friend that goes through the same deal with pedals.

Luckily I started experiencing some serious "burnout" - where I could no longer feel any dopamine rush from getting new gear. In the end I had two good guitars that I played on for 5 years, and nothing else - I had little desire to buy something else, but it might also have been due to me becoming more interested in other things.

Now that I'm building a small home recording studio, I'm starting to feel the burn again. And I guess I've had some small relapse with the guitars, as I currently have 20 excellent guitars in my house...I could, and should, sell everything but a few.

The worst thing is that you stop progressing as a musician, because all the buying and selling steals your time and focus.

Yeah that’s the beauty of consumerism. No matter what your hobby is, there are hundreds of different leisure products for you to acquire and stockpile on top of those of your previous hobby (whose accessories you had acquired)

I think a lot of businesses kind of thrive on selling the dream.

Like how much gear bought at REI is really pushed to the limit for outdoor pursuits vs worn around town?

I love shopping there and looking around and daydreaming about being out in the woods.

It's not really an indictment of the businesses, it's just sort of human nature.

It sucks for us who do push gear. I’m constantly breaking things because I’m well, using them. Anytime u have to buy something it involves hours of research to determine “is this a real quality product or a shitty one marketed as quality”, or “has it changed owners and now rubbish”

I don’t mind paying for quality gear at all. It just needed to be quality

I shop there because the obesity epidemic has made it too hard to find pants in my size at other stores.

Haha. I called a friend and told him I'd been diagnosed with G.A.S. 20 years ago. He sounded really serious when he said he was sorry to hear that. I told him the acronym and said I'm headed to the music shop to buy a synthesizer and would he like to join.

I'm glad computers have become so powerful because now I can emulate that same synth in software (Korg MS20) and much more.

Hobbies I geek out on gear: fountain pens, coffee, backpacking, tools (especially fine woodworking or cabinet making).

Hobbies where my skills have reached a point of equilibrium with my gear: bikes, photography, electronics, knives, auto detailing, cars.

For me it has a lot to do with disparity between my current ability level and being able to recognize whatever a realistic upper end is to my potential (80th percentile). Basically, if there's a skill-gap, I'm more likely to fall prey to "better gear" rather than gear that solves a specific problem.

When I recognize my skills have reached ~80% of my potential, I lose interest in new gear and either work around specific gear limitations or understand what is possible within the limitations and embrace the constraint. Beyond that, I only acquire new gear to solve hyper-specific problems w/o reasonable workarounds, or if there's some super-specific niche/quirky/vintage thing that I have an emotional attachment to or otherwise identify with.

Conversely, if I have an unrealistic perception of my potential, then, well... there's probably lists of shiny things to show for it.

Whenever I've had this for a hobby, it's always been when I've had more time to think about the hobby than do the hobby.

So this happened more when I had long commutes, so plenty of time to read about new gear, discuss gear on forums, think about gear, etc.

When my commuting ended, I had more time to do things, and the lack of engagement with new things coming out mostly put a stop to it.

I think every hobby that involves equipment has some version of this. I feel like we've been conditioned to believe that consumption of a product is equivalent to participation in that hobby, mostly because the biggest "reward" we get from it is often the appearance of having varied interests and appearing to the layman like you know what you're doing because you have the "nice" stuff.

Broad strokes, if you don't enjoy doing something with shitty gear you probably won't enjoy it with nice gear, either. And if you do enjoy it with shitty gear, you should spend enough time with said shitty gear to understand why you would need something nicer and be thoughtful about your upgrades.

I have a lot of hobbies, and I would say several of them are not fun with shitty gear.

Sometimes quality gear makes the entry process far, far less painful.

One exception is rock climbing. I've been pressuring everyone around me to get off of rental shoes already, it makes the experience so much less painful and more pleasant...

Rock-climbing with shitty gear sounds less like a matter of enjoyment, and more like one of survival.

The difference between nice and average gear in rock climbing is pretty slim. A few grams, smooth action on the moving parts... it's also primarily a failsafe, so it's inherently obvious that it won't help you climb dramatically better, any more than a nicer parachute will help you fly a plane better.

There's also a long tradition of the strongest climbers you know climbing on mank (i.e. safety gear so ragged it is terrifying to behold)

> There's also a long tradition of the strongest climbers you know climbing on mank (i.e. safety gear so ragged it is terrifying to behold)

It's not uncommon for trad climbers, or maybe it was. When I was younger I couldn't afford much, and I climbed with others in basically the same situation. My rack consisted of mostly passive protection, some nuts, some rocks (not literal rocks, i'm not that old). I eventually got a few micros and cheap cams (literally 3).. Some of the climbing I did back then was terrifying, not only because I was so new to it, and climbing relatively hard dangerous routes, but because they were made so much harder by having limited active protection, and a limited range of passive gear.

I got very very good at creative nut placement, threading the gnarliest of threads, and was very sparing with cams, trying to save them for only where it was completely impossible to place passive gear. I also got good at hanging on in uncomfortable positions for stupid amounts of time while trying to engineer a safe piece of protection out of very little.

In more recent years I added a couple totems (which are amazing, and amazingly expensive), and then got gifted a rack of cams the likes of which i've never seen. A lot of my trad climbs are feeling a hell of a lot easier now I can just chuck tons of cams with far less sparingly especially big crack climbs... It makes me wish I bought better gear earlier, maybe I would have been able to try a wider range of routes, but I'm also grateful for my hard earned skill of making the absolute best of poorly protected routes with passives, my opinion "well protected" is often very different from other peoples provided it's not literally blank run-out. And what others consider "unprotectable" I can often find perfectly safe protection on.

A very decent trad rack can be had for under £1000, and last a long time - In the scheme of things that's not a lot compared to most activities. I don't know why I'm still so frugal about it, I can afford it now. I feel like ropes are the most expensive part of climbing because you can go through them so quickly and have to buy new ones pretty much every year.

Between nice and average, I can believe. That isn't the phrasing that was used. ;-)

Nobody climbs actual rocks with rental shoes. There'd be nobody to rent them to you. Rental shoes are for gym climbing, which is quite a safe activity if you're not stupid or crazy.

My rule is that I start off with lower-mid-range equipment, until I know whether I actually like a hobby.

If you love cycling and you do it all the time? By all means spend $3000 on a high-end, premium-brand, ultra-light-weight bike, if you've got the disposable income and buying it would bring you joy.

But if you're just considering getting into cycling? There are perfectly good $500 bikes out there, and you don't need to delay getting into a sport just because you don't have $3k to spare right now.

Are there really $500 bikes? New? What brand? I thought entry level was like 1k

There are in my country, sure. Brands like Pinnacle and Trek.

You're not going to be impressing anyone with an aluminium frame and Shimano's cheapest derailleur of course - but you also won't be scared to leave your bike chained up while you drop into a store.

And you might want to pick up lights, a lock, a helmet, and maybe mudguards, so you'll end up spending a bit more. And of course if you don't have the tools, time or inclination to do your own maintenance bike shops can get expensive.

I don't tend to care about appearances and still suffer from GAS. I think it's about telling myself a story that it's not that I'm lazy, the reason I'm not producing amazing music is that my setup isn't perfect yet. Dreaming about gear is always easier than practicing.

After seeing how my team at my first job all participated in the hobby of camera-purchasing, in every new hobby I take up I buy the cheapest gear possible, wait a while to see whether I'm actually using it, then allow myself to get the good stuff. Not because I care about the money, because I care about building the habit of doing the actual hobby, not the habit of shopping.

The only joy I have found in riding an extremely shitty bicycle is cackling with disbelief at how unbelievably shitty it is.

Your maxim is probably more broadly applicable if you specify "serviceable gear".

Completely disagree. Just because shitty gear exists doesnt mean theres some virtue in breaking your neck with it. Quality is always better. Few examples: 3D printing. Reading up about all the possible printers, decided on P1P. Cant imagine dealing (and enjoying dealing) with all the problems of cheaper printers, I enjoy knowing that whatever I want printed will get printed correctly first try. Snowkiting: Cant imagine enjoying being thrown around by cheap kites, while watching people being smoothly and controlably pulled by more expensive ones. PC Gaming: Cant imagine enjoying playing at 30fps at FullHD when I know how 144Hz 4K gaming looks and feels like. And the list goes on and on and on.

Sure, there are people who enjoy tinkering, and the process of "reaching for the top with gear that shouldnt get them there at all", but having quality gear straight from the beggining allows a broader set of people to enjoy a hobby they would otherwise be left out of.

I agree with your first point, which is that by all appearances the acquisition of the product is the entirety of the hobby -- look at any subreddit for musicians or ham radio operators or whatever, it's all photos of some newly-purchased toy with titles like "I couldn't resist!". I think this is in part because it's a lot more effort (and risk of criticism) to post a video of yourself e.g. playing that guitar... and in part because of the feedback loop that makes us think buying shit = participating.

On the second point there is some basic level of quality which is just unpleasant to go below. Sure, maybe a $500 ukulele isn't that much better than a $100 one, but that doesn't mean you should try to learn on a $10 plastic ukulele from Aliexpress.

“I'm really not that fussy — I think it's more important to make the best use of what you have. I don't like to walk into a studio, lay down the law, and say, 'I must have this, otherwise I cannot continue with the session.' I'm not like that. I prefer to be more, 'What have you got? Let's see what we can do with that.' I hate spending inordinate amounts of time just playing with a sound, trying different pieces of equipment, and different mics and that stuff. Let's get the job done. Let's make a record. The whole process of recording is one big experiment in itself." - Alan Parsons

This isn't limited to music. When I worked in NYC and didn't have time to rock climb much, I bought a ton of rock climbing gear--much of it niche equipment that I've never used.

Eventually I realized that this was just a stand-in for actually climbing: I believed that my job was enabling me to rock climb by funding my trips and buying my gear, but the reality was that I was stagnating as a rock climber, because most of my climbing time was at the gym, and that was low-quality time because my job was sapping all my time and energy. On the rare times I could take a few days off, I wasn't in the shape I wanted to be and spent a lot of the trip figuring out how to climb on real rock again since I mostly climbed on plastic. Buying gear was a way to feel like I was making some progress as a climber, because I had the gear to do more things, but the reality was that I wasn't.

I wish I could say I took some agency and started my freelance business, but the reality is that I sort of stumbled into freelance work, and my business started itself. But I did move to a rock climbing area, and eventually moved into a van, and I'm lucky to be able to climb outdoors >3 days a week now (not full days most of the time, but still). In a way, the GAS period of my life set me up for this well, because now I pretty much never need to make any big purchases--I occasionally have to replace an item that wears out but for the most part I have everything I need.

I did also buy a lot of guitar-related gear when I was buying rock climbing gear. That I've mostly sold: all I have at this point is my acoustic guitar, a capo, and a few picks. Again this coincided with me actually playing a lot more guitar, and realizing that I'm really only doing it for myself and only want to do finger-picky acoustic stuff anyway.

I do this for electronics; Parts, Materials and Kit. I don't buy PMK because I think it'll make me more skilled, I do it because I want to. I have noticed, however, that when I've got something physically, and can examine it and play with it, then it becomes like a new word in mental vocabulary that I can think with.

I look at my electronic parts collection like a chef looks at their spice rack.

But I'm often a victim of laziness - I just bought some more transistors because I couldn't find the transistors of the same kind that I know I have somewhere. It's easier to just buy some more parts on Amazon and have them delivered tomorrow than it would be to search every single place the parts I know I have could be. As a result, I have too many electronic parts. I'll probably donate some of it to a local high school eventually.

There are 3 hobbies:

1. Doing the thing

2. Talking about the thing

3. Nerding about the gear for the thing

Every activity has a mix of all 3 types of folk. It’s ok to be in it for the gear if that gets your juices flowing. Sellers love you.

3D printing is a mix of 1. and 3., but recursive.

As someone who's battled Gear Acquisition Syndrome (GAS), I've learned that fixating on the latest tech often hinders progress. Instead, I've found success by embracing effectuation principles:

1. Use what you have: Start with your existing tools and resources.

2. Take action: Begin immediately, rather than waiting for the "perfect" setup.

3. Adapt and learn: Iterate based on real-world feedback.

This mindset shift can lead to more meaningful progress and innovation. When you catch yourself obsessing over new gear, try this:

1. Pause and reflect: Is this acquisition essential for immediate progress?

2. Reevaluate: Can you achieve your current goals with what you already have?

3. Focus on action: Use your existing means to take concrete steps today.

The recent meme of the unequipped Turkish Olympic shooter comes to mind. The other competitors in the shooting event had expensive specialized gear. The Turkish guy had no gear and he got silver.

>Reflecting on his viral moment, [the shooter guy] said, "People sometimes say, 'It's so easy, you won a medal with your hands in your pockets.' But there's 24 years of work and effort behind that medal. I train six days a week for 4-5 hours a day. I wish it was gold, but we still achieved a lot."

I'm always seeking out new gear because I love finding new sounds. I also went to school for classical piano and can play pretty well. Does a chef that likes finding new spices have GAS? Def a joke in there but for real. There are certain sounds that can only be found in vintage analog synths for instance. Of course there are always samples but there are also samples of cellos and violins. But they will never compare to actually playing the real instrument so therefore I must buy them alllll.

I am a musician. Among most musicians I know know I am also one of those with the least obsession with gear.

Gear is just that. Gear. Much of the sound in musical gear doesn't correlate with price. Sure when it comes to recording gear and studio equipment price tends to correlate with reliability, but we are living in truly magical times.

I gifted my brother a 160 Euro Harley Benton (Thomann's budget brand for guitars etc) Telecaster clone. That guitar in sound and playability easily could be the last guitar I would have bought. Amplifiers are similar.

Now I am playing the electrical guitar for 20 years and I online one electrial guitar. A heavily modded US strat that I bought 15 years ago.

Now the main difference between me and my peers is that I am a sound nerd and electronics afficionado — that means if I want to get towards a sound I know how to get there. And this is the crux. Many people (especially guitar players) chase some sort of sound that they never achieve, because they can't tell which part of the physical world maps to which part of the sound they get.

Depending on the style of music a lot of it in the end is in the fingers. But you can't buy enter fingers, you can just train. But that doesn't give you a dopamine boost.

For all people with GAS I recommend that less is more. Get to know ow your shit. It is capable of great sounds. You just need to put in the work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnvYSKshvwc

There's at least a few guitar youtubers who played that "which electric guitar am I playing?" game. I think you can pretty easily make almost any sound from any electric guitar lol.

Yeah, especially if you don't take the strings and pickups/electronics as they are.

Seems to me GAS is nuanced by the type of musical instrument acquired. The syndrome may be less severe with piano and harp players than it is with guitar, and electric bass players. Although, it may extend to excessive acquisitions of sheet music and books on musical theory.

Single kit exceptions may include drummers and xylophone players.

This syndrome is very evident in high-performance vehicle markets where there seems to be no end to the modifications one can make to go faster, sound louder, or look cooler.

You forgot synthesizers.

And I'm not even a good player :-)

My experience with guitar collectors is that is often easier to collector guitars than practice and get good at the instrument, and I include myself in this statement.

The guitar is so accessible and available at retail so widely, its not surprising to me it attracts collectors perhaps more so than a harp or a piano. Plus the guitar has a very strong connection to modern pop music, which surely helps drive its appeal.

> The syndrome may be less severe with piano and harp players than it is with guitar, and electric bass players.

Have you ever seen Liberace's collection? Hehe. If you have enough money and space you can collect pianos as well.

I am a photographer, drone pilot, and mountain bike rider, so it looks like hobbies with "gear acquisition syndrome" built-in are my opium.

What's funny is that most of the expensive gear I bought before the inflation spiral I have now sold for quite a profit.

There are also some pretty big youtube channels that talk up older digital camera models and I am 90% sure they are doing it to dump some excess inventory. You get cameras from around 2010 that are selling close to new camera prices...

I just discovered GAS therapy [0], as there was some controversy about the OP-1 pricing (also from Teenage Engineering). To summarize both sides, software is pretty cheap and limitless. Device are limited which can spark creativity by constraints, their tactile form factor feel great, and their portable nature can be a great advantage.

However, there are other arguments that typically revolve around how "software cannot replicate vintage sounds" where the holy wars really begin. Nobody has ever proven that, but the myth endures. Recently enough [1] showed all that basically with an eq, a compressor and a distortion you can reproduce any vintage amp sound, you just need to know how it deviates from a flat sound response.

How expensive the vintage or high-end hardware is might be a deterrent for some but a very attractive proposition for others.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zU8alMWUmDI&pp=ygULZ2FzIHRoZ...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcBEOcPtlYk

I expect this can be abstracted and include other fields, too. My particular affliction has included electronic lab equipment. Like, did I really need that specialized tool to measure and verify the performance of my oscilloscope? Did I really need the second oscilloscope on my bench? I'm rarely involved in RF, but I have a spectrum analyzer collecting dust now. Etc...

No, but if you join a makerspace and help fortify their electronics lab, you get to help other people make use of those instruments.

This means you get to share in the satisfaction when they succeed, because you were the nudge that got them past some block, for a lot less actual work on your part! ;)

I reached out to someone to buy a second hand saxophone mouthpiece today that one of my favourite players uses. I already own 4, 2 of them masterfully refaced. I play for 26 years and know that only practicing makes me better, not gear. I’m on vacation and don’t even have an instrument. It’s pure GAS for no good reason. Shame on me.

Since I don't possess the necessary self discipline, the next best thing to minimizing GAS is to put your money in a place where it's not very liquid - for me that's immediately moving any disposable income into index funds.

It's the fiscal equivalent of not stocking your larder with junk food.

The corollary to that is to give yourself a guilt free allowance for spending within your overall budget. Especially for me and my partner with combined finances, having this strict separation with no visibility or judgement about it is key.

For photography (Canon DSLR, photojournalism and studio), there was a pursuit of the right gear, but I was usually as much as I was buying.

For example, the ordinary reasonable thought, I could make such great images with that 50mm f/0.9 prime, I might use it for everything, is usually a fantasy. Try it, then sell it before its resale value drops, then find a better use for the money and the space and weight in your backpack.)

A bit similar for homelab servers&networking gear. I've sold many times more rack units' worth of stuff than I currently own. (And currently there's a silent K3s server that's nearing the chopping block, since I haven't been using it.)

I seem to have anti-GAS.

I've got a 5-year old phone (thanks Apple for maintaining OS security support for my model for so long!), a 3-year old laptop I'm not planning on replacing any time soon, and the non-computer based hobbies I've managed to stick with for any length of time are running and bouldering, where the only gear you really need for both are appropriate shoes. And I only have one pair of shoes for each.

Yeah, I've got some light, breathable, non-chafing clothing that makes both less unpleasant to do, but I couldn't tell you with 100% certainty what brand they are, or exactly what they're made of. And I have a bottle of liquid chalk, whatever they were selling in the gym the last time I needed to get some more. But I'm not on Strava or whatever, and I don't track my per-km splits or my heart rate/zone or elevation gained or cadence. I'll time a whole run with a $20 Casio wrist/stopwatch, and sometimes calculate an average pace, but that's about it.

Not that I'm particularly good at running or bouldering, but I'm enjoying doing both at the level I'm currently at, so that's fine.

Anyway, any hobby that requires a bunch of gear is just a turn-off for me. The more gear I'd need, the more I want to give it a wide berth.

Computer software I love to nerd out on. But everything else? Hardware? That's a break from the nerdery for me.

Some of my hobbies I'm like this. I actually think it's been a detriment in one case where I hit a skill wall without realizing until years later. I just convinced my self I suck for to long, and the problem actually was the equipment for to long.

Was doing this with food storage containers.

I looked above my fridge one day and saw about 40 tupperware lids that I had never used and would likely never use. I went through them, saving the large containers for large meals (think Thanksgiving leftovers) and some moderate sized containers for eating for the week. Everything else got tossed and I instead purchased two sets of food service containers. They accomplish the same goal, they're all the same size, and they don't take up nearly as much space.

It isn't limited to musicians. Go onto any bicycle-related forum and you will always find the N+1 crowd who are constantly buying new bikes.

Amateur photographers too.

Same happens to me on so differentes areas like: arts, drawing, painting and sculpting. And reptile and insect raising: ants and geckos.

I have more stuff and tools for future projects that will ever be able to use in 10 years.

Realising this thanks to an HN post a year ago I stopped completely acquiring new gear and started finishing projects.

Sometimes a get a cheap sketchbook though I had several ones unused :P

I'm into several hobbies and something people point out often in all of them is that collecting stuff for a hobby and using stuff for a hobby are actually separate hobbies.

There are synthesizer collectors, and electronic musicians. You can be one or the other or both. I think the important part is having the self-awareness to know which you are and make sure your choices are in line with that. If you want to make electronic music but keeping buying new synths without mastering the ones you already have, then the gear acquisition is interfering with your own goals.

But if you just like having a bunch of synths and you can afford it, by all means.

Do you happen to recall the post in particular that helped you with this realization?

If you have the money and the gear makes you happy then by all means go for it. I'm not buying a Rolex to read the time either. For that i have my phone. Sometimes it's just nice to enjoy the expensive gear you have and play it occasionally and there is no ambition to master the instrument on a competitive level.

The timing of this post is great. As I sit here considering buying the latest teenage engineering offering.

Site wasn't loading for me (front page of HN DDOS effect) so here's wayback machine snapshot from today: http://web.archive.org/web/20240807161556/https://library.oa...

I lightly "suffer" from this in both music and non-music hobbies. I bought the Analogue Pocket with the base that connects to a TV but I've played one game on it and that's it. I've bought gameboy mod carts to make Chiptunes music but I've never performed or even regularly sit down and try and make music, I just like the potential of it. I bought that Pocket CHIP a while back thinking I was going to use it for something (PICO-8 games maybe?), but now it just gathers dust. My current gear obsession is travel gear, thanks to Reddit's OneBag community. I'm going on a 16 day trip soon and I wanted to only have carry-on so I've spent hundreds of dollars on quality merino wool clothing and new travel backpack. Granted, this is probably the most practical of all my purchases because I will use it more often than the video game devices gathering dust. But I also could have just sucked it up and taken the clothing I already own and figured it out.

https://www.analogue.co/pocket

https://shop.pocketchip.co/collections/frontpage/products/po...

https://www.reddit.com/r/onebag/

Speaking of G.A.S., I just noticed that post about the new Teenage Engineering device: "Medieval". It's US$ 300 and very tempting. But I know I won't do anything with it so I won't buy it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41176831

https://teenage.engineering/store/ep-1320/

Thanks, that TE link just made me buy one.

And after acquiring a specific piece of music gear to produce every conceivable sound, I'm actually less productive than I was before, because of the paradox of choice. Constraints breed creativity.

I think I've basically cured my musical GAS.

I’ve been an amateur bass player since 2008. My GAS stopped when I took a year of lessons from professional player. I learned that most of the sound comes from good playing technique.

This is not too different from book/movies/music acquisition syndrome. In particular for books, you continue even if you know you’ll never read them all, or even a significant fraction.

I only learned of this phrase recently but now I see it mentioned everywhere. Isn’t there a word for this phenomenon? Or is it actually a new concept that is spreading virally or something?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion

> The frequency illusion (also known as the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon) is a cognitive bias in which a person notices a specific concept, word, or product more frequently after recently becoming aware of it.

Honestly my GAS subsided when I realized most of my favorite records were made with affordable or off the shelf gear. So many guitarists on the 80s used JCM800s because that was what Marshall was putting out. Eric Clapton’s Stratocaster wasn’t vintage when he bought it, it was just an off the shelf guitar! Same with most amps, instruments, keyboards, synths, drum machines, even samplers which are hailed as legendary because they have higher bass and a lower bitrate (an effect you can get with a one-knob EQ and a bit crusher, respectively). The artists were just using the tools available to them because… they were available.

I have simplified my recording and production setup to mainly just a computer, 10 channel audio interface, a 90s mackie mixer because it’s big and fun and sums neatly to the 10 channels (8 busses + master 2 buss), and whatever bits of quirky and fun gear I can find.

My GAS left when I realized I don’t need any of it. I could make music on just a laptop if I wanted to, I could just play my guitar and resample it for synth sounds if I wanted to. Plenty of iPhone producers out there who just make weird sounds with their mouth. It’s all relative. People will say you’ve Got to have at LEAST one analog mono, one poly, a digi, a sampler, and an endless supply of grooveboxes, but computers are truly more than capable. “Analog sound” is just an EQ away. Just focus on the creative aspect and the gear aspect diminishes and becomes yet another source of creativity - find quirky pawn shop stuff that makes you smile when you play it. Even if you don’t record it, you don’t feel like it’s GAS because it brings joy.

Is there a study on the guilt that comes with over acquiring gears.

The GAS is real. I'm surrounded by music gadgets that I seldom have time (and these days, the proper state of mind) to enjoy, and I keep looking (and building) more.

This is all over my hobby, miniature wargaming. "If I just get this brush, or this new line of paints, I'll be good at painting..."

There is also left end of the bell curve where one enjoys and tries to squeeze single big out of a product that they love and resisting upgrades.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEkhJoaUhFI

Happens for pretty much every hobby with expensive equipment: telescopes, bikes, guns, etc.

Chinese retroconsoles aren't that expensive but some "collectors" have a serious case of GAS

If you dont believe me check r/SBCgaming

i call this "gadget feever". Phones, computers, accesories etc. With age i recognise it within me better and better, but have spent lots of time and money for this.

I know someone who does this with mountain gear.

Rock Climbing. Trad/aid climbing. Hundreds of pounds of gear. All manner of little twists of metal on loops of string or webbing. Ropes. Harnesses. Shoes. Bespoke ascender rigs. Bags of various belay devices. Some of it is expensive, costing hundred of dollars a piece. Other stuff is dirt cheap. Once you buy that second rurp, then you are an addict.

aka consumerism

At first glance your comment looks low-effort and flippant, but it's really the crux of the matter.

Our economy only works if people buy things. Especially things they don't need. Advertising is only getting more and more pervasive and intrusive, and our purchasing habits are tracked, cataloged, and categorized in order to better market things to us.

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