Dear young guitarists: 'You can ignore anyone who tries to measure their worth by the total cost of their gear'
The photo is from a recent recording session.
Creating a good sound, putting it out there, and recording it together with everyone.
It is a valuable and precious experience that returns to the basics.
Now, to the main point.
To all the young guitarists out there, from high school to college age. Even though prices are soaring, you must not lose sight of the criteria for evaluating what you are doing.
Let's play music.
I think it was around 2010 when adults started bringing expensive gear to meetups or showing off to young people.
And then there are the older guys who buy instruments for young girls.
I think that is a dangerous behavior because it could end up planting complexes in young people.
But, if you are in your teens or early twenties and reading this, those people are just noise, so I want to tell you that you don't need to worry about them.
You have acquired a guitar, which is an excellent communication tool both conversationally and musically, so you just need to believe in its potential.
To expand that potential, just play the guitar for now. YouTube backing tracks are fine, and if you have friends who play drums and bass, it's even better if you're in a light music club.
Play a lot.
When you're done, you can go to McDonald's—or whatever you call it—or Osho, or Tenkaippin, and have a debriefing session saying things like, 'That went well today,' or 'If we could nail that break, it would be totally cool.'
That is fine. A minimal world has many more triggers to enrich your life.
It is probably easier to live in today's world if the SNS world is just an extension that grows out of that minimal world.
Don't compete with high-end gear.
Honestly, there is a lot of gear being traded at prices that are no laughing matter in today's world.
The Klon Centaur is a classic example; it used to cost about 60,000 yen at Ikebe back in the day.
Some people bought it before things got like that, so you don't have to think 'it must be good because it's expensive' or 'if I use this, I'll get a good sound.'
Many of the recordings my generation listened to as kids were made with things like the POD 2.0 or POD X3, which are now sold for a few thousand yen at Hard Off.
This is likely because, in the face of the rapid decline of music content, the know-how to produce good sound with the kind of compressed budgets we have now had not yet been fully established.
This leads directly to the compression of recording costs, that is, the studio costs for recording drums and guitars.
I got curious and bought a POD X3 a few years ago.
It was a little over 5,000 yen, and it is perfectly usable.
I can state with certainty that if you use the money you saved to play a Marshall at a studio and polish your sense, the POD X3 is just fine.
However, the Pocket POD series, you are the exception.
The same goes for guitars; a Pacifica or Bacchus is fine.
You can ignore adults who spout off, 'I've played a lot of expensive guitars, so...'
Because you never know how many of them can actually exclude the placebo effect, or how good their taste really is.
It is very common for a person's own admiration, placebo factors, preconceptions, and various other things to be biases.
You can just leave them alone.
It is common to find out that someone who you thought had an incredibly good sound was actually playing a Fender Japan.
Things you should really spend money on.
Conversely, the things I think you should really spend some money on are 'things that can be used for a long time.'
Things that can be used for a long time do not equal expensive things.
They are things that are robust and have been 'standards' for a long time.
In fact, there are many expensive guitars that only have a service life of about five years.
There is nothing more foolish than paying running costs for wear and tear on an expensive guitar.
If you have that kind of money, you're better off taking your guitar to a repair shop for an annual checkup.
I'm serious about this.
Also, stay away from instruments that sound muddy when playing chords or have poor intonation while still in the shop.
There are plenty of items costing over 500,000 yen that shouldn't be that way.
That said, I still find myself thinking things like 'a Telecaster should have a 3-saddle bridge,' but... that's a separate matter.
However, for those of us from the generation where you could buy a Duncan pickup for about 9,000 yen, it's tough that the barrier to the 'just buy this and swap in a JB' approach has gotten so high.
Hard-Off being cheap is a thing of the past
Recycle shops being cheap is a thing of the past.
If you have a keen eye, you might be able to spot a great deal, but even in an environment where information is infinitely available, that's still a tall order.
Even for those with a discerning eye, buying something that looks decent only to end up with a total dud is a fairly common story.
Some people claim they can identify the manufacturer of a Fender Japan guitar just by looking at it, but if you don't possess such a special ability, it's better not to think that things are 'cheap' or 'interesting'.
Sure, I was able to buy all sorts of interesting things 10 to 15 years ago.
That's ancient history now.
However, I think they are good places to buy discontinued gear.
I feel that we need to change our evaluation criteria for recycle shops compared to how we viewed them in the past.
Summary
・Don't chase the latest trends
・Don't look around at others too much
・Don't pin your dreams on price tags
・Shut out the noise
・Play a lot
Just doing these things will make your guitar life a rich one.
Precisely because gear is so expensive now, I feel we should take things more slowly and enjoy our own world.
If you chase every fad or burn through your passion with too much intensity, you'll end up stalling or burning out quickly.
If any adults reading this feel a sense of reflection, let's just add the phrase, 'Go to a studio for now.'
Isn't that enough?
Now then, let's all do our best at our respective posts today.