4th Gen. Focusrite Scarlett Series Interfaces – Solo, 2i2 and 4i4
October 19, 2023
2 Comments
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Whenever you upgrade any of your audio gear, inevitably you have to decide if you should sell your old gear, or give it away, or keep it.
Personally I tend to keep everything for two general reasons:
Of course, I’m in the unusual situation where, because I teach podcast production, I may want to use or demonstrate various gear for educational or marketing reasons in the future.
But soon I will have to overcome these two reasons and sell some stuff, though. Because I believe there is a point for each of us when you simply have way too much gear sitting around not being used, and will probably never be used.
What is your philosophy regarding selling your old gear?
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8 Responses
This is the mindset of the horder – ‘it might come in useful one day’.
If you bought something to replace something, move the old one on. Selling it via eBay, or similar, gives someone else a chance to move up the gear ladder.
If the new item doesn’t replace it, why did you buy it?
Why would you want to demonstrate on old gear? Surely you’d use the current/latest gear. Are you running a school or a museum?
Where it gets difficult is when you store up items just in case -” I might need 64 directional mics and some stereo pairs in case someone asks me to record an orchestra”. This is where you need to take a hard look at yourself and ask what the chance of that is?
Mike, first of all, you are not aware of everything I do and everything I’m planning. And I’m not sure if you meant to have such a condescending tone to your post, but either way I’m gonna respectfully shred some of your comments on a future Daily Goody episode because I don’t have time to construct the necessary text arguments here that will enlighten your ignorance. I usually appreciate your posts here but you soured me a bit with this one, bro. Oh and btw, just because a piece of gear is not brand new doesn’t mean it won’t be useful and valuable for many years to come, like good microphones, mixers, portable recorders, etc etc etc.
Oops.
This was meant to be a bit ‘tongue-in-cheek’ and probably aimed more at me than you (he says buying another storage box for more mics!)
Sorry Chris, didn’t mean to offend
I understand, Mike. No worries. I enjoy your comments, and I believe continuing/clarifying the conversation is valuable. Cheers!
There’s a danger in keeping it too long and selling it. The value or the amount you’d get from it is going to drop. So there’s probably a bell curve that shows when the last chance to sell the gear is before the value drops. If you’re gonna keep it for a while you’re probably going to keep it forever unless you give it away.
I sell and upgrade my gear frequently, and I feel I’m always upgrading. If an item has been sitting for about two years, it’s not worth it for me to take up space. If I need it in future, I’ll just rent it instead. I’d rather use the money towards something I use on a regular basis.
I had a Behringer mixer. I bought a Mackie so I could get inserts. I used a crappy imic interface dongle. I later got a 2i2. Do I need two mixers? I also have a Heil PR 40, couple QU2’s, RE320. I still have a Behringer MDX4600, which is really not necessary given the post production software I have. I also would like to look at possibly purchasing a mixpre6 or Rodecaster Pro.
My reason for listing this stuff, it makes me realize that I could probably recoup the cost of some gear in order to apply it to some other purchases that may be a better fit as my knowledge has expanded.
I could sell them on ebay or craigslist. Someone else could benefit from them – getting really good gear for really good price.
I think I’d be amazed at how much money I could have, to include freed up space, if I assess what I really need and use.
The big reason I don’t unload stuff is because my setup works and I have no real motivation to trim back other than lack of immediate need. The struggle is real.
Time to go off and do inventory!