Audio gear and the MPC

I have noticed a disturbing tred as of late. As soon as someone figures out a sampler, device etc. is useable for some cool stuff for hip-hop or dance or whatever kinda production is the "preferred" flavor at the time, they jack the price up.

xample- 9 months ago a S950 went for 100 dollars and that had better include the manual, os disk and some sounds on floppies. Now they start at 100 and end up at around double that. For a piece of gear that is older then some of the people trying to use them.
another- Yamaha TX16W, was 50 bux 9 months ago and that was if you got ripped off. Now peeps want 150 for units with basic memory.
another- The S1000 is NOT worth more then 125 dollars no matter what anyone tells you.
the ASR-10 is worth no more then 300 dollars for a stock one and a fully maxed one not worth more then 700.

do people get that this gear costs mad loot to use/? you want to expand the mem on older samplers, most of that ish is proprietarry, so you gotta mod memeory, buy used ones (rare as per ususal) or pat Mutec for a new piece that costs as much or more then the unit.

the Remix 16 is nice, but not 200 dollars nice.
the list goes on and on. A emu Emaxx was friggin used in ferris beulers day off, not worth more then 200

I guess people paid all this loot for this gear, (like 2 grand for the s2000 a couple of years ago) but dont they realize that samplers are like computers? every 9 months a sampler comes out that is twice as fast and costs 1/2 as much as the last one (ie the mpc 4000 is the "twice as fast" as the 2000, and if the 2000 were upgraded to do what the 4000 does, the 2KXL would end up costing more then the 4000 to make and sell), basically after a year of use, that brand new 2000 dollar mpc or triton is only worth 800-900 (mpc) and 1200-1300 (the triton) basically 1/2 of what you paid. Do people really think they are gonna get 250 for a S2000?!? , when these people realize that they got robbed and the gear is worth like 1/2 of what the guy wants, sheesh.
basically, if you are selling a sampler older then 1996, expect to get little cash unless its a mpc 60, 3000, or the other vintage gear that is actually WORTH the markup and being called vintage.
Newsflash, a S950 is not a "vintage" sampler any more then a JV1010 is a vintage sound module.

"mpc 60, 3000, or the other vintage gear that is actually WORTH the markup and being called vintage"

So who decides what is vintage? Or who sets the price? I would not pay more than $400 for an MPC60, but see those marked at over $1k. But the truth of the matter is that it is worth $1k to someone.

Is it the sellers fault that he is asking to much or the buyers fault for paying an outrageous amount? According to you, it's the sellers fault. Very wrong. This is an open market and is all to much influenced by people like you buying into a peice of equipment because everyone else is using it (i.e. MPC60).

I have been around long enough to see `vintage` come and go. Truth is that today's cheapest gear is tomorrow's vintage gear. Why? Music industry is full of starving artists. Starving artists cannot afford the expensive gear (or vintage gear for that matter). They work with whatever they get their hands on (the cheapest). Tomorrow's hits are made from today's starving artists. Their gear suddenly becomes in demand. High demand with low supply equals high price. Now it's vintage. This endless cycle has occured for many dozens of years.

How can you benefit from this? Buy what no one else wants. There are some really great deals out there, but they are not always on the internet. Armchair shoppers tend to artifically hold the prices up. Again, there are more shoppers in the internet than there are products to sell. I get out an hit the pavement. I visit music shops every week for trade-ins, I hit pawn shops, and I go to shops whenever I travel. If it turns out you can't actually use the equipment (i.e. not a musician), you will be sitting on a gold mine of vintage gear.

Yep, i've got one of those $1100 loaded ASR-10's for sale. Silly for me to ask that much? No. It will sell.

its both the sellers fault and the buyers. the sellers label anything old as "vintage" and idiots (buyers) will pay for it. The morons who ruin it are those fools who go out and buy a piece cuz some arist used it. I'm sure that once people heard the neptunes like to use the ASR-10 they will go up in price as unscruplous sellers who know what the gear does try to hype it up.

look on EBAY right NOW, there are a million ads for gear that hype it up so much that its funny or run off a list of who uses it and tells you that "you know its tight" or something to that effect. Basically, lots of the posts have mad omissions (yeah, you remebered all that but forgot to mention that the case is cracked, ripped to hell, the os is old, no memory expansion etc.) that basically all amount to a lie by omission. If I bought a piece of gear that was messeud up like this guess what? the item is not as described. In the world of mail order (ie ebay) the act of omitting "glaring and obvious inofrmation necessary to the purchasers decision" amounts to fraud. IE even if you put the obligatory "sold as is" it is up to you to do all in your power to make sure the kit is ok.
IE if you failed to "notice" a crack on it, its your bad, cuz that is glaring and/or obvious, so if I want my $$$ back you have to give it back and if I were to sue, Id likely win. Now if you have a device but cant power it up to test it and it arrives DOA, again, you gotta give back the $$$, becasuse by not posting the defects you are not aware of you are commiting fraud.
this is becasue of the MAIL ORDER (ie garage sales, swapmeets etc. are exempt for #1 you are there and can inspect the gear and that ebay is business conducted under the laws of mail order, as is all net selling in the US) aspect of ebay and if they shuip via the US postal serice or across state lines the federal mail order law applies, used or new.
that law contains a "warranty of mercantability" on net/mail purchases or basically the seller promises that the product sold will be useable as it was originally intended by the manufacturer. They cannot "say sold as is" and override that law, why? it would be different if you went into a store, saw it, held it, got a chance to test it b4 you buy then leave, in that case, for used gear, cavet emptor, you had a chance to inspect it for defects and your purchsae of it signals that you agree the item is in a condition satisfactory to you.
Ebay makes no mention of this anywhere on the site that I have seen, but is a law that applies.

Vintage is a device "characterized by excellence" ok, fine you trying to say a yamaha TX 16 is "characterized by excellence" they just cant say "this thing is old, has no memory, and any expansion is near impossible to find or prohibitvly expensive, its features are so-so compared to a new device and it has a "magic sound"

the reason I allow for the MPC 60 and all to be VINTAGE is that it is characterized by excellence. I can't really say a bad thing about the MPC 60 other then it needs more memory. The sequencer ROCKS, and the midi capabilites are awesome. No other gear, new or otherwise can compete with the 60 here. That makes it vintage, its so good and there is nada that comes close to doing it as well.
the MPC 2000XL is on the brink of becoming vintage with the advent of

I would call the ASR-10 vintage, I changed my mind on that, since it DOES have stuff I like, the keys feel great, better then any other synth I have touched, so as a Piano player, I love that. The sampler is gritty, but not "vintage" in the sense that there is other gear thats in the same range that even costs less that can do the same stuff, nothin special. so for me, the feel of the keys makes the ASR-10 a "vintage" device to me rather then a piece of overpriced junk.

1100 for an ASR-10? I dont think you'll get close to that much for it, ASR-88's with full expansion sell for less then that, and the asr-10 sells for like 500-700 w/ scsi and max ram. the multi-out piece goes for 80-150

good luck, like I said, I bet evey little kid in the world wants to get one now that they know the neptunes use one.
personally, for 1100 I'd save and get a maxed out used triton for 800 more.

and the whole point of this is...? really, no one cares, because people are still going to be buying them regardless of the price.

Well now you are changing your story from sellers charging to much to fraud. These are two separate issues and are NOT to be intermingled. Yes, we are aware some people do not advertise correctly and since we are aware, guess what? Problem solved. No one is forcing you to buy hyped gear. Frankly, I would avoid any gear purchase that has the words `vintage`, `mint` or `rare` in the description.

Mint, by definition, means in the box new, unopened. If you actually beleive all that was mint, ...

no the story is the same, they charge too much and at the same time justify these prices by FRAUD.
they lie, out and out, sometimes blatantly in the ad listing specs the device dont have.

even those who arent frauds will out and out lie about the usefulness of a device, yeah a s950 is useful, but nowehere near as useful as say a S300XL, yet I see these 2 go for around the same price on ebay regularly.

id consider a lot of this increase in price and hype is due to the internet and auction sites. people are too lazy to do the leg-work, to talk the talk, to dig around second hand stores.

i made a good living during university here in australia by walking all of 5 minutes from my house to this auction place that had police and liquidated auction stock. i would snap up all the music gear, give it a quick clean, take a pic with the digital camera and have it online buy nightfall.

even with ETHICAL selling techniques i was getting a 200% return at least. people are just lazy and stupid.

i was quoted in a music mag round these parts talking about the "vintage and analog" hype of some years ago, and made a joking reference to the DX7 being next. sure enough there it is.... it sounds like SHIT, has physically BAD sounding outputs and is a **** to program, let alone being able to download FM7 for free (if you want) and people are forking out big pay cheques cuz its hyped.

as an audio engineer by trade i love unique gadgets and have a trademark of unique uses of older gear, but this hype is crazy. on a similar **** up funny note, i tried to pick up a crappy old casio unit for some multimedia project i was a part of (which involved the unit being filmed and blowing up) and this greedy little geek got all excited and said "its vintage"

greed, hype... human nature. not really worth arguing about but yeah worthy of the occasional **** session.

ps, im laughing at kids buying S950's cause they read Fatboy Slim used one (once upon a time).... pffft... you dont see me selling my MPC cause Afrika Bambaata used an MMT8 once.... crazy

what about the TB303?
I think that is one of the best examples of over priced gear! yes, it sound f***in good, but it´s not worth 800$-1000$
I was checkin ebay the last weeks for a tb303 and suddenly I thought "hey what are U doing there?"
Yes- it is stylish to own this little silver box, but is it worth the money?
I think NO!

...but... but...
but my hart says yes!...

so I´ll go on and hope to find one, that I can effort...

personally i hate the tb303

have you ever actually owned or used one for any length of time? the limitations of it are hilariously acute. all it REALLY has going for it is the glide/slide and thats common on synths and softsynths these days


my supernova cost second hand what a tb303 would and it FAR out-runs that plastic silver monosynth overhyped hunk of crap

beware the hype! about the only analog synth id ever think of buying would be the Jupiter series or a Moog, and thankfully the Alesis Andromeda matches the jupiters and the new Moogs are rockin more then the old.... so analog hype begone!


ask yourself if you are believing the hype or are convinced that big $$$ are worth it for some old audio gear. is studio cred worth the money?

case example: i bought a patchbay, a big box of vinyl and upgraded all my cables and rackmounted my gear for the same money that a friend payed for a tr-808.

i have hundreds of 808 samples and now a pristine signal path, and he has a shitty old drum machine and thats about it. you gotta ask yourself if its worth it. are you making music or collecting music gear?

if youre collecting, go buy baseball cards or something

"have you ever actually owned or used one for any length of time? "

I've owned two TB's, at the same time.

You have to be careful about criticizing gear's limitations around here. Much of the gear that people around here like is all about the limitations:

MPC60's limitation to 12-bit
MPC60's small memory forces creativity
SP-1200 small memory
etc

While I am not a big fan of the 303, it certainly has a bit more than a unique slide.

its ironic your post seems to say "pay big $ for limitations"


my attack is on hype. only those who perpetuate hype or have been its victims will feel defensive here.



what did you pay for 2 TB-303s mike goins? ouch. hope you sold them for good profit.

word. I love to see fools tell me that the s950 is soooo dope and all that, man I've heard almost the same sound come out of a TX16W running typhoon, and that bad boy costs 50 bux and the os is friggin freeware now.

basically "the hype" gear goes off and on, for a while people wanted that emu drumulator or the Oberheim DX's were seen as cool vintage gear.
I know what you mean, I wanted to buy one of those tiny old caisos with the 3 seconds sampler and mod it so that instead of the built in mic there were rca's and then curicut bend that bad boy just as a project really, and the guy was all "this is one of the first sampler so its pretty rare" I looked at him and shook my head, that thing is worth 20 bux and that is RIPPING someone off. he wanted 60, for a pos you can buy at a flea market for 10 dollars.

its greed, stupidity and often out and out lies (if you wanna laugh go look on ebay at dudes selling MPC 2000XL's with "128 mb max ram installed" and "2 digital ins and outs" its just friggin sad.

heh heh

the Casio SK-1 i think you might be referring to

yeah i was going to do the same. those things can be funny but not worth the big $


oh and the only "rare" sampler id care about is the Fairlight, the first ever sampler and made right here in australia

afrika bambataa used it... dont see many people running around saying "yo man, check my dookie Fairlight out!"

heh

reminds me of when i was about to buy a behringer di box, a friend said hed show me how to build one, and its better and 10 bucks cheaper. thats gear-nerd economy to me!