Australia has killed my GAS

samzadgan

As some of you know i moved back to Australia a little over a year and half ago. Since then i've bought and sold some stuff, but no where near what i used to do in London.

To begin with, i have to say I am very happy with my gear...the Matamp is the best amp i have had, my guitars are perfect (1 incoming) and pedalboard has been pretty much the same for the last year.  But the other day i was wondering if I had the gear that had cured my GAS and I had reached complete fulfillment, or was it something else.

It is something else...its Australia!

The problem here is that, good gear is pretty rare to find, and when you do and you want to flip it, its very hard to flip. Basically, if its no a mass market brand, and even within that, the most mass market product line, you have a lot of trouble trying to move gear on. If you do, you end up making a big loss on it.

I remember in London, except for buying new, everything i bought was second hand and if i didn't like it, i would flip it and the most i would lose is cost of postage. which made trying out gear a reality, and gave everything a temporary feel.

The good is that when you buy something here, you have think "Is this a keeper?" if not, be prepared to sell at a big loss. But also, if its not a keeper at first glance, you end up keeping it as its not worth selling and in time you learn to enjoy the piece of gear by experimenting with it and giving it more time.

The bad, you settle for things that are not exactly what you want, and you dont get a chance to try out all the stuff thats coming out. I really miss watching a PGS pedal demo and loving it, then going on the classifieds or ebay and finding and within a few days playing around with it with my rig.

stickyfiddle

Living in Abu Dhabi I know this feeling all too well! Getting mass produced stuff is not too hard (at least Thomann and Andertons will ship here!) but anything vaguely interesting/rare/boutique is impossible. 

For me that means I've moved up to "only buy keepers" mode. This year that has got me a Jazzmaster and an order for a BadCat, and only 1 pedal bought in a year, which itself was a souvenir from Japan more than something I specifically wanted.