We’ve probably all got at least one story of a piece of gear we let go which in retrospect we should have hung onto. But it’s impossible to know exactly which gear will become valuable in the future and which will be forgotten. In our article What Modern Studio Equipment Will Become Classic? we discussed exactly this issue. For every shrewd investment there are mistakes which range from unfortunate to ‘best not think about it…’. We put the question to the Experts team and got responses which predictably covered everything from ‘oops’ to ‘ouch!’. Here are our highlights…
Julian - Roland Juno 106, Sold in 2000 for £250. Current value approx £1800
It’s been hard to watch what I always thought was an OK polysynth which really needed the chorus and some delay or reverb to sound nice become a darling of the synth world since I sold it. I could probably have got £300 for this at the time and I knew it but I sold it to a friend who I knew was going to actually use it and was a far better player than me. I’d bought it in 1988 for £200 and I was pleased to pass it on without losing any money. That decision looks very different today.
At least I only sold one Juno. James Richmond sold a pair.
James Richmond - Juno 106 and Juno 60 $300 AUD each in 1995 (today $600 AUD is approx £320). Combined value today around £5000.
It’s hard to explain to people who weren’t around at the time just how undervalued analogue synths were in the late 80s and early 90s. In 1990 I remember considering selling my Juno and putting the money towards a Yamaha SY77. No-one in the right minds would consider doing that today, and the Juno would cover the cost of the SY 5 times over…
Staying with synths, when it came to those Junos at least James and I actually sold them. We didn’t give them away for nothing.
Reid Caulfield - Roland D50 given away in 2018. Current Value £550
Only 5 years ago Reid gave away a D50. Digital synths aren’t desirable like their analogue counterparts and like the DX7 and the Korg M1 the D50 was spectacularly popular at the time so they aren’t in short supply. However some of those patches like Digital Native Dance or Fantasia are so identifiable with huge records of the time that ‘free’ isn’t a fair reflection of its value.
I wish I could say I’ve never done anything like that but…
Julian - Roland SH1000 - lent to a friend in 1993 and never collected. Current Value £1000
I bought this from a second hand shop when I was in my early teens. It was cheap and I knew nothing about it, or any other synthesiser. It turns out this was the first synth from any Japanese manufacturer. It was from 1973! It looked cool but it sounded terrible. Prices might have risen because of the age and the fact it’s the first, but if you’ve never heard of it there’s a reason. It’s no MiniMoog. It sounds underwheming. My friend wanted to borrow it to photograph it for album artwork, he liked the retro looks, and I was moving onto a boat at the time and had no space for it. I can’t believe anyone would pay £1000 for one but if I still had mine I’d be overjoyed to sell it for that much.
Julian - Marshall Guv’nor Distortion pedal - Left at a friend’s house. Current Value circa £400
I bought a Marshall Guv’nor, the first pedal by Marshall, in 1988 and at some point in the late 90s left it at a friend’s house. Having seen a plugin version in Softube’s new version of Amp Room prompted me to check Ebay. Depressingly this £30 pedal is being offered for £400! I wonder if he’s still got it…
If we’re looking for more desirable gear which was left at friend’s houses and never collected we can turn to William Wittman with our first, but definitely not last, guitar.
William Wittman - 1968 Rickenbacker 365 WB. Left at a friends house in about 1980. Current Value circa £5000
Rickenbacker and the 60s go together and these quirky guitars are what put the jangle into that era. Guitars are difficult to price as there are so many variables but regardless of the specifics of this guitar, just by virtue of being a 60s model it would be desirable today. Being old gear gains a certain cachet, particularly with people who weren’t around at the time that gear was new. Of course some guitars appreciate more than others as we’ll see later in this list.
For something which really hurts, what about bona-fide classic gear? Russ can help here as we enter the top three and change things up a gear in terms of poor decisions…
Russ Hughes - Boxed Roland TR909 - Sold for £50, Current value around £4000
Yep, now we’re into the real howlers! Surely no-one can beat that? Unfortunately we’ve still got a couple to go and things get a lot worse.
Steve DeMott Pre-CBS 1962 slab board 3 tone sunburst Fender Stratocaster - Sold in 1987 for $600, Current Value circa $40,000
Steve is sanguine about this one as back in the 80s it was “just an old guitar”. The vintage obsession hadn’t really started yet. Given it was the 80s I shudder to think what happened to it, hopefully it didn’t get a Floyd Rose fitted to it!
After the Fender company was sold to CBS the quality of the guitars suffered and these pre-CBS examples are highly prized. The 62 had a rosewood fingerboard and the earlier ones had a thick ‘slab’ of rosewood as opposed to a thinner veneer in later examples. Steve’s example, being a slab model is the more desirable.
Apparently he also had one of the very first PRS guitars and passed that on quickly too. He couldn’t have predicted just how huge Paul Reed Smith was going to become.
However we have a winner and if you’ve been waiting for some proper studio gear to show itself on this list of instruments, the wait is over.
William Wittman - Fairchild 670 Sold for $1000 in 1980, current value - $75,000+
The most desirable compressor on the planet, pricing something like this starts to get meaningless because having the money isn’t the problem. There aren’t many out there and the people who have them have every motivation to hang on to them. They are only going to get more valuable after all. When William shared this story I announced, with confidence, that we had a winner. No-one could beat that, surely?
If you are the person who swapped the surviving parts of an EMI TG12345 console after it was put in a skip for an ADAT, or have a similarly spectacular story to share we’d love to hear it. Share yours in the comments below.
Images:
TR-909 in Roland Museum in Hamamatsu, Photo Courtesy of Roland Japan
SH1000 By Orson Wouters, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
D50 By Iixorbiusii
Strat Eden, Janine and Jim from New York City, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Juno 106 and 60 Courtesy of Roland