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Muso elitism - Now at rehearsal studios!

El Raro

El Raro

Feb 6, 2009
1,071
298
Sydney, Australia
#1
My band and I practice a couple times a week at a local rehearsal studio. Management is great, equipment is excellent and the going rate is the best in town. My only issue with the joint...is the clientele. These are the guys who lug their entire live setups (8x10 fridges, two guitar stacks, every single pedal that have etc) and sneer at anyone who comes in with a combo or smaller prac amp. Just...why? You come here to practice, not to show off all the money you spent of high-end gear. That's for live shows :D

Anyway, the other night we rocked up to prac and unloaded all our gear. We waited in the lobby for the previous band to clear out before moving into the space. I took with me my humble little Ibanez SX35 prac simply because I can't justify lugging my full Orange rig just for prac. My guitarist did the same with his Marshall combo. As they walked out, the band look at us, looked down at our gear and, I kid you not, laughed as they took their sweet arse time dragging their stacks back to their cars. I'm pretty certain I also heard the guitarist (I'm assuming he was the guitarist...he looked especially douchey with his dreadlocks) say "How cute" to his bandmate.
The sad thing is, this isn't the only band to do this at this particular studio. A few months back after finishing up, I went to the front desk to pay my share of the session and overheard another different band nearby talking about how pathetic some other band in the studio was for using Squiers.

Its a real shame that this happens in an environment where people go just to practice. I'm not saying it should happen anywhere else, especially at gigs, but its fair enough if someone rocks up there with say a 20 watt amp and it sounds sub-par for a performance. Anyone else encountered these practice douches during rehearsal?
 
#5
Sounds like kid stuff to me. Young, inexperienced, insecure guys who are secretly desperate for approval...but don't get as much of it as their egos demand, so they take the next step of dissing others. :rolleyes:

I wouldn't so much as pay them the slightest bit of attention - just don't give them the satisfaction of knowing that you even took notice of their little digs and jabs.

Successful, secure people have absolutely no need - or desire - to run anybody else down. Just consider the source...

MM
 
#8
El Raro said:
No, actually. South West. Alarming to hear that its not just this place that its happening at...
Click to expand...

I think it's Sydney lol... I've been here 11 years and I've seen it happen as long as I've been here.

Another thing I've noticed is a lot of bands out that have great gear tend to be very average!

Mystic Michael summed it up best (as usual)
 
#10
MysticMichael said:
Sounds like kid stuff to me. Young, inexperienced, insecure guys who are secretly desperate for approval...but don't get as much of it as their egos demand, so they take the next step of dissing others. :rolleyes:

I wouldn't so much as pay them the slightest bit of attention - just don't give them the satisfaction of knowing that you even took notice of their little digs and jabs.

Successful, secure people have absolutely no need - or desire - to run anybody else down. Just consider the source...

MM
Click to expand...

+1

To the OP: you care about this....why?
 
#14
Meh, that's one of the few good things about being a geezer playing with other geezers.

Where we practice, at our guitarist's basement, there is easily $10k -$15k plus worth of equipment just laying around. PRS and vintage Gibson guitars, several basses and misc instruments, tube Marshall halfstack under a cover, half a dozen vintage Fender tube amps that our guitarist, keyboardist and harp player mix and match depending on our mood, $4k worth of drums (acoustic and two electric sets). Half a dozen mixers, recorders, and several PA systems of various sizes. Blah blah blah. So what.

We even talked the other night about how we enjoy meeting and supporting other musicians and bands, and don't understand (the minority) that view us as "competition".

So hang in there. Ego and general "jerks" unfortunately never completely go away, but they do sorta weed themselves out of the scene over time. :)
 
#15
I prefer to spend my rehearsal time rehearsing instead of judging the amps/combos my band is using, as long as it's loud enough to hear the rest of the band, the smaller/lighter the better for me. I would laugh it off seeing a bassist cart their 8x10 and SVT into a 12x12 room to practice for 2 hours.
 
#18
If that's the rig they're using live, why shouldn't it be the one they use for practice? I know a lot of us bassists just plug in and go, but the effect pedals and amp switching is part of practice. That was one of the more difficult aspects to get down when I played guitar in a band was the channel and effect switching.

That said, there was no reason for them to talk down to people with smaller setups. If anything, they should have taken the hint, and bought themselves some lighter gear. I used to play out with a Mesa half stack, breaking my back dragging it around everywhere. I eventually got a 40 watt 1x12 combo for small gigs... And it ended up replacing my Mesa entirely. I see a lot of bands now rocking little blackstars and such, sounding just as big as anyone else. Bigger even, since there's less stage bleed, so the sound guy can get a better mix to the audience.
 
#19
Ignore them; they're just being (presumably) young and stupid.

Any "real" musician doesn't care what brand of gear you're using and only pays attention to what you can do with it. For example, if Eric Clapton or Victor Wooten (or insert any other hero of yours) walked into Guitar Center and played some "El Cheapo" brand product, I doubt anyone would notice for about 5 minutes. It's not like they're suddenly going to forget how to play just because they picked up a $200 instrument.

Unfortunately everyone gets wrapped up in brand ego crap at one point or another. I'm just as guilty of this as anyone else, but I've since been cured of that idiocy. After doing this whole music thing for around 30 years I think it's safe for me to say that the brand of the gear is almost irrelevant to whether or not it can sound good. I may not have figured out how to make a particular amp sound it's best for what I do, but it may be the perfect thing for what you do.
 

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