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Let me tell you about me Gear Fabrication Syndrome

weenoisemaker.com

11–20 of 177 posts

Re: Let me tell you about me Gear Fabrication Syndrome

#11

> Gear Acquisition Syndrome (GAS). A person’s insatiable urge to buy equipment for their art or hobby, distracting them from actually practicing said art or hobby. > It’s driven in part by the belief that new gear will improve one’s art or performance, e.g. I don’t sound like Jimi Hendrix because I don’t have the same effects pedal he used. Bit tangent, but I think one should just embrace it and say “my hobby is coll…

> but I think one should just embrace it and say “my hobby is collecting guitar gear

That's something I noticed with a lot of people in my circle and 3d printers. They don't 3d print for their hobby. Most of them have 3d printing or even 3d printers as their hobby.

Re: Let me tell you about me Gear Fabrication Syndrome

#12

It’s all fun and games until you start applying this to commercial software projects.

It’s interesting how open source kind of short-circuits a lot of this; you can’t “acquire” it all because you already have it all. You can acquire experience in a lot of tools, but that’s actually acquiring practical knowledge, not just acquisition of things as things.

Re: Let me tell you about me Gear Fabrication Syndrome

#13
post #6

So, you're not supposed to buy stuff for your hobby nor build stuff for your hobby? I think it depends on how you define "the hobby" - is it really just the part where you use your equipment? I find that too narrow. A good counter example could perhaps be table top wargaming, e.g. Warhammer and the likes. Surely, people who call that their hobby like to play the (various different) games. But a lot of people love bui…

> So, you're not supposed to buy stuff for your hobby nor build stuff for your hobby?

I'm not sure that anyone is proposing that.

> A good counter example could perhaps be table top wargaming, e.g. Warhammer and the likes. Surely, people who call that their hobby like to play the (various different) games. But a lot of people love building and painting their miniature armies just as much.

That sounds perfectly reasonable if the split between crafting and playing is somewhere near the middle. However, in the case that they hardly ever actually engage in a game, I'd maintain that their hobby is not 'wargaming' and is actually model making.

Re: Let me tell you about me Gear Fabrication Syndrome

#14

> Gear Acquisition Syndrome (GAS). A person’s insatiable urge to buy equipment for their art or hobby, distracting them from actually practicing said art or hobby. > It’s driven in part by the belief that new gear will improve one’s art or performance, e.g. I don’t sound like Jimi Hendrix because I don’t have the same effects pedal he used. Bit tangent, but I think one should just embrace it and say “my hobby is coll…

I like this take. Nobody thinks of stamp collecting as a problematic hobby. Collecting and curating is fun in its own right.

Though I do think there can be another aspect at play; I often find myself collecting things that I think "might be useful". Eg: I have a ton of empty yogurt containers, for use in hypothetical future art projects. I do use them sometimes, but at this point I have plenty. I still feel the urge to keep saving them, though — for some imagined future. I wouldn't say "I enjoy collecting yogurt containers," though.

I'm no hoarder, but I do feel a certain pull/compulsion in that direction from time to time, and I could see the same being true elsewhere. It's not always easy to know whether I'm scratching an itch or worrying at it.

Re: Let me tell you about me Gear Fabrication Syndrome

#15

> Gear Acquisition Syndrome (GAS). A person’s insatiable urge to buy equipment for their art or hobby, distracting them from actually practicing said art or hobby. > It’s driven in part by the belief that new gear will improve one’s art or performance, e.g. I don’t sound like Jimi Hendrix because I don’t have the same effects pedal he used. Bit tangent, but I think one should just embrace it and say “my hobby is coll…

I like this take. Nobody thinks of stamp collecting as a problematic hobby. Collecting and curating is fun in its own right. Though I do think there can be another aspect at play; I often find myself collecting things that I think "might be useful". Eg: I have a ton of empty yogurt containers, for use in hypothetical future art projects. I do use them sometimes, but at this point I have plenty. I still feel the urge…

Haha yes, like so many behaviors, collecting yogurt containers to re-use is adaptive until it isn’t.

Re: Let me tell you about me Gear Fabrication Syndrome

#16
All that design and fabrication work, and the pedals swing the wrong way? And has no rigid frame connection to a seat?

If you're going to bother, then one of the biggest things is to rigidly attach the pedals to the seat so that they cannot move in relation to the seat even against the full power of legs.

And of course car pedals swing on a pivot that is above the pedals not below, although the gas pedal has an extra linkage so that IT does pivot on the bottom.

Clutch and brake (not break) require full leg power and knee bend, only gas is purely ankle bend, calf power.

And if such details don't matter, then you're right back to the off the shelf one.

Re: Let me tell you about me Gear Fabrication Syndrome

#17

> Gear Acquisition Syndrome (GAS). A person’s insatiable urge to buy equipment for their art or hobby, distracting them from actually practicing said art or hobby. > It’s driven in part by the belief that new gear will improve one’s art or performance, e.g. I don’t sound like Jimi Hendrix because I don’t have the same effects pedal he used. Bit tangent, but I think one should just embrace it and say “my hobby is coll…

To add, the gear mentioned in hobbies like this will often hold its value; they're well built tools, often not mass produced, and well looked after.

Source: I wanted a set of the Volca electronic instruments, but the secondhand market was not significantly cheaper than new.

Re: Let me tell you about me Gear Fabrication Syndrome

#18

> Gear Acquisition Syndrome (GAS). A person’s insatiable urge to buy equipment for their art or hobby, distracting them from actually practicing said art or hobby. > It’s driven in part by the belief that new gear will improve one’s art or performance, e.g. I don’t sound like Jimi Hendrix because I don’t have the same effects pedal he used. Bit tangent, but I think one should just embrace it and say “my hobby is coll…

[deleted]

Re: Let me tell you about me Gear Fabrication Syndrome

#20

> Gear Acquisition Syndrome (GAS). A person’s insatiable urge to buy equipment for their art or hobby, distracting them from actually practicing said art or hobby. > It’s driven in part by the belief that new gear will improve one’s art or performance, e.g. I don’t sound like Jimi Hendrix because I don’t have the same effects pedal he used. Bit tangent, but I think one should just embrace it and say “my hobby is coll…

> one should just embrace it and say “my hobby is collecting guitar gear, and my niche is things that Jimi Hendrix used or things that make sounds like he did”

GAS is a form of delusion. You are asking people to “just” self-recognize and somehow self-fix their deeply rooted psychological problems.

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