Let me tell you about me Gear Fabrication Syndrome

As someone who designs analog and digital circuits and a live long musician I often find that building your own shit is the way™, because even if you are not 100% happy with the results it is A) often possible to adjust the result till you like it and more importantly B) it is often all about the friends you made along the way (aka learning).

That being said traditional GAS, as in people that buy a ton of stuff in the hunt for the perfect tone falls often into two categories (or any mix of the two):

1. People whose motivation for the hobby is coupled to these purchases

2. People who don't completely understand all the contributing factors

A good example is Hifi-Heads who will spend upwards of 400 Euros for a simple cable and tell you they can hear what the best measuring equipment known to humanity can't measure, yet they fail to do even the most basic acoustic treatment to their listening space.

Guitar players can be similar, only there one big variable are the players themselves. Also they often fail to understand that every guitar tone they want to imitate is typically a recording of a guitar tone. That means the whole microfone/mixing desk/effects/recording media/mastering chain is part of that sound. So even if you you traveled back in time and had the possibility to sit with Hendrix in the studio, it probably wouldn't sound like it did on the record. And if he gave you the chance to play his guitar and his amp it would still not sound like him, because the magic (or the lack thereof) is in the fingers.

That being said, it is good and useful to have goals for certain sounds, but the way to achive them rarely is a very specific set of (typically obscenely expensive) gear — the trick is to understand your instrument, yourself and the whole signal chain intricately, or on the recording side of things: To work with people who have both that understanding and an appreciation for the sound you are aiming for (just like Hendrix obviously did).

On the Synth end of things I know people who are more into "collecting" these things than using them. These are the people who spend more time researching their next synth or module than they spend on actually learning how to use what they got.

I don't want to judge, it is all about the dopamine in the end, but as someone who enjoys the act of making music — a hobby that arguably needs a ton of stuff, depending on what you do — I always think a too crazy focus on gear takes away from that. And I say that as someone who constructs some of these circuits.

> I was given them from various places

Mmm. That does remind me of the quite nice social interaction some types of collecting gives. For example, a neighbour was a thimble collector so whenever visiting somewhere, we would look for a thimble. It gave us some entertainment as a tourist, like a treasure hunt, and then the nice moment to give it to the neighbour and show we were thinking of them while away.

It can go wrong though. I've known a few friends who have become associated with "a thing" because their family saw they owned one of "the thing" and now it's the exclusive theme of all presents but they don't have the heart to correct them and reveal all their presents were unwanted!

My brother has a pretty intense case of ADHD and is nothing like this. Some of my in-laws too and they also have no problems with weird hobbies and collecting random stuff. They certainly are no "makers".

They do have trouble holding down jobs and not hyper-focusing on their leaky faucets for two weeks straight without eating or sleeping much and talking about it non-stop while somehow not fixing it.

Yet, myself, no ADHD in sight. Other things, sure, but no ADHD and I have a knack of disappearing into black holes and emerging with "stuff"/"knowledge". I dislike synth music, but have programmed a modular software synth because I wanted to know how it works. Never touched it again. I know it now, there is no pay off in using it. That's boring and I'm no musician.

I'm not completely convinced this is an "ADHD" thing. I think this is a personality thing. INTP or something like that? You are just a "tinkerer". Getting stuff done is boring. Learning how stuff works is where the fun is at.

I misread the title, and thought he compulsively built gears (as in, gearing mechanism) :-)

> The thing I have most of is certainly cables and tech widgets of various descriptions, but I don't try to collect them

That makes me think that someone who is a hobby cable collector must have the easiest time of it!

People do collect all sort of non-expensive things (pebbles, seashells, ...) so it feels like just a coincidence that collecting pens means also collecting a lot of tools that will never be used.