Pedals I keep meaning to sell (and why I don't).
Five pedals I have listed on Reverb at least once and pulled down before anyone wrote.
Published
Updated
Two sides. One page.
Jason Colapietro wrote the piece and the counterpoint against it. Read both sides.
The take is shown below.
I have a Fulltone Tube Tape Echo in a road case in a closet behind a coat. I will not sell it. That is what this column is about.
I have five pedals that live in a drawer in my studio and that I never use. I have listed them on Reverb at least once each. I have pulled every listing down within 48 hours, every time, for reasons that are partly sensible and partly embarrassing. The reasons range from 'I might need it' to 'I cannot bear to part with the version of myself who bought this in 2013.'
The honest answer about why I don't sell any of them is that gear is a memory device. The Klein-Walker Lawn Mower reminds me of writing the second record in a basement in Greenpoint with a leaky ceiling. The Frantone Sweet Lo reminds me of the eight months I spent thinking I was a noise musician. The Lovetone Big Cheese reminds me of a fight I had with a producer in 2011 that I lost and was correct about. Selling those pedals would be selling those memories at $400 a piece, and the market is not that good.
The sensible move is to sell the Frantone. I know that. I will not.
'Gear is a memory device. The market for memories is not that good.'
— Jason
Counterpoint, by Jason Colapietro
Gear as a memory device is hoarding with a better publicist. The drawer is two grand of unplayed inventory, and the memories survive the sale. Sentiment is the only market where this author pays retail.
The column's thesis, selling the pedals would be selling the memories at four hundred dollars apiece, mistakes the container for the contents. The basement in Greenpoint, the eight noise-musician months, the 2011 fight with the producer: all of it survives the shipping label. Memory does not live in the enclosure. If it did, every sold guitar would be an amputation, and I have sold guitars, including, per this magazine's own pages, a gold Centaur to a dentist, a transaction I describe with satisfaction and zero reported memory loss.
Meanwhile the drawer has a real cost that the sentiment ledger never books. Five working instruments, silent for years, are five instruments some gigging musician would run every weekend. A Lovetone Big Cheese in a drawer is not a memento. It is supply withheld from a market the column's own magazine teaches readers to shop, and the price inflation on dead-stock boutique relics is partly built from drawers exactly like this one, curated by owners exactly this articulate about why theirs cannot move.
The tell is in the listings. Posted on Reverb at least once each, pulled within 48 hours, every time. That is not attachment overcoming reason. That is me conducting appraisals and calling them farewells, enjoying the market's confirmation of value without paying the only fee the market charges, which is parting. The column knows this, names its reasons partly embarrassing, and then publishes the embarrassment as charm. Charm is how hoarding gets a byline.
Sell one. The Frantone, whose era the author admits is over. Fund a commission from a living builder who pays rent with the money, and write the column about what arrives. The memory of the noise months will still be there. It was never in the box.
Discussion
- No replies yet. Start the argument.