Greetings to you all!
This post is inspired by one incident which happened to me when I met one of the legendary guitarists in India called Naveen Thomas who plays for Galeej Gurus, Junkyard Groove etc to name a few. It was in the month of january, on my birthday that Naveen Thomas along with his team were playing for a worship event which was held in our city and me along with our guys were playing in that event too. After the program was over, we were packing up and I happened to have a small conversation with Naveen, he said “hey, you’ve got some really nice sounding crunch tones out of that POD (Line 6 POD XT live Guitar processor) and you play lovely, never stop playing!” well, honestly that was the time of my life and I am honoured to have recieved that comment from such a great musician. Then he continued “man, I’ve seen people with fancy gear and really expensive guitars but I don’t see them doing justice to what they have, when I started off I didnt even have my own guitar, I used to borrow from others and then later I managed to buy a Kramer and a Zoom 505”. These words were really inspiring to me and it instantly got me thinking “AM I BEING JUST TO MY GEAR?”
That was the time when I used to think “May be I should buy a better processor for my guitar, I’m bored of this POD” but then, that statement made by Naveen changed the way I looked at my POD, I was like “wait, I haven’t really tried so many more amp models and stomps which It already has, I’ve been ‘under-using’ the capabilities what this POD can do”. I started to experiment with that thing and then I could come up with so many new sounds which I didn’t really think it could, making me fall in love with it again! The experiments are still on until this day. I admit it isn’t the best available guitar processor in the market, but thats the best I have so far, I will be upgrading to a better sounding guitar gear in the future but my time hasn’t come, I haven’t taken the best out of my POD yet.
Moral of the story, you might be having the cheapest guitar processor (or any gear) available in the market, remember “cheapest” doesn’t mean “the worst” it will have something that you can productively use for the money you paid, also it will teach you to operate the more complex, high end gear in a simple way (and you can experiment with it without any fear) so that when you go to your next level and upgrade your gear, you’d have a clearer picture of how to get the best out of that. Thus, the story repeats as you go higher and higher.
And, that was my opinion out of my experience. Comparing myself with others on the basis of what equipment they have hasn’t made me any better. I always believe the slow and steady way is the better way when it comes to music. Hoping this post will help you in some or the other way in making your gear choices be it guitar or any other musical instrument.