Retail therapy.

[bass_dinger]

1 hour ago, Earbrass said:

I do miss GAS

I understand that sentiment, I think. 

 

For me, it is about the thrill of the chase - finding an obscure bass guitar, getting it restored, researching which piano I want. 

 

But once I have it all, I then need to sit down and play it, and learn to master the instrument.

 

Last night I opened up a box of stuff which I ordered from Kitronik.co.uk and got bored while I was taking it out of the box....

 

Retail therapy doesn't work well, for me!

[SumOne]

[DTB]

19 hours ago, neepheid said:

 

Right, but you derive no pleasure from having a warm house, yeah?

Ooooh that’s a bit harsh isn’t it? 😁 said with a smile and not nastily. 

[neepheid]

4 minutes ago, DTB said:

Ooooh that’s a bit harsh isn’t it? 😁 said with a smile and not nastily. 

 

Not at all, just pointing out that while on the surface of it, adulting is boring and awful, it's not as if it doesn't yield any benefit whatsoever.  It's just that sometimes those benefits/worths are taken for granted because they're not shiny or dopamine inducing.  If I'm guilty of anything, it's the terse way in which it was expressed.  Scottish stoicism at its finest, doesn't necessarily mean I'm being a meanie...

[DTB]

I get what you saying totally, but even though it keeps my house warm, and provides me with hot water, eventually, (i miss my old hot water tank), I would rather spend £2400 on music stuff than a new boiler. 

My last house related purchase was a washing machine because I ‘broke’ the old one washing my motorcycle rags that had fully synthetic gear oil on them and then everything else that got washed after stunk of oil. That really annoyed me because the money I had saved servicing both bikes myself was about the cost of the new machine. 

[SumOne]

21 hours ago, Chris2112 said:

I've recently spent a load of money on things that were just no fun at all. A new combi-boiler yesterday, car insurance the same day, and today I was off to the dentist to have a molar removed after it was damaged whilst I was getting a wisdom tooth taken out last year. 

 

I decided to spend some money on myself other than just paying these 'cost of living' charges. Well, I have been saying for a long time that I wanted a fretted jazz bass and the Flea signature model always intrigued me. I'm not a RHCP fan but the spec always sounded like the sort of thing I would enjoy and have a lot of use for. 

 

Bass Bros to the rescue. Let's hope it's as good as it looks! I bought a fretless CIJ jazz from them in October 2024 which I play all the time, so it'll be nice to have a fretted model to sit next to it. 

 

 

I'm in a similar boat:  Car insurance, MOT, parking fine, and root canal all paid in the last few weeks. It makes the cost of a new (second hand) Bass seem relatively insignificant, and is something that tends to hold value anyway so I'd sort of an investment.

[martin8708]

There is nothing new about retail therapy , it’s just got a whole lot sophisticated in the last 10 ish years .

Even in post war Britain , people would get a certain glow from buying new goods , new appliances , new clothes .

I am just as guilty of buying stuff to get that warm fuzzy hit of new stuff arriving on the doorstep .

it was particularly bad during the photography phase when film was king , big bucks on big lenses / bodies / motor drives .

Thank goodness digital killed that off . 
If the equipment that is bought is used and appreciated ,all well and good . I generally use most of the gear I buy , so your not chucking money down the drain .

Buying is just too easy . back in the pre internet days , you trawled the classifieds in NME / MM papers and made the journey to London to buy the instrument in question ,  now we just press the buy button from the comfort of your sofa . 
Eventually you hit the point when you realise buying one more guitar does not make you a better player , it just means you have one more guitar . 

[TimR]

No. I'm a tight-wad. The only time I buy something is if I run out of it, or I've spent too long trying to fix it when it broke. 

 

My last bass lasted 25 years and after 2 years of saying there's nothing wrong with it, I bit the bullet and bought a new one.

 

I find feeling down is fixed with exercise and company, ideally both at the same time. Obviously not everyone can exercise, but a walk with the dog is good enough. Although, as I've never been depressed, it's easy for me to say. 

Edited 22 minutes ago by TimR