Once upon a time, there was this guy who bought a thing. He raved about this thing to anyone who would listen. It was the best thing ever. Superior in every measurable quality to everything else possessing qualities which could be measured. Of all things, this one thing reigned supreme; ultimate champion among the elite echelon of awesome things.
And it was his. And he would never part with it. Ever.
It would stay with him to the end of his days and beyond, for he had left specific instructions for his progeny to chain his body to this thing upon his death and bury he and it together in the path of a deep-sea magma flow, binding them in chain and stone beneath the endless embrace of the briny deep forever.
Except, oh, wait… Nope. He just sold it.
The End.
Do you know this tale? Oh, you do? You mean, you ARE that guy? Well, you’re not alone. I think we’ve all been there at one point or another. I, too, am that guy (kind of). But it’s OK.
I recently wrote this article about trusting our ears to get better tones from our rigs. In it, I spent a few colorful adjectives on describing the thick, powerful sounds I was able to get out of  an amp I had recently acquired. I even shared some of the settings I was using.
At the time of writing this article, the amp I wrote about before has been gone for over a week. You read that right. In fact, I dealt the amp away before my article about it had even been published. Ironic? Maybe a little. Okay, yeah, that’s pretty bad. My shame stems from sharing my opinions on the gear before the honeymoon was over.
You’d think I would know better. Okay, maybe you wouldn’t, but I would expect to know better. It wasn’t exactly my first rodeo, or the first time I’d picked up something that later turned out to be different than I expected, or just didn’t work for my style and sound like I thought it would.

These are just a handful of the best guitars ever in the world that I sold because they sucked.

If you’ve purchased any amount of musical equipment in your life, you’re probably familiar with the notion of the “honeymoon period,” i.e. the time immediately after getting something new, during which it is completely impossible to be objective about it. Like a new romantic relationship, we’re totally infatuated. We see only the good qualities of our new gear, and the negative things are ignored. Everything is hotel suites and poolside drinks and moon-lit walks in the sand.
Eventually, though, you have to go home. You get back to your normal life and actually live together. And sometimes, that’s when things go bad.
I still stand by every word I wrote in that article, but I’ll use this opportunity to add to them: We need to trust our ears (and not our eyes) when dialing in our rigs, but we need to keep trusting our ears and be willing to admit it when something just isn’t working for us anymore.
In my case, it was simply a compatibility issue. The amp was beautiful, exquisitely made, and of the highest pedigree, but we simply did not share the same values. I wanted to raise our little tones with an emphasis on a smooth gain structure, tight low-end voicing, and an ease of use that meant I could spend less time tweaking and more time with my guitar. “She” wanted to go with huge amounts of available distortion, wide frequency sweeps from her knobs, and scooped mid-range.
Now, I’m not always an advocate of a quick out, especially when there are so many tone-shaping tricks and tools available to players today. We have a reasonably wide and readily-available selection of tubes to experiment with; a better tone is often a couple of 12ax7s away. Not to mention the veritable cornucopia of pedals there are to choose from to boost inputs, fine-tune EQs, and even completely augment the preamp sections of our amps… but I’ve never been much of a pedal guy.
And Daddy don’t scoop no mid-range.

Now go and wash those filthy hands!! …I mean turn up the mids.

That amp had to go.
It was painful, as breakups often are. It’s a funny thing, the relationship many guitarists have with their equipment. I don’t know if carpenters or painters form emotional bonds with their hammers or brushes, but we certainly can with our guitars and rigs.
When we have time, money, and the threat of disappointment on the line, accepting that our gear isn’t meeting our needs can be a bitter pill. And then there’s the shame of admitting to our friends and band-mates that the guitar, amp, or pedal we’d been gushing about like we’d been paid to is not really all that awesome for us after all. Harder still can be admitting it to ourselves.
But we pick ourselves up and get back on the horse, right? We do our homework: We read reviews, try floor models in stores, watch every amp demo video on YouTube, and do our very best to make an informed decision on what to buy next. The quest for tone continues…
And when we do find our new amp (or guitar, or pedal, or pickup, or whatever), we’ll be in love again.
What about you? Currently in the “honeymoon phase” with anything right now?