Can gear lose its mojo?

[BG76]

Thanks Phil. It took a long time and a lot of phone calls but at least it was finally returned.

 

[Phil O'Keefe]

[Phil O'Keefe]

[AJ6stringsting]

So true, I had a Strat that was lifeless ( tone wise ) , then I watched a video Robin Tower made. He had a his action very high to produce some huge monster tone, I tried it and the guitar came to life.

A few months ago, I had to replace a volume pot in my Jackson guitars that I use to play Speed / Thrash Metal, I had to go through 4 pots to get it close to what it had.

Another Start needed some major tonal make over, the pickups were too powerful for my needs and under the recommendations of M.r. Wankdaplank.

Blamo !!!!, the guitar now has that Mark Knopfler tone that I was looking for.

I guess, my mojo must be good, because most of the mods I've done were for the better.

[AJ6stringsting]

A few years back, I got an e-mail from Hollywood P.D., they recovered my Gibson LPC that was stolen from me when I lived on Oakwood ( Fairfax/ Melrose area ).

Recently L.A. P.D. found my old Fender Princeton amp (1968) , that was stolen from me too.

I love hearing stories of gear finding their way home 👍

[Phil O'Keefe]

Glad to hear they recovered your gear too AJ.

 

Did it take a while or did they find them fairly quickly?

[gardo]

That's amazing. Glad to hear it

[*BLEEP*]

I tried calling him, etc... and couldn't get any returns to my calls. he guy fell off the face of the Earth, which was odd because he was one of those people who was always posting photos of his gear, etc....

 

 

I think I would have forced myself into taking a Colorado ski vacation that year, with a slight diversion to a certain person's residence -- or to the Sheriff's office.

 

[gardo]

That one definitely lost it's mojo

[AJ6stringsting]

Wow, I wonder why my skin is crawling after that post 😯

[AJ6stringsting]

That happened back in 1988. I got my LPC back in 2010 and my amp back in 2015.

I just hope one day , they'll recover my Carvin V 220. 😂

[GAS Man]

I can't say as I've ever had any of my gear lose its mojo, but unfortunately I lose my own mojo from time to time. I'll be working on my music in my study one day, making some glorious tones, and then some other random day, and at least to my own ears, it just isn't happening and I don't know why. Gotta be my mojo is on hiatus from time to time. I think my mojo must be a pot smoker.

 

[thatsbunk]

I had a Squier Vintage Modified Jaguar that falls into this category. When I first got it I loved it & it played like butter. After about a year or so, it started to get wonky on me. It became a bear to intonate, & no matter what I tried, I couldn't get it set up to play without the bridge buzzing or the upper frets fretting out. Tried to re-shim the neck, & used lock-tite on the bridge, but nothing worked for me. I considered buying a mastery bridge but after consideration decided I didn't want to drop the coin on it.

 

I wound up selling it because I couldn't deal with the frustration any longer. Hopefully the new owner got it sorted out...

[MarvelUndies]

I haven't read the article yet (but I promise I will!), but I shall attempt to offer my thoughts without pursuing a tangent about how amusing it is that a vast majority of people will give their opinion without first researching the subject.

 

Anyway. Personally, I wonder if it's not necessarily the gear that loses its mojo, but the player's tastes and techniques that evolve over time. For me, it comes in phases depending on what I'm inspired by at the time. For a time, I was pretty obsessed with The Division Bell. Especially High Hopes with its incredible slide solo at the end. During that time, I had a serious love affair with my Strats and my more reserved and gentle tones. When I went back to listening to faster, heavier and more technical music, the collection was rotated and the high output humbucker equipped guitars came out.

 

With regard to equipment repair and modification, there have been some that just haven't been the same after someone else has gotten their hands on them. I remember loaning a Strat to a friend who attempted to set it up for their own preference, and in the process completely ruined it.

 

Finally, there have been guitars that due to the acquisition of new ones, I just don't find time for as the newer ones surpass their predecessors in one way or another or the novelty takes a while to wear off. No doubt in the future I'll rediscover these neglected instruments and why I fell in love, but for now there's an Epi Zakk Wylde signature that has some kind of hypnotic power over me. The bullseye is a conspiracy!

[1001gear]

Absolutely do it! Even if you had a fairly speedy HDD' date=' a decent SSD will feel a LOT faster. I went from three minute (or longer) launch times for Pro Tools HD while it loaded all my plugins to it taking just a few seconds after I installed my SSD. [/quote']

 

Ok i'm back up on an ssd. 120G - should do for now. I'm wondering though, if I installed all my programs on a second 120G SSD would I gain the space without a speed penalty? The storage stuff of course would go to a big HDD. Just looking to save the 50 bucks over a 250G ssd.

[Dendy Jarrett]

I had a snare drum once that was just incredible (1964 ludwig supra phonic). I played on it for a few years and it always delivered. Then the head started showing age and I changed it. For the life of me, I couldn't get it to sound like it did before. I had kept the other head. Put it back on, and the mojo came back. Wore that head completely out, and after it got to the point where I had no choice to but to permanently change the head, the drum's mojo was gone ...

[Phil O'Keefe]

Sounds like the mojo was in the skin and not in the drum. Did you ever try to get another head of the same type / brand?

[Phil O'Keefe]

 

Ok i'm back up on an ssd. 120G - should do for now. I'm wondering though, if I installed all my programs on a second 120G SSD would I gain the space without a speed penalty? The storage stuff of course would go to a big HDD. Just looking to save the 50 bucks over a 250G ssd.

 

 

 

If I am understanding you correctly, you have one 120GB SSD that you're using as your system (C:\) drive, and are thinking of adding a second SSD as a program drive, correct?

 

I would think you'd still see a significant increase in speed by doing so. I can't tell you whether you'll take a "hit" from having the programs on a separate drive and not on the boot drive with the operating system, but if you do, it's going to be very minor. In fact, it may even be faster to do it that way - especially if the system needs to make a call to the program data and the OS data on the drive at the same time. If they're on the same drive, those things would have to be done sequentially / serially, whereas with the OS and programs on separate drives, they may be able to be done closer to simultaneously / in parallel.

 

I use my C:\ drive for my OS and programs, but I do have separate drives for my sample libraries as well as for audio files, and that is a big help too.

 

The other thing that is a HUGE help is disk caching. Lots of RAM is your friend, and it will make a big difference in overall system performance. If your DAW supports it, load everything into RAM - not just the program, but all of the audio and sample files. Things work much faster from RAM than from any kind of disk drive - even a SSD.

[1001gear]

 

 

 

If I am understanding you correctly, you have one 120GB SSD that you're using as your system (C:\) drive, and are thinking of adding a second SSD as a program drive, correct?

 

I would think you'd still see a significant increase in speed by doing so. I can't tell you whether you'll take a "hit" from having the programs on a separate drive and not on the boot drive with the operating system, but if you do, it's going to be very minor. In fact, it may even be faster to do it that way - especially if the system needs to make a call to the program data and the OS data on the drive at the same time. If they're on the same drive, those things would have to be done sequentially / serially, whereas with the OS and programs on separate drives, they may be able to be done closer to simultaneously / in parallel.

 

I use my C:\ drive for my OS and programs, but I do have separate drives for my sample libraries as well as for audio files, and that is a big help too.

 

The other thing that is a HUGE help is disk caching. Lots of RAM is your friend, and it will make a big difference in overall system performance. If your DAW supports it, load everything into RAM - not just the program, but all of the audio and sample files. Things work much faster from RAM than from any kind of disk drive - even a SSD.

 

Correct; a second drive for programs. This because with 15G of written data indicated, C: shows 60G used space and 50G left !

 

It's good to know that a second SSD might even be beneficial. Can I just install to a regular folder on the new drive and leave the original Prog/Prog x86 as is and on C:?

 

 

[MarvelUndies]

 

Ok i'm back up on an ssd. 120G - should do for now. I'm wondering though, if I installed all my programs on a second 120G SSD would I gain the space without a speed penalty? The storage stuff of course would go to a big HDD. Just looking to save the 50 bucks over a 250G ssd.

 

Ooh! Something I vaguely know about!

 

Running a 120GB SSD with just my OS on it and a few core programs that I want to run quickly, then four more high capacity HDDs (between 320GB and 1TB) for media, games, software and general storage (photos and documents etc). I find this setup works pretty well with a respectable boot time and it's adequately fast. Running in conjunction with the AID FX8350 8-core CPU OC'd to 4.5GHz and 8GB RAM, soon upgrading to 16 with a water cooler. My general opinion is that if you can afford to upgrade to all SSDs, then by all means do so. You will gain performance and reliability, and above all it will be noticeable. But if you're looking to save money, HDDs are fine for running things that you're not overly bothered about being super fast and fine for storage

[Phil O'Keefe]

 

Ooh! Something I vaguely know about!

 

Running a 120GB SSD with just my OS on it and a few core programs that I want to run quickly, then four more high capacity HDDs (between 320GB and 1TB) for media, games, software and general storage (photos and documents etc). I find this setup works pretty well with a respectable boot time and it's adequately fast. Running in conjunction with the AID FX8350 8-core CPU OC'd to 4.5GHz and 8GB RAM, soon upgrading to 16 with a water cooler. My general opinion is that if you can afford to upgrade to all SSDs, then by all means do so. You will gain performance and reliability, and above all it will be noticeable. But if you're looking to save money, HDDs are fine for running things that you're not overly bothered about being super fast and fine for storage

 

Cool post. It sounds like you have a very nice system!

 

My main DAW computer has a SSD in it for the boot drive, with separate hard drives for audio files and for sample libraries. At the moment I am using HDDs for everything except the boot drive. I may eventually replace the sample library drive with a SSD. I think you're fine with a SSD anywhere you will be using it to read from a lot... I'm less comfortable with the idea of writing huge files to them over and over, and since I do my sessions cached (I'm running 16GB of RAM and getting ready to upgrade that to 32GB) I don't really see any advantage to using SSDs for my audio drives at the moment... although I think that eventually SSDs will pretty much replace hard drives.

 

[Phil O'Keefe]

 

Correct; a second drive for programs. This because with 15G of written data indicated, C: shows 60G used space and 50G left !

 

It's good to know that a second SSD might even be beneficial. Can I just install to a regular folder on the new drive and leave the original Prog/Prog x86 as is and on C:?

 

 

What OS are you running?

 

I'd leave the OS on the C drive and then just install your programs to the second / new SSD.

[1001gear]

 

What OS are you running?

 

I'd leave the OS on the C drive and then just install your programs to the second / new SSD.

 

I'm using Win7 HomeP (lol) (the only version my key would activate) Thankfully it's SP1 although the subsequent rollup requires an expert.

 

Windows configured the install as best the bios could although now I'm booting from EFI instead of the new drive. I don't quite understand the principle but it seems to be working.

 

There are already 30 plus things installed so If I install a DAW - even Audacity, I'd feel safer if it's to a second drive. The small ones are around 40 bucks give or take and the one I got - cheapest one on Amazon, does fine in personal use. Main questions regard naming of the new folders and will Windows distinguish 32 from 64 bit without issue?

 

The board has 6 connectors but according to one mobo app I only have 2 channels: 1) SATA 6 and 1) SATA 150 both in use so I'm not exactly sure how or if plugging in 2 more drives is going to work - or wok for that matter. Already reset the Win10 machine - i7 too (woopee, thrills) so there's no going back.

[1001gear]

A second 120G SSD is under 50 bucks so that's plan A. I have a 4T usb Wd for right now but I'd like to use a 1T WD black internally mainly for convenience and the 5 yr warranty.

[Phil O'Keefe]

If you're running a 64 bit version of Windows you'll need a compatible DAW - same thing if you're running a 32 bit version. Putting it on the second drive shouldn't be a problem for the OS, as long as the DAW is compatible with the OS you're running.