This page contains a Flash digital edition of a book.
FEATURE USED GEAR


Sign up for your digital AM at www.audiomedia.com


Caveat Emptor - The Audio Media Guide to Buying Secondhand


For those looking to stretch their budget when equipping or upgrading a studio there is no better way than to buy secondhand. But how do you know whether that deal really is just too good to be true? Jory MacKay investigates the market for buying used and brings tips and advice from the industry’s biggest brokers and resellers.


W


alking into a shop selling used pro-audio and studio kit can feel


like going deeper and deeper into an Aladdin’s cave passing shiny and not- so-shiny esoteric pieces of kit in search of that diamond in the rough. Yet there is always the risk that when you clean the grime off that ‘vintage’ piece of kit, there’s a lot less diamond and a whole lot more rough underneath. It would be a lie to say that the vintage gear craze is slowing down, with any self-respecting studio owner going above and beyond to fatten out their list of vintage microphones, preamps, consoles, and backline (we’re still waiting for the vintage plug-in craze to kick in). Te stacks of outboard that disappeared during the initial move over to digital studios in the 90s have sprung up again, with analogue kit being a big selling point for many commercial studios. But the path to a vintage-equipped studio is fraught with pitfalls that even the pros sometimes can’t avoid. Just as if you were buying a secondhand car sight unseen, what’s under the hood might not be exactly as advertised. For those looking to add some


flavour to their studio, or just stretch their budgets, there are a number of processes for procuring used kit, each with their pros and cons.


Where to Buy


Te private market is full of people moving along old kit, upgrading, or who just fancy a change. But what if you aren’t willing to part with your hard-earned cash without some type of


18 July 2014


“If it’s a bargain there’s a pretty good chance it won’t be as it seems.” Mark Thompson, Funky Junk


Knowing what you can, and can’t get spares for is important


guarantee as to what you are receiving? “You can obviously stretch your budget and pick up a bargain, but you’re in a bit of a lottery,” comments Funky Junk founder Mark Tompson. “Lets put it this way: we love eBay. Probably at least 50% of our work in the past year has been from things that people have bought on eBay and aren’t what they thought it would be. If it’s a bargain there’s a pretty good chance it won’t be as it seems.” Tompson founded Funky Junk in


London in the early 1990s. It specialises in buying vintage kit, servicing and sometimes restoring it, and then selling it with a warranty. At almost the same time across the Atlantic, engineer/ producer/musician brothers Michael and Andrew Nehra were doing something similar under the Vintage King moniker. Both had become frustrated with the lack of responsibility taken by private sellers and gear brokers of the time and understood that, as Tompson puts it: “Every single piece of gear has something that needs to be done to it and most pieces of gear that come from a professional background need a lot done to them.” Tompson uses a recent example of a Teletronix LA-2A that Coldplay


wanted to use on their new record. Te unit measured fine on all the tests but his techs said that it didn’t sound exactly right and brought in a tube specialist. “Before that goes anywhere we’re going to make sure it sounds like a Teletronix should,” he explains. “If you were buying that same unit off eBay, you’d pay the same as you would from us or Vintage King, the difference being that we would have invested £160 in bits, maybe more, plus a couple of hours on the bench. It’s not just the cost of doing that, but finding someone who has the time to do it.”


The Personal Touch


While Tomspon and Nehra have built their businesses around this model, the recording industry is still a small, tightknit group of people, and one where many deals still happen on a personal basis. Enter the pro-audio broker… “A broker’s role is one of trust and


providing a secure buffer between the buyer and the seller so that both can feel confident in trading especially when a technical authority is required to be certain of how much value for money you’re getting,” explains


Neumann mics are perenially popular on the used market


Hamish Jackson of equipment broker and studio real estate company mjQ. “Quality and assurance is the basis of a broker’s reputation, which takes a long time to establish.” Unlike Funky Junk and Vintage


King, which act more as a curated secondhand shop, a broker is responsible to both buyer and seller, which means, at least to Jackson, that sticking to a clear company policy is the best bet at making the deal as transparent as possible for both sides – something that is summed up in the unofficial mjQ motto: if it ain’t fixed, don’t ‘broke’ it!


www.audiomedia.com


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44