Recording Gear Choices: When Too Much Slows You Down

You absolutely need another compressor plugin. The other six are probably lonely.

At least, that is the kind of logic Chris & Jody put under the microscope in this episode of Inside the Recording Studio. Because somewhere along the way, building a studio can quietly turn into collecting home studio gear like you are preparing for a recording emergency that may never happen.

One guitar needs a backup.

Naturally, the backup needs a backup.

And apparently that guitar needs another backup because... reasons.

Plugins are even easier. There is always another compressor, EQ, effect, or shiny new tool waiting to convince you that this one will finally make everything sound better. Meanwhile, buried somewhere in your existing collection are hidden features in studio gear you have never touched.

Possibly because you forgot you owned the gear in the first place.

Chris & Jody dig into that wonderfully ridiculous cycle of collecting more stuff while barely scratching the surface of what is already available. It is part gear obsession, part studio reality check, and part admission that musicians and engineers can be very good at finding reasons to acquire another toy.

But there is a serious question underneath the jokes.

Does having more gear actually make your mixes better?

Sometimes it might. Having the right tool matters. But having twenty versions of the same basic tool does not automatically give you twenty times the ability. At some point, another choice is simply another choice.

And choices add up.

Instead of working on the music, you can end up searching through plugins. Instead of learning one tool deeply, you bounce between ten. Instead of discovering what your current recording setup can do, you start wondering what you should add to it.

That is where Chris & Jody flip the question around.

What if the next great addition to your studio is something you already own?

Open that plugin you ignored. Look through the features on the gear sitting beside you. Find the tool you bought because it looked amazing and then somehow never learned. There may be more hiding inside your current setup than you remember.

And yes, your wallet will probably appreciate the experiment.

This is not an anti-gear episode. Gear is fun. Plugins are fun. Guitars are fun. The absurdity starts when collecting all of it gets in the way of the reason you wanted a studio in the first place.

Making music.

So before you buy compressor number seven, spend some time with compressors one through six. One of them might already do exactly what you need.

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