This is a timely thread for me, and I'm enjoying reading all your interesting stories and great lists.
Over the years, I've amassed a fairly large collection of pedals and I have been considering thinning out their numbers. First off, I guess I have too many distortion, fuzz and overdrive pedals, and truth be told I rarely use most of them. For practical purposes, a late 1980s RAT gives me what I need. I also have far too many delay pedals, even though I only use them sparingly. And, in going through my collection of delays, I realized that tape delays are the most fun and interesting, not emulators but the mechanical tape devices. Maybe because my first delay in the 1980s was a Space Echo.
So a project I'll work on this year is to sell distortion and delay pedals. Here's most of the delays:
The delays are all in one place for the purpose of playing them to decide which to keep and which to sell. I'll also do that with the distortion pedals, and others when the time comes. Some of these delays I bought without trying them, based largely on reputation (and online recommendations!). A few of these are part of a collection of pedals from the same company. For example, the two mini Guyatone delays are part of a near complete collection of all the pedals in that line, which makes it more difficult to cull some. Same with the Pearl pedals, in fact I think I have all of those. Others are there for potential use, for example the Head Rush or Mystery Brain. And this raises another point.
For gear, some are tools and others are toys, some are held for potential use value while others for what might be called their quirk value. I have a hard time differentiating among them, so thought of playing each for a while to help me decide. I gig only sporadically and rarely record, so the tool use value could be easily determined; the quirk value or completist impulse are more challenging to me.
I suppose one factor in this dilemma is the question of "joy." Although she back-pedaled a bit after having a child, Marie Kondo posed a question to help readers to declutter their lives: Does it spark joy? If it doesn't let it go. Seems easy. Sometimes, when I walk into my music room, I can honestly say that the presence among all of these pedals (and guitars, amps, etc.) does indeed still spark joy.
But I'm going to keep moving toward thinning the collection because at some point, we have to let it all go. After helping with cleaning out my parents' house after they passed away (may they both rest in peace) I found out about how much work it can be to look after someone else's stuff. My younger brother is more practical, he just brought in an estate liquidator and let them do it. But I'm not sure, personally speaking, about leaving all that till the end (much less to someone else), and since there is the element of joy attached to the gear, I'd like to try another approach. I'm thinking about how it would be for me, while I'm still here, to give all that gear a conscious, loving--and joyful--farewell.
Having recently retired from a full-time job, I am in the process of cleaning out an office that I had for 20 years. It struck me that all the stuff I accumulated in there (mostly books, some physical media). Might be an opportunity to spark joy for someone else. So I invited in my students to pick through the books and take what catches their fancy. It worked really well! I made tea and coffee, brought some snacks, and we talked about the books. Objects have stories, and half the fun of having it is telling the attached story, which I found works well to help letting go. And then I started bringing in other stuff from home, CDs, DVDs, posters, textiles, etc. that I had accumulated over the years. It turned into a joyful experience for me, and for the students as well. It was a loving sendoff for it all.
That helped me realize that letting go may be the most difficult part of getting rid of stuff. The easy part, for me, is the actual selling, gifting, etc. For selling, I have a friend who runs an online auction shop and he has already sold some gear for me. I drop stuff off, and he does all the listing, packing, shipping for a cut of the selling price. Most things were gone and paid within two weeks. But the joy question from my office experience made me think that I might also enjoy giving away some gear to my students, many of whom are wonderful musicians. Maybe, sparking joy for another person, from a certain point of view, can be a way to feel joy for oneself, so I'm looking forward to give that a try.
This is getting verbose, so I'll end here. I wish you the best in your adventures with the joys of stuff!
