Outboard Gear: Investment or Indulgence?

This week on The Pro Audio Suite, the team dives into a question every engineer, producer, and voice actor has wrestled with: is outboard gear still worth the space and the spend?

From vintage LA-2As and Neve compressors to Avalons, VariMus, and the rise of clones and plug-ins, we break down:

• Whether classic hardware really goes up in value

• Why collectors, commercial studios, and voice actors see things differently

• The surprising role of AI in modeling old gear

• When plug-ins are “close enough”… and when they’re not

• Tales of gear that doubled in value (and some that didn’t keep up with inflation)

Join Robbo, AP, George the Tech, and Robert Marshall as they debate if that rack of gear is an investment or just taking up space.

Recorded with Source-Connect, edited by Andrew Peters, and mixed by Robbo.

🔗 Find us online at proaudiosuite.com

Thanks to our sponsors:
🎤 Tribooth — use code TRIPAP200 for $200 off
🎙 Austrian Audio — Making Passion Heard

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
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Welcome.
Hi.
Hi.
Hi.
Hello, everyone.
To the Pro Audio Suite.
These guys are professional, they're motivated.
With Tech the VO stars, George Witton, founder
of Source Elements, Robert Marshall, international audio engineer,
Darren Robbo-Robertson, and global voice, Andrew Peters.
Thanks to Triboo, Austrian Audio, Making Passion Heard,

(00:20):
Source Elements, George the Tech Witton, and Robbo
and AP's international demos.
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Line up, man.
Here we go.
And welcome to another Pro Audio Suite.
Thanks to Tribooth.
Don't forget the code, TRIPAP200, to get $200
off your Tribooth, and Austrian Audio, Making Passion

(00:44):
Heard.
Today's topic, I'm going to steal this one,
and I will give credit to Bobby Yosinski,
his podcast, The Inner Circle.
He's doing an interview, and one of the
subjects sort of jumped out at me, and
I thought, that's interesting.
Being a person who holds a lot of
expensive outboard gear, and I know Robert has
the same habit, is it worth hanging on

(01:04):
to, and will it go up in value?
And is it better than plugins?
That is my question I pose to you.
I think you've got to frame it by
whose point of view.
From a studio owner's point of view, or
commercial studio owner's point of view, from a
voice actor's point of view, and from just
like a sheer collector's point of view.
From a hoarder's point of view.

(01:25):
I think, well, there's a few different points
of view.
I mean, if I was to sell my
stuff, then I'd probably end up selling it
to a commercial studio, I'm guessing, because a
voice over talent's not going to buy the
stuff I've got in here.
But a music studio, I may.
Right.
So, what we're banking on, is there going
to be more commercial grade music studios vying

(01:48):
for this less and less common gear.
It's harder to get.
That would drive up the price.
Because, I mean, the thing is, a lot
of the stuff you buy now, there's so
many clones of all this classic gear.
Purple, and warm, and there's all these companies,
right?
But don't you reckon there's something tactile about
turning a knob, you know, or adjusting it?

(02:10):
Yeah, but you can get that with a
clone of the new stuff, as the old
stuff.
Not even a digital clone, but an actual
analog clone.
Yeah, yeah.
You can get that.
And some of that kind of holds its
value, probably.
But the original LA-2As, and the original
1176s, those go way up in value.
I had an original Tube Screamer pedal that
was stolen from me.

(02:31):
And those things are like $1,000, and
I have a reissue now of a Tube
Screamer, and I don't know if it sounds
different or not.
So somebody out there, those pedals are worth
a lot more when they're the original one,
that they don't make anymore, that has the
what-have-you chip in it, that you
can't get anymore.

(02:51):
So I don't know that a lot of
that stuff really makes such a huge difference
in sound, to be honest.
Like a purple 1176 is still a really
great compressor, as an original 1176.
But there's definitely a lot of cachet.
Yeah, it's like microphones, really.
I mean, you know, a classic E47, you're

(03:11):
going to be paying like $25,000 for
it, or a U67 for sure.
So, you know, I mean, I'm guessing it's
going to be the same with Outboard.
If you had a 2254, an original square
2254, that would be worth a fortune.
Probably like $10,000 or something, or more,
I don't know.
So a lot of people are getting used

(03:33):
to, this was the interesting part, it's like
you get a reference.
So if you started as an intern in
a studio, and you worked your way up
in a proper commercial studio, you have a
reference in your head, you know, the sound
of the real stuff.
So when you hear a clone, you know,
unless it's a very good clone, you'll pick

(03:54):
it, you'll pick the difference.
But a lot of people are kicking off
their careers in bedrooms, so they have no
reference of what this stuff sounds like.
I mean, let's just take something we're looking
at.
How close is that 737 plug-in to
those units behind you?
Oh, right here?
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's pretty close, because I've, you know, the

(04:15):
reason I have some to get rid of
is we've been replacing them with the virtual
plug-in.
And in this particular case, in my opinion,
the 737 preamps being class A, they're very,
very clean.
I mean, they really have no character to
them.
They don't have transformers, and they just have

(04:38):
a really clean sound.
So in my opinion, they're really easy to
replace, because they don't really have much sound,
character to them, not like a Neve or
something.
So in my opinion, it's very easy to
replace them.
Now we've used the plug-ins, and we
did some extensive testing with one of my
clients, obsessively so.
We did hear a difference between his particular

(04:59):
Avalon 737 and the plug-in we were
using, that it was an EQ thing.
I found a little frequency that I...
Is it better or worse, or just different,
you know?
It wasn't a better or worse thing, it
was just not exactly identical.
There was something in the mids, like in
the 2k-ish, where somewhere that wasn't exactly
the same, and we bumped one up a

(05:21):
dB or two.
I mean, it was similar.
It was really, really similar.
I think a better comparison could be maybe,
and I don't have one, of course, but
a Manley VoxBox to the VoxBox plug-in.
If someone wants to buy me the Manley
VariMu, I've got a VariMu.
You have a VariMu?
I have a VariMu, yeah.
Oh, wow.
Do they still make those?

(05:42):
I think so.
Okay.
So what's the concept behind a VariMu?
The compression style, it's like, I forget exactly,
but it's like, you know, instead of an
optical, it's a variable Mu, which I would
have to AI it to re-remember.
You have to Google that one.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, speaking of AI, I used

(06:04):
an AI, and I put into the system,
here, has the value of used vintage audio
recording equipment increased at a rate that outpaces
inflation?
Well, the first piece of data it gave
me was about new audio gear, and that
clearly is a different story.
It says it has deflated sharply since 1977.

(06:25):
So, you know, the equivalent of a $20
to, is about, $20 with a gear in
77 would now be $5.80 worth.
Like if you're going to go buy a
receiver, right?
There's just, they've devalued because they've gotten so
much cheaper to produce.
But let's talk about vintage gear, and again,

(06:47):
it's doing a comparison here of consumer stuff,
not pro.
Yeah.
I want to mention a Sansui G9000.
It has doubled in value in two years,
while some Marantz units are escalating rapidly also.
But others have noted that things like the
1178, it says, 1178.

(07:08):
1178?
Yeah, that's- It might be, I mean,
that's a home stereo amp, or the-
No, now it's going into pro audio, and
I think it's starting to hallucinate, because the
model numbers are 1178LA2A and CL1B.
Anybody know what a CL1B is?
The CL1B is a modern re-create of
a Tubetech, I mean, is a Tubetech re

(07:28):
-create of a Pultec- Yeah, so these
model numbers are a little bit word-synced.
I think, or CL1B is known as a
compressor.
So- It's a Tubetech compressor though.
So a community member notes that reissues and
vintage models from a rate, they climbed from
2,200 to 2,700 and over 3
,000 during the pandemic era.
Certain brands from the 1670s continue to go

(07:50):
up in price because of reputation and looks.
They're going up roughly the same rate as
the stock market, says somebody on Gearspace.
Oh, wow, okay.
Well, here's one I can tell you, I've
got a Neve 1073 DPA.
I bought it probably 10 years ago, I

(08:10):
guess.
I think I paid $2,000 for it.
I've just seen the used one on eBay
for 4,000.
Wow, so 10 years ago, you doubled your
money.
If you could sell it for that.
I always search for closed or completed sales
because there's a lot of like, I'll put
it, there's a lot of stuff on eBay
that is the wife has been nagging me

(08:31):
to sell this shit for years.
So I'll put it up on eBay for
aspirational price and just let it sit there
for five years so that she doesn't nag
me about it.
Honey, it's on eBay.
I'll tell you one that I did actually
do really well on.
I bought a Neve eight channel mixer from

(08:52):
the 80s right after like Rupert left.
So it's like, and I bought that thing
for five grand and I think it's 15
,000 now.
Some people try to get 15,000 for
it now.
I don't know if they're getting it though
again.
I think it has to be really venerable.
The stuff, the more it's knocked off, the

(09:14):
more it's probably worth.
Wouldn't you say?
Yeah.
So this one's not knocked off a lot.
And if anything, it's knocked on like, you
know, all the Neve snobs were like, that's
not a Neve because Neve wasn't there when
Neve made that.
Oh, I see.
That's a John Pope.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know.
What model is the one you're talking about,
AP?
The 1073 DPA, which is IMS Neve.

(09:35):
But if your 1073 was an original 1073,
it'd be like fricking $10,000 more.
Yeah.
Yeah.
In the States.
Because yours is an actual Neve recreate, but
it is a Neve.
Yeah.
It's legit.
It's not like a heritage.
Oh, it's basically like Neumann.
It's a circuit match, right?
It's an exact circuit match.
Well, as much as Neve can match it.

(09:58):
A brand new one in the U.S.
right now is 2743.
Yeah.
So that's 540s.
With the exchange rate up there, close to
4,200.
Yeah.
Which is about the same.
What are Verimuse going for?
I don't know.
I'm on Reverb.
You guys use Reverb down under?
I've bought a lot of stuff off Reverb.

(10:18):
Have I?
I know of Reverb, but no.
I don't know whether people sell much.
No.
What's Reverb?
It's very trustworthy.
It's good for pricing, that's for sure.
Yeah.
So...
Five grand?
5,500?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I got mine for four.
But you can buy them for 3,500
bucks.
Used.
So, $3,300.

(10:39):
It's like, I've lost money on that one.
The 2254 Neve compressor, the AMS version, which
is what I've got here.
A new one of those is 4,500
Australian dollars.
But if you have a 2254 limited compressor
vintage rack stereo pair, U.S. dollars?
12,000.

(11:02):
Hmm.
So, yeah.
I mean, there's certain gear that is still
very commonly available and or still being made
new, which definitely is going to happen.
You know, like the Avalon's are a great
example.
They still produce these.
I think the Varium U is still being
made.
Right.
So, that drives down the use price a
fair deal.

(11:22):
And I thought these things were worth well
over two grand.
They're worth 1,500 to 1,700 bucks,
the Avalon's.
For those Avalon's?
And you know what?
Every one of them that I'm selling has
been refurbed.
So, there's about $500 to $700 in labor
into each one of these units.
So, I have to recoup 1,000.

(11:43):
I can recoup 1,000 bucks maybe on
these.
But yeah, they're definitely not going up in
value in terms of used market, the Avalon's.
They're pretty kind of stable.
The other question is, as people dealing with
audio, can you hear the difference between a
clone or a plug-in as opposed to

(12:03):
a real piece of…
Well, I mean, you can have five LA
-2As that are all going to sound different,
right?
Yeah.
And that's the problem with anything that's got
tubes or old wiring and capacitors and stuff.
All that stuff degrades and ages over time.
So, like I said, when I bring these
Avalon's into my friends over at Audio Rehab,

(12:25):
which is the official repair center of Avalon
for the entire United States, it's going to
come out of there benching as a new
unit.
No questions asked.
No, you would not hear the difference in
that case.
But yeah, when they're truly vintage and they
haven't been benched in 5, 10, 20 years,
yeah, they're all going to sound different for
sure.

(12:45):
In fact, even UA has in their library
of teletronics LA-2As, their models, there's three
or four different models.
They all have a different image on the
screen and one looks like it's got little
Dymo labels stuck on it, like somebody's original
piece of gear out of his…
It probably came out of, you know, what's
-his-face's studio.

(13:06):
And people played with this.
Who's the plug-in manufacturer that we interviewed
where it's like, that's not just anything for
a child, that's so-and-so's for a
child that we cloned?
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then the other one is Plugin Alliance
that they have.
Imagine you have a Neve desk and there's
80 channels in the Neve desk.
It's expected that not all 80 channels are
the same.

(13:27):
And so in their plug-in, when you
throw the plug-in down many times, they
have a setting that they have patented that
gives every single plug-in reiteration of that
within your DAW a different sound.
Oh my God.
You didn't know about that?
No, I mean, that's not the world I
live in, but that's insane.

(13:49):
I mean, I know what it's all about,
authenticity, but holy smokes.
Well, it's like sampled instruments.
Sampled pianos and Rhodes and stuff only got
good when they started sampling them at every
velocity, you know, softer, harder, harder, harder, harder,
you know?
And it's still not good enough.
It's still not the same.

(14:10):
When you go with the really soft, you're
like, man, I can hit a piano hammer
so soft that it doesn't make any sound.
Right, yeah.
Yes.
Plugin Alliance calls it variable harmonics.
Wow.
And you can make it...
Is it sort of a randomizer?
It's a randomizer that changes the TVT.
No, no, no, sorry, sorry.

(14:30):
Tolerance Modeling Technology, TMT, patented by Brainworks.
This technology is used by many plug-in
products, including the Lyndall Audio 50 Series.
Functionality, TMT emulates the minor component variations found
in various analog hardware.
This process adds a slight realistic difference in
tolerance between every single plug-in channel.

(14:52):
I don't like the way this mix sounds.
Hang on, hit the button.
Click.
Let me fuck it up.
Randomize all the models.
Right.
Do it again.
Now that's better.
I think I like that better.
Now go back to the first one.
I can't.
It was random.
So by introducing these subtle imperfections, TMT creates
harmonic variations across multiple tracks, which provides depth

(15:15):
and realism associated with analog consoles.
Wow.
Maybe they couldn't make it consistent, and then
they called it a feature.
There you go.
Well, if it's machine learning based, then it
would have problems.
Patent that flaw.
Well, anything that's machine learning has problems with
consistency.
If that's part of what's going on, I

(15:35):
don't think so.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's fascinating.
And I haven't really seen machine learning entering
the world of modeled preamps and modeled gear
yet, so I guess that's the next thing
probably.
You could go to the plug-in and
go type into the thing.
I just hit you with a hammer three
times.
What do you sound like now?

(15:56):
You know, it's like microphonic and it's distorting.
It's like the spring reverb that they modeled
the sound of someone kicking the amp.
Right.
They did that.
Did they really?
Yes.
And one of the soft tube spring reverb,
you can flick it and it, you know,

(16:20):
like there's a knob for it.
It really does depend on how unique the
pre is, I think, or the pieces.
How hard it is to find and how
popular it is right now.
Some of it's not really like gaining.
Some of it's matching, you know, like inflation
and some is outpacing it.

(16:42):
Some is doing as well as stock.
I mean, if you have a used piece
of gear that's doing as well as the
stock market, that's pretty good.
Because the stock market is better than real
estate.
And at least here it is.
But we've also seen the real estate market
go haywire too.
So it's fascinating to look at.

(17:04):
But it doesn't really go down or down
fast.
So there's that.
I mean, I have a bag of junk
silver that hasn't really gone up in value
in the last 10 years.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I might actually have lost money on that.
If you talk to Andrew Sheps, he mixes
in the box now.
Yeah.
You mean the creator of the Sheps Omnichannel?

(17:26):
Yeah.
Yeah, of course.
He made his own plug-in.
Why would you spend all the time to
make a plug-in if you didn't believe
it was amazing?
But, I mean, you recall the desk.
And you know how clients are.
And it's a business.
And it is so much more practical to
mix in the box and recall that thing
and make a tweak.

(17:46):
Yep.
And the most you want to have is
maybe something on your master chain.
But if you get too far out on
gear, you can only mix it in one
place.
You can't have it on your laptop.
You can't recall it and do a quick
change for somebody.
Let's talk about summing amplifiers sometime too.
That's a whole other mystical piece of the
mix down puzzle.

(18:06):
Summing amps.
Or even people just talking about different DAWs
having different summing characteristics.
I always use the Harrison DAW because of
its summing.
Oh, it's real analog.
Or UA is trying to say that their
Luna sounds real.

(18:29):
And then Pro Tools has heat on the
mix bus.
Right.
Which is literally just all of these things
are distortions.
Just distortions.
Yeah.
Tape saturators, virtual tape decks, et cetera, et
cetera, et cetera.
Yeah.
I can say having used tape saturators and
real tape, it's really hard to get one
that feels really exactly the same.
Oh, yeah.
There's just something about tracking drums through tape

(18:51):
that works really well.
It takes away a lot of compressor work
later.
And I think it's really the drums themselves.
Yeah, it does the compression for you.
You don't have to spend nearly as much
time monkeying with compressors trying to get that.
Yeah, it just kind of gets them in
a nice fat, kind of consistent.
I don't know about consistent, but just has

(19:12):
a certain roundness without being overly compressed.
And it just happens for you so much
easier.
And then you try the tape emulators, and
they're just flipping them on and off.
You're like, can I hear it?
And probably the difference is the tape deck
is really messed up.
The tape emulators are emulating a tape deck
that's properly set up.

(19:32):
Meanwhile, your love of the tape deck is
it's not really well calibrated or hasn't been
calibrated in a while.
Well, I mean, I've been listening to cassette
tapes a little bit because I bought my
daughter a cassette boom box, little mini tiny
one that has CD player in the top
and Bluetooth and stuff.
And I was at her house, and I
played a tape that I'd bought for her,
a Billie Eilish tape, her newest albums on

(19:54):
cassette.
And I played it back on her deck,
and it sounded like shit.
I was like, is that the deck or
is that the tape, right?
So fortunately, I had made her a dub
of my own.
I took her top 30 songs on Spotify,
recorded them through a Sony cassette deck that
I bummed off a friend of mine who

(20:15):
never uses it, right?
And it won't rewind, but it still records
perfectly.
And I made a tape for her.
I had that tape too.
I put that into her deck, and it
sounded so much better.
All it did remind me is that bin
-looped mass-produced cassettes still sound like garbage.
Sound like garbage.
Maybe Billie Eilish cleaned the heads of her

(20:37):
tape deck.
Right?
But the point of those cassettes is not
at all about quality because I was shocked
at how good the tape sounded when I
made that one for my daughter.
I actually sat and listened to pretty much
the whole tape, headphones plugged right into the
deck.
And I was like, damn, this sounds pretty
good.
Because you can't hear above 14k anymore?
It just sounded pretty solid, you know?

(20:57):
It sounded clean and good.
And then I shipped her off the tape.
But I don't know, my point being, I
guess, is that, you know, I don't know
what my point is.
Go ahead, AP.
I was just going to say that I
remember years ago, I was back in the
80s, I was in the UK doing some
interviews, and they'd always give you like a
white label or promotional copy of whatever record

(21:20):
you're going to be talking to the person
about.
And the best one I got was actually,
which I've since lost, which is so annoying,
it was the drummer from Orange Juice, a
guy called Zigbang Yika.
And they gave me his album on cassette,
and it was a chrome cassette, chrome tape.
Man, did that sound good.
They can sound good, yeah.
Yeah, that was very good.
So here's one that went up in value.

(21:42):
I still have my Tanscam 688 8-track
cassette.
I bought it in 1994 or 1992.
New.
No, no, I bought it like 1990.
Okay, so it was used.
I graduated in 92.
So I bought it new in 1990.
Oh, new, yeah.

(22:03):
And it was $1,600.
I took a loan out to buy that
thing.
Yeah, yeah, that's a lot of money.
Now, one in good condition, it's $2,500.
Well, is that keeping up with inflation?
But that's probably not the same value as
the $1,600 I spent.
No, because I love this.
I don't think that kept up with inflation.
Okay, so ready?

(22:23):
If you took $1,600 and put it
in the stock market, this would be funny.
Don't depress yourself.
Yeah, you'd be about $2,500.
$1,600 times, we're going to say 5%.
And what is that, 1990?
So 10, 20, 35 years?
35 years ago, yeah.
That's frightening, isn't it, 35 years ago?
Good God.

(22:44):
Yeah, if you put it in the stock
market, you'd have $8,800.
And that's conservative.
You probably would have a lot more than
that.
Which we'd buy you a meat pie and
a beer these days anyway.
So, you know.
Yeah, that's right.
We're doing 20% lately.
Yeah, 20%, you'd have a crapload.

(23:05):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
You could buy my stuff, and then I
could invest the money into something else.
There you have it.
Pro Audio gear, not a solid.
I had a hell of a lot of
fun with that thing.
Yeah.
It ain't all about the resale value.
No.
Well, that was fun.
Is it over?
It's over with me.
The Pro Audio Suite.
With thanks to Tribooth.

(23:25):
And Austrian Audio.
Recorded using Source Connect.
Edited by Andrew Peters.
And mixed by Robbo.
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(23:46):
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