It’s really common advice to not start with the cheapest gear. Yes a lot of us learned to play on dime store guitars but would have suffered less with a quality instrument. The same is true for just about everything.
Exactly. I started learning harmonica on those $20 pack of 8 and struggled for weeks to get anything to sound close to what I wanted. When I spent $60 on a decent instrument, I could suddenly do what I’d been practicing. There’s a sweet spot for getting good enough equipment to actually learn without blowing the budget on something you may not continue doing
Woodworking planes.
You can go to Home Depot and get a plane for $15-20, and it will - mostly - cut wood. Spend $50-60 and get a decent name brand tool that gives a lot less grief. Spend $500 and get a Lie Nielsen that’s just on another level.
Here’s the thing, though: you have to be pretty competent to appreciate the difference between the $50 and $500 tools; and if you know what you’re doing, you can easily tune the $15 so it works almost as well as the $500. Buy cheap to get started; upgrade if it turns out you stick with the hobby. I’ll never know if I could have learned easier/faster starting with a $50 plane, but my guess is that I’d still have been gouging the shit out of everything.
Another thing that works really well is buying old when it comes to some tools.
I have a handful of 80 year old Stanley planes that are all the same quality as the expensive Lie Nielsen options, but I got them for about 50 bucks each.
on another level
Ohhh youuu
I don’t disagree with what you’re saying. But learning to tune a plane takes skill and time. People get into woodworking because they want to build things out of wood. The love of adjusting tools comes later.
The setup thing is no joke. I made a sub $200 mandolin play well out of its league with just some sandpaper to lower the nut height. I still got the nicer one but for the time inbetween it was great. Now the friend I bought it from for $50 has it on loan since she can actually physically play it now with the lower string height.
I’ve learned that the ROI on most expensive stuff just isn’t really there unless you’re deep into it and want to treat yourself or you’re a professional(which is kinda the same but I’ll keep it separate). The caveat of course is that you have to start at a semi-reasonable place like you mentioned.
I don’t know why we want to believe that the high-end stuff is made with fairy dust and that we’re not capable of these things with just a bit of effort and trust in ourselves.
Lowering the string height on my guitar made it so much nicer to play. Didn’t need to spend thousands, just needed a little work.
Absolutely agree with you, it’s about finding that value curve, where quality scales well with price. Say the cheapest ‘something’ is $10, the $20 one is twice as good, the $40 is maybe 70% better again but the $80 might only be 10% better than that.
As a beginner, I’d go for maybe the $20 option or the $40 if I were confident I’d stick with it. But yeah, it’s a pain when your ability to enjoy or succeed at a hobby is hampered by buying the cheapest option off AliExpress, haha.
Eh. I’ve been playing an $80 no name bass for five years. No one has any idea, because it sounds fine.
You don’t need to go all out. Ability is more important than name brand.
It must have some decent machine heads to hold tune. Did you buy it used?
It’s pretty great actually. It rarely goes off tune. Takes about 20 seconds with a snark.
It was brand new, off Amazon of all places. I did have to buy a new strap though, the one that came with it broke immediately.
To be honest it does have a “trumpet” sound that I’m not fond of.
I’ve got everything from an American G&L to a shitty $80 acoustic bass off Amazon. My favorite that I purchased instead of built is currently a mid level Alvarez, followed very closely by a butterscotch Squier 51 that I’ve had since they first came out (for under $100).
The biggest problem with low end guitars and bass guitars these days is mostly QC. Sharp frets, super high action, and bad tuners are fixable as long as your neck isn’t complete garbage. The problem comes in when new folks really have no idea what it should feel like and they don’t want to take it down and pay half the cost of the instrument to have a good setup done. So they suffer and quit when they could have spent $45 and turned a garbage $80 no name special into a reasonable beginner instrument.
To be fair, QC has also become a problem with much more expensive guitars as well in some cases (looking at you, Gibson).
I teach guitar. I have lost more students to a crappy beginner instrument than to any lack of desire, ambition, or ability.
I think with many hobbies there’s a two-sided trap:
If you buy the absolute cheapest, you can end up hamstrung and unable to progress. On the other end, you can get caught up in having the very best, and miss out on actually progressing because you’re convinced you just need to buy a better one.
eh, i think in photography you actually learn better habits and skills on older, more limited gear. it’s easy to nail exposure when your camera can handle work at 3,000 iso, but then when you’re at the edge of what your camera is capable of you’ll be less able to tease out the performance you need. it’s why i will keep my old canon rebel t2i. whenever someone wants to learn a little i toss them that thing. it can still take great pictures , you just have to work within its limitations. it’s why my broadcast school made me learn to do reel to reel tape editing. when you know how much tape you have and how much of a pain it is to edit you will be way way better about getting your shot right the first time and every time.
these days, instead of using these tools as a crutch to shoot sloppier knowing that the gear can handle it now, i use them as a booster to do when more than i would have been able to before. i still shoot at the minimum viable iso every time on my a7siii, the difference is now i can keep shooting until the stars are plainly visible without needing a tripod.
ironically, this doesn’t seem to hold quite as true for video now that i think about it. video is so tech and tool based. often it’s newer guys that embrace the new tech and techniques that the old heads snub their noses at that end up doing the best. maybe not in Hollywood, but Hollywood is a totally different animal from what 99% of videographers do. I’m talking about video outside of Hollywood. often these newer tools will be lower quality less professional tools for quick turnaround. the kind of thing that corporate America is all about these days. quantity over quality is the name of the game in today’s video world more often than not.
a video camera from 15 years ago is likely almost useless today for any real work, a stills camera from 25 years ago could be used to make a billboard ad right now.
Also it is important to know where to spend a money. I think that almost all hobbies have some gear where the cheapest option is best.
Yeah fuck this guys (OP, not the person I’m replying under) take. Hobbies need less gatekeepers and if I want to do research about gear, make nice purchases as a way to deepen my investment into the hobby so be it.
Example: I just got into fitness. I have almost no need for some of the products ive been buying, however through the research ive stumbled across some excellent articles and a few YouTube channels that inspire me. Even if the gear / gadgets do nothing more than inspire you to show up and try them out, its worked.
I don’t typically see people advocate for the cheapest gear, just not to go all-in. There is something to be said for how much you can learn from stuff that requires a bit more tuning or customization.
In airsoft we had people who didn’t even know there were other options show up with $40 clear plastic guns from Walmart (they’re awful) and guys with $2000 air-powered guns from the best brands show up all the time, and both of these people sucked. Typically, they both also had a bad time, because neither could realistically learn anything from their guns considering they were already as good as they were ever going to be.
My advice was always to start with a low-mid range electric rifle that can take a high-capacity magazine. Having like 400+ shots in a match is more than enough. Pick a design that is easy to get parts and accessories for so you can build on it. Someday you grow out of it and then you drop the real money on an airsoft rifle, but you can run a good starter rifle for a long time. I only replaced mine because it catastrophically broke after years of rough play: I learned a lot from modifying it and it made my next gun choice much more educated that I ever could have managed as a newbie.
Especially if it’s something that can be sold second hand for decent money, that way if you end up not sticking with it you can just sell your gear.
Skateboards with no pop. Guitars with shit intonation. More broadly: consumables that wear through too quickly and cause people to nope out of the hobby because it is ‘too expensive’, the list goes on.
There is something reassuring about quality gear because beginners don’t always know or properly understand this stuff.
With that said there is a point beyond which those returns begin to diminish.
But also objectively silly to buy the most expensive. Guitar one being a les Paul vs a seagull is probably not a good value proposition.
Most expensive is not always best, what fits you the best is the best and you don’t know what that is until you try.
gearsluts
I’ve heard “gear whore,” as well as harsher q-slur that makes it rhyme
Why do you think you’d need to not sensor yourself with whore, but can’t say queer?
On a side note, it rhymes, but it doesn’t really make as much sense as slut or whore.
I used one but not the other because my best interpretation of modern social sensibilities is that “whore” is not considered terribly offensive when it’s directed outside of its more literal sense, whereas “queer” is only acceptable in positive discussion of non-heteronormativity.
The second gear- usage just comes from a time (and communities behind the times) where the slur is used more broadly to mean “anybody I don’t like.”
“Gear queer”? Seems like a tongue twister. I thought “queer” was reclaimed or something like that, dunno if that’s the case.
What do you mean you didn’t buy a Canon 1 series? That point and shoot is a PoS you loser. 😝
I feel very personally called out by this as someone with ADHD lmao. Do not look in the closet of my craft/game room.
Eh, slutshaming, misogyny vibes
what about gear guzzler or something, i dunno i wish gear dragon or gear god didnt make the sound cool
also gear geek ig
Men are the biggest gear sluts so I’m fine with turning the misogyny around.
Thats uh, not how it works.
besides itd correlate more with wealth than gender
Depending on the hobby, this is some fucked up gatekeeping.
My first thought was riding a motorcycle as a hobby, and that is one activity that many people severely underestimate how much expensive gear you should be wearing for your safety before you even consider doing it.
Helmet, jeans, and a tank top. Psh, easy.
You forgot flip flops.
With the caveat that, if you can read my tank top, the bitch fell off.
Motorcycle example: buying a brand new 1000cc before you even know if you want to ride
Oh that’s that new “x”?! Tell me about it?!
Be excited people are joining your hobbies. Without people hobbies die.
I don’t recognize it, I use Mastodon on desktop and Megalodon on phone, same login for both.
Buy hards?
This is what I see suggested every time this meme is reposted, so I guess that’s the right answer
I like this one, but I’ve heard the term whales for gaming communities. Hobby whale is probably my go-to
Whales is the industry term in gaming lol. I do like buyhard though.
Well that’s just perfect
Perfection
What about “Well researched hobbyist”
Sometimes the cheapest option is so much worse than just getting the right gear from the beginning.
Yeah the attitude of negativity against this is basically “you aren’t really into my hobby until you’ve spent twice as much money by starting with the crappy equipment and upgrading when you realize its crap”.
Or the beginner gear makes the hobby super tedious and difficult. Who knows if you would’ve liked it with proper tools instead of trying to make it work with a shitty, poorly working set up.
I don’t think people will judge you for not getting the worst stuff. As a cyclist I’m judging the person who hasn’t ridden in a decade and decides to buy a carbon fiber bike with all the coolest custom stuff, not the person who buys a steel or aluminum bike from a well respected shop. The Walmart bikes are better than walking but there’s a big jump there and it’s in reliability. The top of the line carbon fiber frame is less reliable, but it weighs less and as such high level riders and racers will see benefits there. A newb should buy a steel frame of an appropriate size from someone who can help make sure it’s the right bike for them. That’s the well researched hobbyist.
Yeah but the TOP end MOST expensive gear is far different from the “right gear”.
How about “people supporting my hobby”? People buying better gear (be it climbing gear, better bikes, airbrush kits for models, or whatever) show manufacturers that people want improved gear which ultimately raises the baseline quality of gear in general.
Real life isn’t a video game where we each have to progress up a skill tree to “earn” better gear.
Maybe try engaging with the newbie with the fancy gadgets and making a friend who shares your hobby?
People buying stuff also makes for a healthy secondary market. 90% of my brewing gear is 2nd hand.
A lot of my camera gear is second hand too. It’s a great way to save some serious $$. As an added bonus, some of my “used” gear was very lightly used by their previous owner.
There was definitely a dude into photography in my old neighborhood. The pawn shop was absolutely filled with incredibly cheap lenses with clearly very little use.
But how am I supposed to feel better about myself when I see someone who can spend more money on my hobby than me?
You can be the guy who shows him how to actually use that fancy equipment he spent so much money on.
Thank you for this comment. I’ve seen nothing but negativity on Lemmy all day
There’s also the flip side of this - clueless beginners buying needlessly expensive things (not to them because they’re beginners but in general), in turn telling manufacturers that there’s a market for needlessly expensive things. But hopefully the people with more sense outweigh them so that the market regulates itself.
Better question… how do we find our own self-esteem without denigrating others for making choices that are absolutely none of our concern?
I vote cowpattycrusaders
Eh, a little gatekeeping is good. Especially when it prevents people with more dollars than sense from overrunning the culture of an enthusiast group.
If it’s a dangerous hobby then this becomes a safety concern.
A slur? Why?
Who cares what people want to do with their money.
Buy once cry once.
Be advised, for anything that requires preference or tuning “buy once cry once” is totally fallacious. The most expensive anything is not guaranteed to be the thing that suits you best. Still don’t need a slur, but you don’t walk into a clothing store and just buy the most expensive things. You have to put in some time and develop some preference before it makes sense to spend hard.
Now if you’re just buying an angle grinder, sure, whatever buy the pricey one: it is probably made better.
I’m not sure I’d call buying clothes a hobby but I understand what you’re saying.
I saw this posted elsewhere and the best one I saw was “Buyhard”
Well there it is.
We have one in Finnish “välineurheilija”. “Väline” is “sports equipment” and “urheilija” is athlete, so it’s literally just “equipmentathlete” and used derogatorily towarsd people who — instead of actually practicing — just show up in very expensive gear.
Has “couch expert”/“couch warrior” vibe.
Correct
If it was only easier to pronounce…
Wah-leh-neh (silent h’s and the first a is like in can and ant)
Oor-hey-leh-yuh
Okey that might not have helped at all, tbh.
In cycling we call them dentists.
But if someone is trying out one of my hobbies idgaf what gear they can afford. We all start somewhere.
Yeah I’ll admit i definitely think more highly of someone using a clearly modified bike as a newb, but it’s partly because I’m into the bicycle repair and recycling scene
Why?
Because „being asshole because of phone“ is soooooo 2010 and gatekeeping normally doesn’t feel good enough anymore.
because being excited about a new hobby isnt cool. actually starting a new hobby is an insult to all the people who’d been real fans of the hobby before you. this is the internet.
If anyone likes what I like then it’s my duty to ruin it for them by making a hostile environment where it’s no longer fun.
I don’t have hobbies because I want to enjoy them, only to feel superior to others.
I see you’ve met MOBA players.
Those people create the second hand market. Celebrate them.
I Scuba dive. Whenever I need a piece of gear, I buy used. Many times I have bought brand new gear for less than half retail. I like these people.
Yes and no. Coin collecting went through the roof during the pandemic. The result is that we’re now paying 2-3x the amount for the same coins as before covid. I welcome anyone to the hobby but I’ve had to cut back severely due to this.
Paying for expensive gear at the beginning may not be a bad idea, given the possibility: should you quit the hobby and try to sell your stuff, no one is going to buy your knockoff cheap equipment, while more quality stuff holds its value
If you can afford it, absolutely.
There’s also an argument to be made for good equipment making a hobby more accessible. Musical instruments especially. It’s almost always much harder to make a cheap musical instrument sound nice than it is a good one. From clarinets to guitars to synths. I wouldn’t be surprised if half the people who quit an instrument do so because they’re trying to learn on a $100 Walmart special, something that ironically would only sound good in the hands of a professional who wouldn’t touch it in the first place.
I once bought some cheap harmonicas and after about. 10 minutes was like “yeah, these are total crap and won’t be any fun.” So I gave them away for free to someone who knew exactly what they were and bought a real one.
