Where do you buy your used gear?

jziggy314 · Post by **jziggy314** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 7:51 am

Hey everyone. I did a topic search for used gear dealers and couldn't find anything that addressed prefered dealers of used gear as a whole. I found lots of threads talking about where to find guitar parts or used mics or used compressors but nothing that addressed all used gear.

Where do you buy your used gear? Do they have a website? If so, include a link. Thanks.

joel hamilton · Post by **joel hamilton** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 7:56 am

Sonic Circus is really cool.
Oddyssey is really cool.

Just search "vintage pro audio sals" or that sort of thing... A bunch of things come up.
Vintage king is cool.

Ebay can be okay if you want to fix something...

Avoid vintage loop, and David butler.

ChrisCo · Post by **ChrisCo** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 8:45 am

TOMB Message Board!

I've gotten a 2 channel Mic preamp, an assortment of microphones. All good, all of the time!

fremitus · Post by **fremitus** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 9:22 am

seing as i work part-time for sonic circus there's an obvious bias, and as of recent it's my primary place to grab good stuff cheap, no doubt.

and at the risk of giving away my secrets to buying low, selling high, here's a couple of nifty places to prowl...

government liquidation - such a hidden gem, but i love you guys so screw it, the secret's out. they have silly deals on gear here and there, but you have to get it or arrange for shipping, and some of it has definitely been worked pretty hard, but you can often fix it for less than buying it.

sweetwater trading post - it's probably the only good thing that i'll bother saying about sweetwater, but this is a free bulletin board for people to list gear that they are selling, there's some definite wankers posting on it, but there are occasional diamonds in that rough.

another slick way to go is to check out all of the colleges in your area and find out how they handle their surplus. when they get rid of stuff it's almost free. for a while i was making a LOT of money on the side, buying and selling stuff from my local community college alone, once i expanded it became too much work to deal with unless i wanted to make it a job.

i have a couple of others, but i have to keep a couple of secrets so that i have that certain 'je ne sais quois' that keeps the ladies coming back.

(that was stupid)

colby

Coco · Post by **Coco** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 9:22 am

I have had good luck off of the TOMB and great luck on the Gearslutz classifieds. I have never been burned and things are usually better than described.

megajoe · Post by **megajoe** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 10:01 am

I'll second the college surplus. I have made away like a bandit at the university here.

Russian Recording · Post by **Russian Recording** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 10:11 am

i have heard a lot of people recommend sonic circus, but I will have to say that i had really terrible experience with them. I experienced bad communication, dishonesty and poor customer service. And no apology. Just my experience.

mike

centurymantra · Post by **centurymantra** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 10:28 am

fremitus wrote:seing as i work part-time for sonic circus there's an obvious bias, and as of recent it's my primary place to grab good stuff cheap, no doubt.

and at the risk of giving away my secrets to buying low, selling high, here's a couple of nifty places to prowl...

government liquidation - such a hidden gem, but i love you guys so screw it, the secret's out. they have silly deals on gear here and there, but you have to get it or arrange for shipping, and some of it has definitely been worked pretty hard, but you can often fix it for less than buying it.

sweetwater trading post - it's probably the only good thing that i'll bother saying about sweetwater, but this is a free bulletin board for people to list gear that they are selling, there's some definite wankers posting on it, but there are occasional diamonds in that rough.

another slick way to go is to check out all of the colleges in your area and find out how they handle their surplus. when they get rid of stuff it's almost free. for a while i was making a LOT of money on the side, buying and selling stuff from my local community college alone, once i expanded it became too much work to deal with unless i wanted to make it a job.

colby

Those are some good tips. We've got a college surplus shop with some pretty cool deals, though there's enough scavenger hounds that frequent the place at the crack-of-dawn that it's tough sometimes to get the 'good stuff'. Most of those guys aren't audio geeks though, and I know a friend of mine who is scores some pretty cool stuff. I remember an Altec compressor he found for, like, $7 that he sold for around $800-900 after putting new tubes in it and giving it an exam on the work bench.

Thanks for the government surplus tip. That's a good one. Will keep an eye on that. I'm especially excited to find four pallets of used VCR players! Was just getting ready to post a WTB ad on TapeOp!...

I'll add my thumbs-up for Gearslutz while we're at it. Regular posters are pretty upstanding audio-folk over there.

Harry · Post by **Harry** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 11:33 am

this is a handy page....

http://www.heaudio.com/html/Prolink/Links/sales.html

ubertar · Post by **ubertar** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 1:47 pm

Russian Recording wrote:i have heard a lot of people recommend sonic circus, but I will have to say that i had really terrible experience with them. I experienced bad communication, dishonesty and poor customer service. And no apology. Just my experience.

mike

They'll call you right away if you place an order for a $0.00 Telefunken mic though!

bannerj · Post by **bannerj** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 2:53 pm

gearslutz, you have to join in order to access their classifieds page and it is down at the bottom of the main index page and easy to miss. Membership is free so no sweat. It is a good accountable community. I bought a G5 and had trouble with damage in the shipment and fedex wasn't cooperating. The seller was so concerned about being a good seller and keeping a good reputation on gearslutz that he just bought the computer back from me and dealt with fedex himself.

I also just scored a red type b on there for $575 with everything it originally came with mount and cable.

Coco · Post by **Coco** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 3:42 pm

bannerj wrote:gearslutz, you have to join in order to access their classifieds page and it is down at the bottom of the main index page and easy to miss. Membership is free so no sweat. It is a good accountable community. I bought a G5 and had trouble with damage in the shipment and fedex wasn't cooperating. The seller was so concerned about being a good seller and keeping a good reputation on gearslutz that he just bought the computer back from me and dealt with fedex himself.

I also just scored a red type b on there for $575 with everything it originally came with mount and cable.

Yup, good honest folks here and on Gearslutz.

Just to fuel the fire, a friend bought 6 silverface UREI 1176's form our local airport for $50 CDN each when they put in a new PA system. 4 of the 6 were consecutive pairs and he ebayed the hell out of them and kept one for himself, that he never uses or plugs in because he says it is too noisy. Bastard.

effector · Post by **effector** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 8:14 pm

in the same vein as the college surplus, has anyone had luck buying stuff from local radio stations? i've thought about calling around to see if i can find some old compressors or mixers or whatever, but....i don't even have the money to buy anything if i found a deal.

jziggy314 · Post by **jziggy314** » Mon Jun 12, 2006 9:12 am

Great suggestions all around.

Let me clarify my situation and see if we can't squeeze a little closer to the mark.

First, I am getting insurance price quotes for equipment that was either heavily damaged or destroyed in a fire. My job is to find the highest price I can for each piece of gear. Essentially backwards from how all of us think about hunting for gear. The owner does intend on replacing the equipment but the insurance hoops have to be jumped through first.

Secondly, some of the equipment is vintage and readily found from sonic circus, etc. Some of it is custom furniture by Travis Smith. (if anyone is familiar with this guy please point me in the right direction). Some of it is fairly new technology that is not as easily found used.

Third, if I just can't find some gear, would sonic circus or any other comparable service be willing to use their resources to find the gear that I couldn't?

Fourth, the quotes have to come from reputable dealers so classifieds are out as well as any auctions on ebay though "buy it now" items are acceptable though not preferred.

Again thanks for the feedback.

blixton · Post by **blixton** » Mon Jun 12, 2006 10:48 am

what is college surplus?

Where do you buy your used gear?

Where do you buy your used gear?

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