There’s a support group portion here and there’s also a pledge. The point of the pledge is accountability. You can be “out”, as in you broke the pledge, but still be welcome here to be involved in the support group. There has been very minimal negativity here IMO.
Anyway, I redirected my GAS into buying a course to teach me how to use my Digitone better. Also I still have not bought a guitar (I can’t afford the one I have my eye on anyway).
I will say that if you have the Stryfecta it does tend to soothe a lot of pedal-related GAS, since you can do so much with them. I used to just plug them into my guitar and go through the presets and make up a little improv for each. Way better than surfing channels! They should keep you busy for quite a while. I mostly just look at the cool art on other pedals and close the browser tab now. Congrats on the promotion!
Just seen an mpc2500 on fb marketplace for $50. Apparently it was hiven to the person and he doesn’t have any use for it. It was about 1.5hrs drive away and i was working. The ad is now gone but i wouldn’t even consider that breaking the GAS if i did pick it up haha.
I didn’t even realize I passed my two year mark with no new gear. Feb 04 2021.
[lackluster] 
i thought it was in March…I was wrong …yay
Firstly, I’m no longer on the list of those who have not purchased. Ahh well.
I started the year making a couple of bad buys for me, with a circuit rhythm and model:samples. Neither inspire me.
I just wanted to share some podcasts that have really helped me over the past few months. I would say I have been going through a spell of growth as a person, and information taken from these has been fundamental in allowing it.
I haven’t posted possibly the most influential of all, which is about alcohol, as I know this isn’t an AA meeting haha. But not having drunk alcohol since Christmas is the fundamental base change for me which is allowing other things to blossom.
I think these are really relevant… Understanding dopamine in great detail is really helpful in understanding GAS. The last one, about habits, is proving really useful to me at the moment in approaching my music and learning to appreciate and learn my current instrument (MPC Live 2). The 6/21 habit challenge in the middle of the last video is what I’m currently working on, but if you can be bothered, it’s worth going through these in order, because of the incremental knowledge build up about the dopamine system.
The other thing I’m realising is super important is working out exactly what you need. I’ve been having executive function based coaching, provided by my employer to help with my ADHD. One of my realisations during these sessions is the strength of associations we form with spaces, and recognising my ‘studio’ is currently tied mentally to being more my ‘office’. An office I’ve spent over a year working in on my own, and feeling very stressed.
It’s helped me realise that I need to try building a music habit anywhere BUT in that room for a while, and maybe finder a better balance between home working and office time in the future. This has helped make an informed gear decision about getting the MPC, as it’s given me the portability I need, along with a good balance of production power and streamlined workflow…
Basically there was a whole mental aspect I hadn’t been considering, that was influencing my gear habits, and purchases i had been making were wild stabs in the dark to try and solve a problem I didn’t understand.
My personal goal for the year now is to just learn my MPC and continue trying to build the habit. I’m now on a 9 day run of putting at least 30 mins in a day, without getting too hung up on the results.
The only other thing I might get is a USB mixer to use with the MPC, but only if it’s a birthday present (it’s my 40th so might be due a slightly larger group gift).
I appreciate those videos, and my post, are long, but this stuff has been so helpful for me I thought I would take the time to share in case anyone can take anything from this 
Well, this is getting interesting. So far, I’ve sold one machine and bought another one (which I’ll probably kepp). However, the machine that I bought overlaps quite a bit with another piece of gear that I own, so I’ll probably sell that as well. In addition, I plan to sell a couple of smaller accessories that I don’t really use anymore.
So, if I go ahead with these plans, my net amount of stuff will have been reduced. I count that as a win, even if I’ve failed the challange. And regarding that midi controller, I frankly don’t know if I have the space for it anymore 
However, what’s most troubling to me right now is that I’m eyeing a Perkon’s HD-01 even though I already own a Syntakt that I think works great for drums. What I’m thinking is that I would like to have something even more hands on without having to navigate to different tracks and pages.
That’s solid progress, well done
The definition of GAS
I’m about 3 months late but I’m hopping on the wagon with you guys! After a couple of years of searching and deliberating I got a Monomachine to pair with my MD for live sets. I’ve switched up my live rig several times in the last year but I’m going to commit to this one until the new year (at least!). I guess if 9 months is long enough to create a baby it’s gotta be long enough to create a habit, right?
Yes, and? 
I was first struck by GAS in 2016, after my girlfriend and I broke up. At that time I was using Renoise, a few free plugins and hardware keyboard (Korg X50, but mostly as a midi controller).
I started buying a whole bunch of plugins and at first my productivity went up, but soon I got overwhelmed and… well, you know. At the beginning of 2019 I sold X50 and at the end of year I finally stopped buying stuff and uninstalled half of it. Quite some money out of the window…
Mid 2020 - working from home and staring all day at the computer, I decided to try a dawless approach for some new ideas. Just a small setup. That ignited the second GAS wave. Up until end of 2022 I bought a whole bunch of gear, got overwhelmed again and ended with not using any of it for a few months.
Last weekend I split my setup to two smaller, more manageable setups and sold first piece of gear after more than 4 years. I have to admit - It feels good! 
Now let’s see if I can take this challenge:)
Life gets in the way sometimes. I paid a lot in taxes this year and have to replace fence in my backyard and that costs a lot of cash. So no gear for me. Besides, I need to really knuckle down and master my Virus, Oberheim, Hapax, Rytm and Digitone! Those have several life times of music making possibilities. No complaints just reality and glad I have been able to buy nice gear with no debt.
After playing around with my Octatrack for a while, I just realized that it, together with my Blokas Midihub, can do everything I wanted that midicontroller to do, so I can scratch that from my list of things to buy. Now I feel stupid that I hadn’t considered this before.
Oh well, one less temptation 
Tutorials and the like are so good for counteracting GAS! I’ve found out about some lovely techniques for the OT (internal sampling) and ST (drone) lately which are set to expand what I can do with those devices. I’m no expert, so there’s loads to learn.
Cheers. I’m trying.
Sometimes it can feel like there’s still annoying steps backwards here and there, amongst the progress. But slower progress is better than no progress!
When I started my AA recovery I made the mistake of trying to do it perfectly. It’s not possible - at least not for me! I learned to just take the next right action, and let go of the past and worrying about the future. I’m not perfect at that either, but the more I do it the more freedom I have from the addictive, destructive behaviours.
It’s exactly the same with GAS for me, keep taking the next right action. Stay away from the product videos, try to replicate sounds or features with what I have (fun activity in itself), if I have 30 minutes spend that using some gear instead of watching a video.
I’m not perfect at this either, sometimes there are backwards steps, but overall exactly what you said:
So I’m still kicking here. Barely making any music cuz I’m taking care of a house full of kids all day, and gaming is taking my very small free time… but I’ve not bought anything all year other than just making payments on bitwig… should prolly open that up soon hehe
Haven’t bought any hardware so far and feeling a lot better for it! Stopped watching all of youtube, reading about sales and just focused on getting some projects done with the gear that I have.
Currently working up a way to do live sets using OT and Tempest. Learning slightly different approach to sampling on OT where i used to fill every track then build form there I’m thinking about having a whole set built from single project which forces me to use smaller samples, and keep an eye on memory. Using banks for first time and building my own scenes. The challenge often is getting the two machines to blend sound wise and I’m reaching a conclusion that they both like to be the spectrum boss. That’s fine I just need to have a 75/25 split either way and keep that in mind. Also going deeper on tempest just really blows your wig back seeing what they achieved with that machine, though I don’t see it as a bread and butter drum machine. Anyway, deeper.
Hi NGNY’ers of 2023,
I also want to make the pledge. I’ve been lurking on this thread from the beginning of january. I made the new year resolution to not buy anything this year and I just feel now that I’m falling back into old habits of looking at gear on the forum and youtube. My brain just lusts after that hit of dopamine.
I’m looking for a bit of support. Because I am very close to selling stuff and buying something new, but I feel like it would be good for me to stick to what I have, even though I can come up with perfect rationalizations why I need that other stuff. It’s not about the money or not even that I wouldn’t put the new stuff to good use (cuz I’m very productive music-wise atm), but it’s about sticking to a principle and keeping that momentum. I hope someone can relate, or has good advice for me
I really like this thread and think it’s a very healthy current under a not so healthy commodity-fetishist main-stream.