On the value of old effect pedals

Not as good as vintage stringed instruments, but still...

Zillions of years ago, in the late 70s, I used to be some sort of an effects pedals freak, thinking they were a must to create music.

So I spent my allowance on gear, instead of practicing. At the time, I had:

• Flanger/Chorus: Electro-Harmonix Electric Mistress
• Phaser: Electro-Harmonix Small Stone
• Spring reverb: Cathedral (more on this one later)
• Fuzz: Colorsound Tonebender
• MXR: blue box
• and a noname mixing desk

But, to no one's surprise, this didn't make me a better guitar player, and I slowly spent less and less time with these, and more with my Ibanez Blazer bass and just the Electric Mistress, then with just a Boss ME-5 pedalboard, which was actually a guitar processor: there was nothing at the time on the market specifically for bass players.

Time passed.

Years went by, and soon enough I found my self without a band, as fellow musicians either moved into virtuoso jazz/rock or built families that didn't leave them time to play. And I stopped playing anything but some bass and piano, and all of these went to gather dust on a shelf.

Then some day came the Pandora for bass (Korg Toneworks PX3B)... The Pandora is a much-improved Rockman-type of box, including a headphones output, a rather good set of effects, and a fixed-pattern drum machine. It made playing a pleasure again and motivated me to search harder for a band and find one (more on that later).

Recently I took to making some room in the house, and wondered whether any of this unused stuff could still have some value. And it has !

The Electric Mistress went on eBay for 99 EUR. I'll try to let go of all the rest and keep track of the results here. It's rather amazing to see such old effect pedals being sold used for the same price (in current euros) they were bought almost 30 years ago. Admittedly, considering the effect of inflation, it amounts to considerably less actual buying power but, hey, the price of electronics goods has being going way down since then.