Musical gear survey

[MusicalGearSurvey]

Dear fellow musicians

In online boards, we musicians extensively discuss about instruments and gear, often with quite some passion. These discussions range from the suitability of certain instrument models for specific genres to the size of one’s instrument collection.

Research has not yet paid special attention to such discussions. This is quite surprising as there is a lot to be learned about musical and music-related practices, e.g. what motivates musicians to collect instruments, how do we use our gear to develop our musical identity and what criteria do we regard as important when acquiring a new instrument.

As musicians (guitarists, bassists and drummers) and musicologists, we aim to explore this interesting issue with an online survey. We need as many participants as possible. Being dependent on your assistance, we kindly ask you to fill in our survey. The instruments considered are guitars, bass guitars, drums, keyboards, saxophones and trumpets. The survey should take about 20 minutes and the responses are completely anonymous.

All data are used exclusively for academic (non-commercial) research in music. There is no funding involved. As musicians ourselves, we are interested to research this subject. By taking part in the study, you are supporting two academics in the early phases of their careers!

We have been given permission by the moderators to post our survey in this board. If you are interested in participating, please follow this link to visit the survey: https://www.soscisurvey.de/musicalgear/?r=16

Thank you very much for your support!

Best wishes from Germany,
Jan and Jonas

[muzines]

Other than just being "interested in this topic" - what is the goal of the research?

You must be doing this *for* something, other than just "we find this topic interesting", presumably...

I completed it anyway.

Your data might be skewed if you post this on GearSlutz.com...

[Guest271017]

You admit the info's been covered, why not sift the data yourself instead of asking people to waste 20 minutes answering a survey? Seems the survey's geared toward marketing, not an actual music purpose, to boot.

[Dynamic Mike]

I'm tired of completing surveys which start innocently enough & then after 20 minutes won't let you continue without answering mandatory personal questions, at which time I just quit. I'm not saying your survey does, I'm just letting you know why I won't be bothering.

Perhaps if you were happy to list all questions in a forum post, people would have a better idea whether or not they see any value in completing it & you'd get a better return?

[muzines]

I'm tired of completing surveys which start innocently enough & then after 20 minutes won't let you continue without answering mandatory personal questions, at which time I just quit. I'm not saying your survey does, I'm just letting you know why I won't be bothering.

From what i saw, all the questions asking for personal data had "I'd prefer not to answer" options, so I think you're OK here.

I thought it was quite a well put-together survey, FWIW...

[Dynamic Mike]

From what i saw, all the questions asking for personal data had "I'd prefer not to answer" options, so I think you're OK here.

That's fine & good luck to them. Sadly though I think the proliferation of either pointless or invasive surveys have put some of us off for good.

Anyone here from marketing?..You are the ruination of all things good.

[Dave B]

I did the whole thing. I like doing things like this - because of my skill set and preferences, I must skew all of the results.

[MusicalGearSurvey]

Thanks everybody so far for participating!

I can assure you that we don't intend to explore anything related to marketing. This survey is in the context of the academic disciplines of music technology, sociology of music and cultural studies and explores the relation between e.g. musical genres, attitudes towards equipment, kinds of bands and different person-related factors. None of the data will be sold.

Unfortunately we cannot provide you with more detailed information as long as the survey is taking place. Later, I could reference an earlier article (kind of a pre-study) showing what this survey is about.

If you have any questions or comments, please don't hesitate to ask.

We still need some more participants, so if you haven't participated yet, please think about it. Thank you!

[Hugh Robjohns]

Clearly some here take a cynical attitude towards surveys, and perhaps with some valid historical reasons.

However, and for the record, the originator of this survey had the courtesy to ask permission before posting, and persuaded me of the academic merit and non-commercial nature of this specific survey.

So, take part or not, according to your personal preference, but leave out the unnecessary and inappropriate hostility please.

H

[ConcertinaChap]

The instruments considered in our study are guitars, bass guitars, drums, keyboards, saxophones and trumpets.

Well, as a concertina player I guess that saved me 20 minutes ...

CC

[bill555]

lol - yep and singers are out as well, as well as anyone whose primary instrument isn't one of the above. And since you aren't allowed to skip questions, even when they don't offer a valid answer, I passed as well...though surveys which refuse to be clear about their purpose (esp one that takes 20 mins to fill out - that's a long survey!) aren't likely get me to respond anyway. Oh well, it may be on the up and up, not saying it isn't, but IMO it needs a little work...and tbh I suspect you may continue to have problems getting responders if you refuse to lay out its intent.

[Dave Rowles]

I found the restrictive focus on the survey a little dis-heartening, especially now reading that it's an academic study, but completed it anyway. I always say that unnecessary restrictions to your lists can mean you miss out on some vital and startling revelations about what you're looking into.

As for the fiddle, box, accordion, whistle, flute, bouzouki, harp, etc, players and singers out there that use loopers, fx, and more gear than you can shake a stick out, I guess this survey isn't for you.

[slewin49]

Well I filled it in though I can't imagine the answers will do anyone any good. I couldn't understand some of the questions. And there were an awful lot of them where I didn't want to answer "Agree/Disagree". The correct answer was obviously "Sometimes".

But it's sort of nice that someone is trying to make sense of (some of) us and I wish them luck. They'll need it.

Steve

[MusicalGearSurvey]

Dear all,
More than 4 years ago, we received permission to advertise a survey for an academic study on ‘Gear Acquisition Syndrome’ (GAS). We would like to give back for all your help by granting you access to the findings of this study, which are part of a book on GAS published this year. The entire book can be downloaded for free via this link: https://unipress.hud.ac.uk/plugins/books/27

We know that time is scarce, and we all should spend more time practising. That is why we have compiled a compact overview of our research findings, which you can access here: https://doi.org/10.34696/61g5-zd65 (using the Access Dataset download button)

As part of our endeavour to make our research available for free, we are asked to evaluate what use it has for musicians like us. If you wish to help us with this, this thread could be a platform for us to discuss:
- Have we learned something new about GAS from our research?
- Has it changed the way we think or feel about GAS?
- Will we change your practice when it comes to dealing with gear?

Hopefully our findings will foster an interesting discussion about GAS and our use of musical equipment. We appreciate your interest in our research!

Best wishes,
Jan and Jonas

[Eddy Deegan]

At first glance that looks like a very interesting PDF indeed. I've downloaded a copy and look forward to reading it properly later.

Thank you for following up and posting the results of your work. It would be great if more people did that!

[MusicalGearSurvey]

At first glance that looks like a very interesting PDF indeed. I've downloaded a copy and look forward to reading it properly later.

Thank you for following up and posting the results of your work. It would be great if more people did that!

Thanks Eddy Deegan!

[Wonks]

I know i have significantly more guitars now than I had back in 2017.

[Dave B]

I've downloaded the full paper to read later, but have just been through the summary presentation. Wow. Interesting. It is nice to see an outside and objective view of our little foibles and there are quite a few positives here. We help and encourage but don't enable and try to make sure we all stay grounded in our GAS 'struggles'. So, whilst we joke about how serious it is, we try to keep it in perspective. It's particularly heartening to see that we try and stop people getting into debt to achieve their GAS dreams.

In all, it seems to point out that our GAS is a (mostly) harmless thing that is just part of our community. Which is nice.

So ... now that that's done ... I might just go and splurge on a new Kurzweil to celebrate ...

[Funkyflash5]

I read the summery and have started on the full book, really appreciating getting a less anecdotal view of GAS than just seeing it around on the forums and among bandmates. Makes me wonder about it with respect to multi instrumentalists, and sound and recording folks. I know I've shifted gears over time, with my gear for my primary instruments (basses) settling to nearly static, while new acquisitions have moved to secondary instruments (guitars and percussion) and microphones and recording accessories. Simultaneously, the other "sound/recording" guy I play with is primarily a guitarist and the guitar/recording gear split seems to be nearly even, and he has me vastly beat in terms of both age and size of collection (although he's probably more justified as a full time pro).