Very little market for rack gear.

[Axtman]

As a hobby, I buy broken amps, repair them, and sell them. It has become increasingly hard to sell rack gear. Prices are extremely low. My guess is that musicians either want old tube amp heads or new lightweight Class D amplifiers and nothing in between. Nobody wants heavy rack gear.

Has this been your experience?

[Mick Bailey]

It does seem to me to be out of fashion generally. I do have one pro who still uses rackmount stuff - he's just had a Kemper rack unit as well as a power conditioner to add to his collection. In general I see very little rackmout stuff and it's mainly PA amps and related sound reinforcement gear, or bass heads rather than guitarists equipment. A lot of bass players here are still using heavy iron such as SVT4 Pro or Eden WT800 amps. The old rackmount FX units are in general worth so little that nobody has them repaired, the exception being some studios still send me old 80s and early 90s units.

[glebert]

The market has definitely gotten weird. I do the same sort of "fix and flip" as you do. Basically any PA gear that isn't powered speakers or digital mixers is almost not worth selling. For bass amps I have been trying to sell off my Eden VT-.40 (rack mount) and can't get any takers, but if it was a WT400 I bet I would have sold it by now. There are some great Hartke heads (rack mount) that also sell for very little. Sometimes though the usage models change and the old stuff falls out of fashion, such as bi-amping.

[Axtman]

Gelbert,

I agree. Old PA gear is pretty much worthless (unless is so old that it is tube). My church upgraded their PA and I did some research into how much we could get for selling the old gear. It was disturbingly low. I think the old gear is still collecting dust in some closet.

[Randall]

Who wants wants rack gear when the new digital boards pack such a punch? A pair of 2000 watt powered speakers that weigh 35 lbs and a Presonus or likewise board, and you're in business. I do the occasional wedding or open mic, and I can fit my entire 6000 watt remote controlled system in the back of my Jeep Liberty. Although, I do have one two space rack that houses my power conditioner and some AC extension cables.

[olddawg]

Why left heavy, unreliable, old gear when new, inexpensive stuff works so much better. Especially live. I have his argument constantly with people I play with.

[Axtman]

I too like lightweight Class D amps and Neodymium speakers. My rotator cuff surgery two years ago made me re-evaluate my equipment choices. That said I still have some great sounding SWR and Ampeg bass rack gear.

I wonder if rack gear will come back into style?

[olddawg]

I played a New Years Eve gig.. our bass player had no amp on stage at all. SansAmp DI. I can’t tell the difference. I still use a small tube amp for natural sustain and feedback. But a lower stage volume and in ear monitors is where it’s at nowadays. I can’t get this particular band to use in ears. They have to have their 15” wedges. But I prefer modern in ears..

[Chuck H]

It has become increasingly hard to sell rack gear. Prices are extremely low. My guess is that musicians either want old tube amp heads or new lightweight Class D amplifiers and nothing in between. Nobody wants heavy rack gear.

It's partly due to trends. There's no line at the 8 track tape trading counter at the failing brick and mortar vintage music store in my town

I'm not saying that some of the best gear of the era won't achieve a cult following. In fact some has. But the rack mount thing started in, what?, 1990? And lasted until maybe 2000 as THE way it gets done. So a decade in popular method. Considering that most of that stuff was post industrial east Asia and SS. That is, made with cheap components in the cheapest way possible at the beginning of a disposable and cheap market strategy and using any new and soon to be outdated tech that's soon to be obsolete in a growing industry. You can't even get chips for most of that stuff anymore... No, I don't expect the market to be strong other than very selectively. No more than I expect plaid flannel shirts to sell more than they did in the 50's just because the PNW grunge movement touted them in the 90's.

JM2C

[Enzo]

Gear has to do something useful. When I was on the road a Vocal Master was a happening PA. It even had REVERB!! 6 channels. FOur vocal mics left us two for the drums and everything else. Hipsters got a Shure M68 mic mixer for a sub mix, mine was the drums. That left one channel. Now anyone can have a 16 or more channel mixer with aux sends, graphic EQ, DFX includes reverb as well as delay, pitch shift, phasing or whatever. I had to grab the Echoplex from the guitarist and quick plug it into his vocal channel so we could do Jump into the Fire. Stuff that might have been outside gear became part of the mixer.

Guitar amps often have DFX these days, and tuners, and for all I know a cigarette lighter and a alarm clock. Much as I like the look of that old Cylon rack tuner swinging away back in a rack, seems silly now to have a whole piece of rack gear taking up rack space JUST to be a tuner.

Used to be a Fuzz Face and a wah pedal on the floor. Now half a recording studio exists on the average pedal board. Or one of those hundred effects in one deals with a row of stomp switches...same deal. So what is left to put in a rack?

The PA. If you haven't gone over to powered speakers, you need power amps. Electronic crossover? Some power amp input cards include that. Same with compressor/limiter action.

[Mick Bailey]

When you open up some rack FX units there's sometimes the pedal version right in there with a simple power supply. A big box full of nothing, maybe with some extra LEDs. Prices here tumbled very quickly in the 90s. For one thing, a hair-metal guitarist with a fully populated 22U rack just looked plain stupid playing a pub with just a handful of customers.

How much those rack DFX processors cost in the day and nowadays many don't sound too good compared to a cheap $70 plastic Zoom pedal.

[Axtman]

Being a bass player, I don't know much about git fiddle stuff. I would assume that EFX units are way better now. Yet I just realized that older Boss and other brand effect pedals command higher prices. Hmmmmm.

If I was a touring musician all I would play would be rack gear. It is so nice to have everything in one box and room for cable storage in the back. I would definitely use rack gear if someone else was moving and packing my gear.

It is too bad that rack gear has become practically worthless because some of it still sounds great.

[Justin Thomas]

Funny, I associate rack gear with 80s-early 90s... It was greeat for tours, just load up a giant box & go. Personally I don't like multi-fx boxes or anything I hafta program. Nearly everyone I know who's switched to digital whatsits sound "cool," but FAR from better than they did with "real" amps & pedals. There's no "fun" factor, no mess, no chaos... It's just download-a-tone & go. Nothing stands out. And I've often felt like the lanes aren't "wide enough" on all the dfx. I've said it before, if you CAN'T dial in a bad sound, it's too restricted.

Justin

[Chuck H]

I think the floor pedal stuff holds on because it enjoyed more time in popular use. The method having been used on more popular recordings historically, etc. Also, you can't put a dirt box in your effects loop (well, you can, but you probably won't like it). Now they DID make rack mount dirt boxes, but that only left players with the conundrum of running their rack case to their guitar AND their amps effects loop or just staying with the floor pedals for stuff that goes into the amps input and reserving the rack case for the effects loop exclusively. Not to mention the extra cords for midi controllers and extra (tone robbing) cable length, etc. So boxes on the floor remained even through the rack mount phase. Many effects just work better into a guitar amp input. And it's a short run of cable to the floor boxes which already have foot controllers and actuators built in. You can also arrange foot pedals in whatever combination or order you like with more versatility than even the best effects processors. Since guitar amp effects loops are pretty much only superior for reverb and delay (and not even that much for delay so that just leaves reverb) the floor pedals remained the most practical solution for nearly everything else.

Just my very biased opinion your quandary.

EDIT: I did have the full rack mount catastrophe once upon a time (Two tube preamps (in the rack and another at home), two effects processors, EQ, stereo power amp (one in the rack and one at home), midi controller interface, etc. plus some recording stuff at home like an ADAT and even RTR tape. All rack mount). And I actually had it dialed in correctly so it wasn't just a mushy, noisy squeak machine. And I used A LOT of the effects to mimic tones for the cover band I was in. But anytime there was a small gig or something peripheral to my main band I just found myself grabbing the 1x12 combo amp more and more. Then one day at a used music gear place I plugged into a Marshall head. It sounded so brash, bold, chaotic and expressive. I had to have one immediately. I sold off or traded a lot of my rack gear to acquire that head and some pedals and I've never looked back. All the rest of it found a home with someone that needed it more than I wanted it or sold for cheap.

[Justin Thomas]

Well, Fender's been putting the reverb where the FX loop goes since 1960 anyway, so...
I'm not usually using more than three boxes at a time anyway, and generally no more than 5 on the floor. I'm just a plug&play guy I guess. Though a more durable case for my precious Arion SCH1 would be nice... The One I Fear To Lose...

Justin