Damn you Musician's Friend catalog! Damn you....

[vi5]

I get one of these every 2-3 weeks it seems. And inevitably I read through it and drool over everything and end up ordering something that I don't necessarily NEED but that looks great/cool/fun and is inexpensive and makes me go "Well even if it's not GREAT and doesn't work that well, it's not all that expensive so why not!?!?" And thus a $30 mandolin turns into a $25 effects pedal turns into a $75 keyboard turns into $15 set of bongos.

It's made worse by the fact that I'm a "throw in everything but the kitchen sink" type of guy when it comes to recording in my home studio so I'll be able to find a spot in some song for everything and then am able to justify it to myself as having been worth it. Plus, with 2 young kids I'm hopeful having as much different musical equipment around to get their feet wet with will spark their creativity and allow them to see if they actually like and/or are good at something before we invest in a higher quality instrument for them.

I feel like a recovering gambler who keeps getting those comp tickets from casinos.

[smoogatz]

1. My wife calls the Musician's Fiend catalog "guitar porn."

She's right. And I hear you on the idea of having a lot of music stuff around for the kids to bang on; my 2.5-year-old goes and grabs his little cheapo uke now when I pick up my guitar. Very cool!

[Rockit]

2. The guys at the guitar shop I work at call it... Muscians Fiend!